Simply, no person or group of persons has the answer(s) to our current dilemmas. Even if someone did have the answer(s), implementing them would be outrageously complex and fraught with peril.

The best that we can hope for seems to be to muck along as best we can from day to day and hope that we don’t make things worse.

And we better be very lucky to boot.

Trust is over. Credibility has to be earned. The social contract has been torn up. I don’t care who you, what credentials you have or or what podium you presume to stand on. The game is up, the players stand naked and exposed. The truth is out. We are tired of talk…bullshit walks…

or if we dont find the next little dollar
I tell you we must die, I tell you we must die
I tell you, I tell you, I tell you we must die”…..

And you think that’s what took place on November 4th? Please tell me that you’re kidding.

Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, Obama and their predecessors are marionettes occupying the same stage.

So, her motives can be conjectured, but the point isn’t that she was or was not prophetic, but that the demise of imperialistic capitalism (to paraphrase Marx) seeded in the depths of its project.

I would suggest looking into a Memorandum E-B34 drafted by a joint planning group to the President (FDR) in 1941 outling the concept of a “Grand Area”. This was the plan drafted before US entry into WWII to control the world’s resources. Or you might want to heed this, Policy Planning Study 23, a top-secret document written in 1948 by George Kennan, the leading architect of the post-WWII world:
“We have about 50% of the world’s wealth, but only 6.3% of its population…In this situation we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity…To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our intention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives… We should cease to talk about vague…unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of living standards, and democratization. The day isnot far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.”

This is the crux of the power behind the power and it is replete throughout US history.

Naomi Klein got lucky. Naomi’s Klein’s book, “The Shock Doctrine” was not written to inform people of the current economic crisis. The book was written to deflect attention away from the growing inquiries that the War on Iraq may not have been solely about oil. Her book was part of the “progressive” or left-wing antidote for Mersheimer and Walt raising the issue of Zionism’s influence upon American foreign policy.

Ms. Klein background is as a critique of neo-liberalism based on her experience in Latin American. She used her background to alter the direction of the debate about the war. Now that the economy is melting down her book appear prophetic but that was NOT the intended purpose of her book.

The reason why there were so many “Obama lapdogs” is due to the Left’s own inability to build solidarity with the groups who gave Obama much of his support — people of color.

You are right Max that there is much work to be done the question is implementation. That I do not hear much of that coming from the Left.

You are right when you call this form of government a “mythical democracy” because it NEVER existed. There has never been more than a right to vote and until the early 20th Century that was denied to most.

And as I said, the voting process is based on the pre-selected power structure candidates.

The so-called progressives that keep sucking the air out of our dire need for deep real change are worse than the so-called right-wing elite. It is the very Obama lapdogs who are in the way!!

Ignore them and their muddled and wishful thinking. There’s work to be done!

The Democratic Party doesn’t have a progressive base. It has a warmongering, imperialist, corporatist base — i.e. Fascist — and lots of deluded supporters. That so many people can describe the “price worth paying” party as “progressive” demonstrates that those delusions are hopelessly entrenched.

Historians will argue about when the mythical “democratic” America was truly dead. Maybe they’ll decide it was when Eisenhower warned of the MIC and nobody (except perhaps JFK) took any notice. Or maybe it died in Dealey Plaza and at the Lorraine Motel.

The solution to your dilemma? Go on believing whatever you want to believe; but please, leave the World alone.

Prospero:
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d tow’rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

The Tempest Act 4, scene 1, 148–158

While no doubt you may think your article is a “progressive” stand on our wayward ways, taking a rightish turn from time to time, and then “finding our moral compass and correcting course” (my quotes, paraphasing what I think you’re stating); but I think yours is a mis-reading (or lack thereof) of US history.

US history is not simply about a right/left but about elite authoritarians that have ALWAYS ruled the US of A. There has been no lapse in this direction since the inception of the “birth” and before beginning with the colonial underpinnings of the UK imperial conquest.

We must be clear eyed and headed. Less is just a distortion of our historical facts. The U.S. Constitution is a charter for the wealthy elite to rule. It was never meant to be more nor less; and it continues to this day. The Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights were appeasement documents that captured the true nature of democracy but was never intended (nor has it) to be implemented.

We do not NOW, or EVER have lived in a democracy. We are a republic ruled by power elites who select our candidates and then allow us to pick among their selection. Each is sworn to protect and defend the constitution and the elite who rule.

US history is replete with the powerful against the people, particularly people of color, women and workers. There have been uprisings at times, but the powers of the press, corportions, judicial system and government have ultimately kept the power elite in control. Those are facts. Yes, there have been struggles and these have yielded some change, but at bottom our government is 1) not democratically organized, 2) money rules 3) US foreign and domestic policies are driven by an imperial agenda. The system only knows this way to function. When it accomodates, it does so only to appease and to always KEEP the power structure and imperialism in tact.

Our new president will follow those orders. That is the role of the POTUS. It won’t change with Obama, and he demonstrates this with each and every action he takes.

The federal government was created to concentrate power, while orchestrating a massive empire.

Keep in mind there is not ONE thing that George W. Bush has done while president that was not done before by other presidents. For example, almost all of the hundreds of wars/occupations this imperial country has been involved with were pre-emptive strikes, rarely instigated by the sovereign (usually small/relatively weaker) nation the US chose to invade. Some have offered a “softer touch” but in the end there are thousands and sometimes millions of death due to US murder squads.

The real work is local. The power structure must directly confront change. Local politics is amenable to change by the people; IF the people want and are willing to demand change and work for it on a regular basis.

Washington – George Bush is working at a breakneck pace to dismantle at least 10 major environmental safeguards protecting America’s wildlife, national parks and rivers before he leaves office in January.

With barely 60 days to go until Bush hands over to Barack Obama, his White House is working methodically to weaken or reverse an array of regulations that protect America’s wilderness from logging or mining operations, and compel factory farms to clean up dangerous waste.

In the latest such move this week, Bush opened up some 800,000 hectares (2m acres) of land in Rocky Mountain states for the development of oil shale, one of the dirtiest fuels on the planet. The law goes into effect on January 17, three days before Obama takes office.

Bush’s legacy is and always’ will be he and his people the have and have more did there best to bring on the destruction of the human race.