According to some who pass as progressive or liberal voices in US politics, if Mitt Romney wins the White House the world will come to an end. Mr. Romney might win the White House, and the world might then come to an end; but it is unlikely the two events would be related. I suppose it possible that Mr. Romney is even more a religious lunatic than was Bush II and, in an attempt to hasten the return of his war god, he would push the Big Red Button to launch the all-out nuclear exchange that could end civilization. Assuming some skilled use of propaganda, (something the right wing mastered as long ago as the Reagan era), the support of the religious nut-cases that make up the T-party, the proclivity of religious Americans to think god is on their side, and the admitted religious lunacy of several nations that would make likely targets, it is just barely imaginable that he could pull it off. If so it might even lead to the end of the human species and not just civilization as we know it.
Even then the world wouldn't end. New species would evolve to fit the new environment and in a million years or so there would be little left to indicate that a species of semi-intelligent ape had once dominated the planet. Given the expanse of the universe, the idea that an intelligent species killed itself off out of shear stupidity isn't much of a reach. In fact it would be a pretty good bet that it has happened somewhere already. We may just be the next in line to vote ourselves off the island.
Of course Mr. Romney, even if such an unlikely chain of events actually did happen, wouldn't be able to take all of the credit. So decrying the catastrophe of a Mitt win is way overstated. Particularly since, it must be admitted, President Obama's reign has been a bit of a catastrophe of its own. The resurgence of the conservatives and the rise of the bat-shit crazy T-Party happened on Mr. Obama's watch. And it happened partly because he and the Democrats failed miserably to evidence anything at all like "Hope" or "Change" while they held both houses of Congress and the White House. The then new President didn't even change the Generals who were in charge of the wars. Hope died when Wall Street insiders moved into the West Wing instead of being hauled off to jail, when the current President became as secretive and as possessive of Executive Power and Executive privilege as any President before him, and when the Bush administration got a complete pass on lying the country into two wars and implementing torture as a policy of the government of the United States.
In other words Mr. Obama is just another President in the top-down power structure that is the sham of America's claim to be a democracy. Mr. Romney might be a bit worse, but he and the current President are cut from the same cloth. Those on the left who think a Mitt win would be a disaster just need to move a bit further to the left, far enough to leave the reservation. From here Mitt being in the race at all is a win; the election doesn't matter.
If Mitt loses the top-down power structure that has blossomed after Citizens United, that of a political system for sale to the highest bidder, takes a huge - huge hit. Imagine the hundreds of millions of dollars spent by a handful of narcissists to get their man in the White House being utterly wasted. Mitt's billionaire boys club humiliated, rejected, shunned by the very population they thought they had bullied and bull-shitted into compliance. It could be the proudest day America has seen for a long, long time. Just the possibility that might happen brings a smile.
The knowledge that a couple of these idiots have already spent millions of dollars supporting Newt and Rick makes one laugh out loud. Sheldon Adelson and his kin are reported to have spent $16 million on Newt - sixteen million fucking dollars on a has-been political hack whose major claim to fame is being chased out of the House of Representative in disgrace - no easy task that. I felt stupid spending $90 / month on cable TV and stopped. This guy spent $16M on Newt and lost. Spend another $20M or so on Mitt and lose again? That is just down right hilarious.
Foster Friess is reported to have spent something like a million dollars trying to get Rick Santorum into the White House ... really? That has to be about the dumbest money ever tossed down a rat hole. Mr. Friess reportedly lives on the fringes of Christan fundamentalism and is described as a "hawk - read that as war monger and profiteer. He should probably hope that atheists are correct in claiming the Christian god doesn't actually exist. Even the worst incarnation of the Christian god would have to think there are better ways to piss away a million than on the political aspirations of Mr. Santorum. Mr. Friess is going to have a hard time explaining to a puzzled and short-tempered god where the money went.
Of course, should Mitt lose, Obama would still be in the White House. Wall Street would sill reign, wars would go on, the military / security apparatus would continue to grow ... no change the first time around can hardly lead to helping the country toward the replacement of top-down power structures the second time around. But at least he would not be any worse than he has been. A Mitt loss might slow the failure of the American political system a little ... might.
And if Mitt wins? Well, Americans would have proved themselves to be kind of dull, pretty slow and way to trusting of 30 second sound-bite-political-ads. But how long would that last? Imagine Mitt implementing the lunacy of his backers; more tax cuts for the rich, more military spending paid for by tax increases on the middle class, an open assault on education and teachers, Wall Street completely unleashed to devastate the economy yet again, civil rights abandoned, voter purges, worker rights and protections sacrificed to corporate profits, less access to health care, fewer families that can afford collage, more jobs shipped over seas ... it is hard to imagine that most of my fellow Americans are stupid enough to put up with that very long. But even if they are, such a society is simply untenable in the world as it is evolving. Jobs shipped over seas cannot be taxed to pay for the war machine. A society that has denigrated and abandoned education, turned its back on innovation, and allowed human progress in civil rights and social progress to move to other parts of the world, will be overwhelmed and left behind as humanity moves into the future. That future will not include a top-down power structure like Obama and Mitt's American political machine.
Mitt, by being in the race and representing only the interests of the very few of the most corrupt of the political / religious / corporate / elite, has already served the country for the better. If he loses the wealthy wanna-be overlords take an instant big hit. If he wins the hit will only be delayed only a little. (I take it as a given that those who spends millions of dollars trying to buy the White House for themselves are utterly corrupt. If the SCOTUS had not declared bribery as legal, every single one of Mitt's billionaire boys club would be guilty enough to spend the rest of their natural lives in prison.)
For my money, looking as I do from off the reservation and back toward the mad-house, Mitt's top-heavy run for the White House shines a bright light on why this system can't last much longer. A win promises to bring about the fall that much faster, allowing a new thing to grow in its place.
Let the debacle continue...
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