Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

The primary reason that our government doesn't work, and the institutions that are supposed to be protecting our rights have become monuments to the maintenance of the status quo is because WE, THE PEOPLE, have allowed ourselves to become so distracted by the corporate promotion of social hedonism that we're allowing the most ruthless among us to take control of government.
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As I point out in a message to the group, CARMA - Citizens Against Reckless Middle Class Abuse - the poor and middle class will never be secure in their homes, their standard of living, or their jobs until they ensure that their politicians, union officials, and all other representatives of the people are insecure in theirs.
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So while Tavis Smiley and Cornel West have the right idea in terms of the need to confront power, it’s their motives and the hypocrisy of their agenda that I have a problem with. They’re clearly being self-serving and purposely divisive, which plays right into the hands of those who continue to subjugate us.
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Keeping the people divided is the coin of the corporatist realm, and I seriously suspect that Tavis is working in concert with the corporations that he continues to shill for - Wal-Mart, Exxon, Nationwide, Wells Fargo, etc. As for West, if he was even close to as intelligent as the corporate media would have us believe, he’d surely recognize the relevance of the Abraham Lincoln maxim that “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” So West is either working in collusion with Tavis’ turncoat agenda, or he’s incredibly stupid for failing to recognize that social manipulators have been keeping the people under thumb with the tactic of social division for centuries - if not eons.
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The fact is, the people need to take a lesson from the Tea Party. We need to strictly control those we allow in office, and make them immediately accountable for their behavior. The government is SUPPOSED to be us, but we've shirked our responsibility. We’ve allowed ourselves to become more interested in Kobe’s jump shot than we are the education of our children, the future well being of our families, and even the survival of the nation as a whole. We’ve also allowed corporate instigators to create so much animosity among the people that we’ve become more interested in hating one another than we are in coming together to protect our common interests.
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We do need to get Obama’s attention, however, that’s a given. But our approach should be through educating the people, not by antagonizing half of the population against the other. That’s counterproductive, and it’s also counterrevolutionary - and believe me, the turmoil that’s taking place here in the United States, in the Middle East, and now in the United Kingdom, clearly attests to the fact that we’re in the midst of a global, class revolution.
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Tavis and West are advocating that the people live in a fantasy. The problem with that is, when you live in a fantasy, you're forced to view reality as a myth. They’re engaging in the very same kind of hysterically flawed, self-serving, and demagogic behavior that Ralph Nader did during the 2000 election, which led to the misery of the Bush era, and ultimately, to the situation that we currently find ourselves.
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Those of us who are students of political history have seen this Tavis/West demagoguery before. They’re following directly in the footsteps of Ralph Nader, one of the worst turncoats in American history.
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Nader should have pushed his agenda during the Democratic primaries, then if his position was rejected, he should have fallen in line and supported the Democratic candidate if for no other reason than to support the public good. But instead, when his position was rejected, he took it as a personal rejection and acted like a petulant child. He ignored the greater good and purposely sabotaged the Democratic agenda - along with all of the causes that he was supposed to be so passionate about all of his life - and took his ball (and votes) and went home.
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By doing so, Nader negated everything that he ever accomplished in his life. He also betrayed the fact that everything he ever accomplished was done purely for self-promotion and not for the public good, as we had previously assumed. His miserable act of treachery during the 2000 election was purposely designed to help George Bush to win that election in order to deny the Democrats after rejecting him as a candidate. That makes him just as culpable as Bush and Cheney for the death of over a million Iraqi citizens, the maiming and death of thousands of American troops, and even the nations current economic condition, which is a direct result of the Bush administration’s purposeful plundering of the United States treasury. Nader supporters would say that he stood on principles, but his "principles" has led to the death and misery of literally millions of innocent people. Thus, Ralph Nader should be remembered as one of the most miserable and self-serving snakes in all of U. S. History.
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Tavis and West are engaged in the very same sort of treachery as Nader, and it may very well lead to the same result, or worse. Because you see, this time we’re going to be left with a fascist state. Look around you. The GOP has already turned the state of Michigan into Michighanistan. So what are we gonna do, not vote for Obama in the next election and turn the country over to fascists? It sounds to me like that’s what Tavis and West are advocating.
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That brings me to yet another reason why the activities of Tavis and West send up a red flag for  me. Notice that nearly all of their hostility is directed toward Barack Obama, and they’re saying little or nothing about the GOP, who are DIRECTLY engaged in undermining the poor and middle class. So I have to ask a very simple question. Why are they focusing all of their energy and resources toward attacking a sleeping sentry, while completely ignoring the invading hordes?
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Something is very wrong there, or at the very least, tactically inept.
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Eric L. Wattree
http://wattree.blogspot.com/
Ewattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)
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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.