I knew for months now that the fix was in for Barack Obama to become the nominee . I articulated some of that here, but I guess I never really believe that it would actually happen in such a brazen way. What we witnessed last Saturday was the ugly truth setting aside its mask and revealing what it is.
I guess we all knew in 2000 that America was no longer a democracy, but preferred to think that it would go away. How naive we were to think that once the powers that be got their hands on something they would just let it go willingly. How stupid of us. We actually thought it would be over in 2004. Boy were we wrong.
After that night in 2004, I knew. I heard people say "it's just 4 years" and realized they.didn't.get.it.
Why would they?
Most Americans have lived all their lives under democracy. Some if not most believed it to be the natural state of things. I am pretty sure none thought that their democracy was in any way at stake.
"The sleep of reason breeds monsters"
The sleep of a nation breeds them too.
The lack of rioting in the streets in 2000 showed the powers that be that the Americans weren't THAT worried about their democracy. 2004 was just the logical following. And people took it.
However, someone stood in the way. The DNC. The people who were regarded as having integrity and not stooping that low.
But they had their weaknesses. The DNC had stopped being a progressive and people party a long time ago.
Their urge to elect one of their own, which I would call an elitist jerk should that not be an insult to the rather useful elitistjerks.com has made them get exactly 2 presidents in the past 40 years. One of them is Jimmy Carter, who left America in a mess of Bushian proportions. The otehr one was a hick from Arlansas who won the presidency twice despite not being one of said elitist jerks ( the bad ones not the WoW ones).
The term "liberal" always evoked that to me, the attitude of a kind yet superior someone who deems to help those lower on the societary ladder (poor people) out of the goodness of his heart. It is the school of thought that says "If poor people knew what's good for them, they'd do it", where "good for them" = "what we think it's good for them".
Of course, that also implies that said poor people whould be fuckign grateful for being even considered worthy of interest and damned if they dare to have their own opinions about their own lives.
Me, I grew up under communism. I know what it's like to be poor, and I know a bit what happens when you don't have democracy.
People who lived their li9ves under dmeocracy have no idea what a frail thing it is, that it is not set in stone but has to be permanently protected. They also have no idea of the many pre requisites for a functional democracy... like economic stability amongst other things.
And thus we come to the matter at hand, namely what happened last Sunday and its context within the current situation of the American primaries.
I see a lot of people, Obama supporters, peole who think of themselves as progressive, who have no problem with the fact that their candidate stole the nomination.
They feel the"rules are rules" and that it is for the greater good of getting Barack elected.
This scares the shit out of me. If Democracy is not important enough for Barack Obama, what else isn't important enough?
I'm very scared.
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