Were it not for the very real and serious consequences wrought by a political system that values victory over compassion, politics in the Untied States as it is currently constituted would amount to not much more than bad theater. What I find much more interesting is how the corporate media in America spins, misinforms, and propagandizes the concerns of the people in order to create a false sense of hopelessness, helplessness and artificial consensus; what Noam Chomsky calls manufacturing consent. 

Just today (10.22.08) an Associated Press poll asserted that the Presidential election is too close to call; this makes no sense to me. This is the same John McCain who roughly 90% of the time voted in agreement with the historically unpopular President Bush, who is currently riding his prop pony and shrinking approval ratings into a dust bowl-like sunset, whistling past an international war crimes tribunal. Logically John McCain and his political agenda should be similarly unpopular.

To my mind there is likely an ongoing attempt by the super rich base of the Republican party to once again subvert the will of the people and to steal yet another Presidential election.

Here is how I think it may be transpiring:

The bought-and-paid-for, subservient corporate media is softening the ground by persistently reporting that the election is a back-and-forth virtual draw; meanwhile likely Democratic voters in swing states are being surreptitiously prohibited from voting using similar if not identical voter caging methods that were so effective in the Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004 elections.

Should John McCain be announced the winner, very possibly after court intervention, the corporate media will once again claim that the race had been close all along, thus providing the super-rich, Republican, Christian fundamentalists plausible deniability and the keys to what is left of the kingdom. This corruption of democracy and free will has worked out quite well for those gluttonous, fear-mongering, narrow-minded people benefited by the status quo but not quite so well for the rest of us

However, (and if you have visited this website even once you had to know there would be a however), all hope is not lost.

Our government is not broken, the method of selecting who governs is broken and the fix is simple in theory and inexpensive in practice; campaign finance reform is a must. Publicly funded elections would to a great extent take the super-rich and corporations out of the picture and make the candidates more responsible to the people. Give free radio and TV time to all candidates (not just the Democrats and Republicans), and shorten the election cycle to six months. If we can’t be convinced to vote for any candidate in that time there should be a “none of the above” option like the ones used in Nevada and some European countries. Finally, for the purposes of increasing voter turnout, make Election Day a national holiday.

I believe these five simple changes would shift the balance of power away from the few and redistribute it to the many, making our elected officials more accountable to the people they are hired to represent.

One last thing – vote on November 4^th – if for no other reason than to honor those who have given and continue to give their lives for the privilege.