I wish I was as good at rationalizing as I used to be

I hate to be a spoilsport, but I have to agree with Chris Hedges Floyd. Not to mention the bait-and-switch done with this rally, which was originally stated as meant to “demand the change we voted for” instead of a GOTV rally meant to “show support for Obama”:

A Saturday rally in Washington by unions and other groups did turn out several thousand people, calling for more jobs, tax hikes on the rich, immigration reform and defending public services. This, as they say, is better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, although it falls far short of the angry, obstreperous crowds in Europe, who are not wanly supplicating their leaders for a few crumbs but demanding action to preserve their quality of life.

However, one’s heart sinks to see the event’s organizers, and some of the participants, describing it as a get-out-the-vote effort for the Democrats, and a show of support for Obama. Given the horrendous record of the president and his party in prosecuting savage and wasteful wars, overt and covert, all over the world; setting up unaccountable, “extrajudicial” death squads and hit lists; continuing and expanding Bush’s assault on civil liberties; aiding and abetting the ever-widening disparity in wealth and opportunity between the sliverous elite and the collapsing middle class and the already poor — not to mention the president’s clear intent, with his stacked-deck “Catfood Commission,” to gut Social Security, one of the last remaining shreds of America’s never-robust or extensive “safety net,” just as soon as the election is over — what in God’s name do they think the Democrats will actually do to advance the organizers’ stated “core principles” of “jobs, justice and education,” should the party  manage to cling  to Congressional power in November? There will be no money to support these principles, for one thing; it will all go to the wars, to the burgeoning security apparatus, and to the sacred goal of “deficit reduction.” And Obama and the Democrats have already demonstrated, amply, that they have no will or desire to advance these principles or put them into action in any event.

I don’t want to belittle the efforts and hopes of thousands of poor and working people who showed up at the rally to fight for a better life. In that, I wish them every success. And I’m glad to see some counterblast in the public square to the violent fantasies of the proto-fascists. But I believe that if your ultimate goal is simply to perpetuate the status quo of rule by two scarcely indistinguishable political factions, both deeply dedicated to militarist empire and the crushing dominance of financial elites, then you will not stop the accelerating degradation of American society or light a path to a genuinely new direction. Instead, the war, murder, chaos and decay will go on, breeding more blowback from abroad and instability at home, and thus giving more fuel to the proto-fascists and their paymasters.