BartBlog

This November, it goes without saying that most American oligarchs will gleefully vote for Mitt Romney — or whoever else the Republicans finally choose — because it’s clearly in their best self-interest to vote for a candidate who offers them every perk that they want. I understand that.

But what I completely don’t understand is why anyone who makes less than $5,000,000 a year would even consider voting for anyone besides progressive candidates such as the Green Party’s Jill Stein. If you’re not filthy rich and aren’t receiving Welfare for the Wealthy, then voting for progressives is clearly in YOUR own best self-interest too.

And then there’s Barack Obama to consider. Given his dismally neo-con-ish track record these past four years, why in the world would any American working-class hero ever consider voting for Obama again either? He has proven time and again to be a friend of the rich, an admirer of banksters, a happy supporter of oil barons, the corporatistas’ BFF, and a buddy-buddy-pal to war profiteers.

According to journalist Mark Karlin, Obama has recently come up with even more and better ways to help out oligarchs — not us. “Under President Obama and the Republicans, apparently we are about to surrender portions of our legal system that protect our health, environment, financial system and working conditions to a corporate-driven international tribunal.” http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/13547.

A vote for Obama is definitely not a vote for the Salt of the Earth like you and me and definitely not in our own self-interest. So why would I ever vote for him? Here’s why: REVENGE.

After repeatedly selling out the very people who elected him to office in a landslide in 2008, dontcha think it’s finally about time for Obama to finally feel the pain of our wrath? Yeah! And what could possibly be more painful than to torture Obama by getting him re-elected and forcing him to spend another four miserable years listening to racists, birthers, wannabe assassins, thugs and haters spewing out vitriolic, horrid and slimy things about him and his family again and again and again — like they have already done for the last four years.

But, ironically, it is these very same racists, birthers and haters who used to practically cream their jeans with happiness back when George W. Bush came out with all the very same “Bail out the Rich and kill everything that moves in the Middle East” policies that Obama now embraces. Go figure. You would think that these people would simply adore Obama just like they did GWB (and now Bush’s twin brother Romney).

I’m still surprised that they don’t.

PS: At the 2012 Netroots Nation convention last week, Van Jones gave a very stirring speech in favor of voting for Obama (for reasons other than revenge). And here is the gist of his speech, hopefully quoted correctly by me. But is Jones right? Should we actually go ahead and vote for Obama? Who knows. But I personally like my REVENGE reason better.

Here’s pretty much what Jones said:

“With regard to Wisconsin, you have to do a lot more than outspend us eight-to-one in order to beat us down. We are not giving up!

Our grandparents knew what it was like to march for change for real. They faced fire hoses and billy clubs. And now some of us want to give up after a really bad Tweet?

In Wisconsin, the local forces stood up — but they fought alone. Where was the national Democratic party? We did our minimum and the others did their maximum — and they won. Democrats, women, civil rights movement? They didn’t step up.

And now we have a quandary. We know we’re supposed to be all fired up. But we’re not. We like this President — but we don’t love him. We went from having a crush to feeling crushed. And we’re upset. Caught between a Barack and a hard place!

But if we try to teach Obama a lesson, let me just say a few things. If the Tea Party is allowed to score a trifecta and they govern America, they might use power a little bit differently than we do. They might use their power to decimate us! These people truly want to decapitate us — to eliminate the EPA for instance, which has probably saved more American lives than the Department of Defense.

When we had power, we went all bipartisan. But if they win, they won’t act that way. Do you actually think that if they win in November that they are going to be all bipartisan too? All the crazy stuff they say that they will do? They will do it!

It will be the worst.

Imagine a beach with a lifeguard, not the best lifeguard in the world — but not the worst. Then imagine a tsunami coming. Then imagine someone saying, “The more people who drown, that is a good thing — because then they will fire the lifeguard and I could get the lifeguard’s job.”

I respect Tea Party members. They are Americans. But I want to beat them in November! It’s time for us to stand up for what we believe in. It’s like when my kid plays soccer. I want my kid to win. But I don’t want my kid to win by biting the other kid and or to cheat and lie.

So we are in a quandary. We’ve been dealt a tough hand. But we have to be as strong as the opposition. So. What to do? Re-elect the president — and then hold him accountable too.

But before you can get a president to do what you want, you have to have a president who can be moved — and then you’ve got to do the moving. And Obama can be moved. But if the Tea Party gets a president elected, you can bet that their president will not and cannot be moved. So we have two fights here — first, to stop the Tea Party in November. But also to stop the budget committee in December as well, when the Bush tax cuts and the Pell grants expire. And we can do it. Occupy Wall Street was able to stop the SuperCommittee. Remember that.

We are dealing with ham-and-egg justice here — where the rich only have to give up a few eggs but the rest of us have to contribute the ham for breakfast. And in the process we, like the pig that contributes the ham, have to be killed.

In 2000, we had no idea that Bush would bankrupt the nation or crumple our international esteem. But in 2012, we now know. They have a wrecking-ball agenda. And we know this now. Education, clean air, unions. They have a brutal willingness to destroy all we have fought for. “I want to drown America’s government in a bathtub.” Who even thinks like that?

Kids coming home from wars are killing themselves — one a day. They’ve been nation-building in other countries. Now do it here at home!

You need to take yourselves very seriously now. We’ve got to take a time-out from our pity party. The stakes are too high — and you have the power. Our grandparents fought worse things than this and they won. Somebody has got to stand up now. Fight back. The fight to take back America has to start somewhere. Why not here.

PPS: Was it Plato who first got all excited about Beauty being the most important thing in the world? Beauty. That’s right.

“A thing of beauty is a joy forever,” Keats tells us.

“Flowers are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty out-values all the utilities of the world,” says Ralph Waldo Emerson.

But no matter who you personally plan to vote for in 2012, please remember this: There is no beauty in greed, no beauty in poverty and no beauty in war.