The Presidential Selection of 2012

No, that is not a typo in the title. That is a more accurate description of our current political process, particularly of the presidential contest, than the sappy bullshit about our Republic you hear Ken Burns or other amateur historians spouting. The candidates are selected for us by the elite and then we chose between the Democratic and Republican wings of the Property Party.
Whether the GOP finally decides on Newt Gingrich or Mitt Romney is a small matter ( the other contenders having been displaced by the inevitable winnowing process as big money throws its weight behind those candidates who can talk right- wing crazy on cue but who won't actually rock the boat too much ). Never in the history of American politics have the two parties been closer in their ideologies. Contrary to what the few remaining true believers in Obama think, bombs do not magically stop killing people just because the guy in the White House as a ( D ) after his last name. The very same liberal democrats who took to the streets to protest Bush's War suddenly fell silent on the subject once their hero assumed power. And Obama's political foes in the GOP do not question the President's drone campaign in Central Asia on moral grounds, but in terms of how much more tons of high explosives those drones would drop if they were President.
Civil rights? The Obama administration took over the continuing erosion of the rule of law from that of George W. Bush without missing a beat. The National Defense Authorization Act now makes it legal for the U.S. Military to arrest American citizens overseas or in their own homeland. Goodbye, Posse Comitatus Act. Again, the GOP candidates do not criticize the actual destruction of our rights as U.S. citizens. Their complaint is that the President is not throwing more people in jail.
Both the President and the Republican candidates agree on the fact that Capital must be dominant over Labor. Again, it is a matter of degree. The Democrat must make promises to organized labor and throw a few scraps to the workers now and then. Of course the promises to the Unions can be ignored until the next election cycle comes up ( remember the Employee Free Choice Act ? ) and workers can be distracted by minor cuts in payroll taxes while our Democratic President quietly praises indentured servitude programs like Georgia Works. The Republican candidates have it easier- they do not have to pretend they are a friend of the working class. Their solution to unemployment is to build more prisons.
" Why am I voting for Obama? Two words: Newt Gingrich ( or Mitt Romney )." With President Obama sounding like Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich sounding like, well, Newt Gingrich, even the standard shitty reason of Democrat diehards to vote for their idol falls flat. More and more people are waking up to the fact that the Two- Party system is a pretty crappy form of representative government that is unresponsive to the needs of 99% of its citizens.
The rallying cry of America's workers for the upcoming Occupy campaigns in the spring should be simple: We Deserve Better.