by Stephen Lendman

Ahead of Tuesday's mid-term elections, he's mostly shunned. Considered toxic. Damaged goods.

Disgracing the office he holds. A caricature of a leader. Shameless. Lawless. Dishonest. Most Democrat candidates want no part of him.

Where he shows up, Big Lies follow. Truth is nowhere in sight. Duplicitous demagogic boilerplate substitutes.

So often perhaps he's no longer able to distinguish between facts and fiction. Mumbo jumbo rubbish repeats with disturbing regularity.

Political doublespeak. Newspeak. Contrary views considered thoughtcrimes. Dissent increasingly an endangered species.

Obamaspeak gives Big Lies new meaning. On November 1 and 2, he campaigned in Detroit and Bridgeport, CT.

Surprisingly anyone showed up to hear him. Or stayed to listen. Similar rubbish repeats in all his speeches. Polar opposite hard truths.

At Wayne State University, MI, he said it's "(t)hree days until you get to choose a new governor and senator."

In a city reflecting America's decline. Bankrupt. A shadow of its former self. Once with the nation's highest per capita income. Its industrial heartland.

Today a hollow shell. Once mighty Motown now a ghost town. A desolate wasteland. Only its obituary remains to be written.

Public education is being dismantled. Dozens of schools closed. Thousands of teachers sacked. Along with police, firemen and other civil servants.

Two-thirds of its public parks remain permanently closed. Tens of thousands of buildings are abandoned. Similar numbers of neighborhood residences.

Half or more of its working-age population unemployed. Most with jobs have rotten ones. Paying poverty or sub-poverty wages. With few or no benefits.

Child poverty is off-the-scale. Extreme by any standard. Matching impoverished third world countries. No one gives a damn to help.

Crime is a growth industry. Desperate people do anything to survive. Things get worse, not better.

Detroit's so-called "Plan of Adjustment" intends gutting pensions. Healthcare. Other vital benefits. Affecting city workers and retired ones.

Establishing financial dictatorship. Giving it new meaning. Beholden to Wall Street and other corporate predators.

Carving up Detroit for profit. Selling off municipal assets at fire sale prices. Eliminating vital social benefits. Voiding union contracts.

Leaving working-class families high and dry. On their own. Out of luck. Sink or swim.

What's happening in Detroit reflects America. Vitally needed services are disappearing. Vanishing when most needed.

Obama ignored what most needs explaining. He lied claiming "real progress since the worst economic crisis in our lifetimes."

Protracted Main Street Depression conditions persist. Real unemployment tops 23%. Not the fake reported 5.9%.

Tens of millions of Americans are ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed and ill-cared for. Human misery is unprecedented. Poverty a growth industry.

US-style casino capitalism failed. Growing millions struggle to get by. One missed paycheck away from homelessness, hunger and despair.

"I don't have to tell you the auto industry that was on the brink of collapse is back on its feet, making better cars than ever, right here in Michigan," said Obama.

It's a shell of its former self. Downsized and largely offshored. Profitable on the backs of exploited workers. Paying new ones half what older ones get.

Gutting pensions and benefits. Demanding more from workers at less pay. Obama didn't explain.

Or mention Detroit's bankruptcy. Symbolic of predatory capitalism's failure. A looting mechanism. Transferring wealth from ordinary people to super-rich ones already with too much.

Washington's criminal class is bipartisan. Facilitating what demands condemnation. Eliminated altogether. Replaced by fairness entirely absent.

Democrats share guilt with Republicans. For appalling conditions. Worsening, not improving.

Privatizing profits. Socializing losses. Facilitating corporate grand theft. Targeting America's social contract for elimination. Doing so when most needed.

Heading it for history's dustbin. Thirdworldizing America. Banana republicanizing it. Institutionalizing inequality.

Unprecedented in modern times. Serving monied interests only. America no longer fit to live in.

Detroit symbolizes its decline. Plundering public resources for profit. Finance is a new form of warfare. Economies strip-mined for profit.

Communities laid waste. Detroit is ground zero. Reflecting what's wrong with America.

Exposing predatory capitalism's failure. Its dark side. Symbolic of much worse to come.

Monied interests alone matter. Democracy is pure fantasy. Obama didn't explain. Regurgitating one Big Lie after another.

Like he always does. Ignoring his direct responsibility for dire economic conditions. Sacrificing Main Street for Wall Street.

Doing nothing to help beleaguered Detroit residents. Supporting its bankruptcy process. On the backs of ordinary people.

Complicit with business and corrupt labor bosses. In America's poorest big city. A testimony to blight, impoverishment and despair. Obama ignored what's most important.

Again in Bridgeport, CT the next day. Repeating similar Big Lies. Selling snake oil. Business as usual. Same old, same old.

Ignoring hard truths. The American dream. The one you have to be asleep to believe. In one of its poorest cities. One of its most unequal.

Claiming "it doesn't matter who you are, what you look like, where you came from, what your last name is, who you love."

"What matters is, are you willing to work hard? Are you willing to take responsibility?"

"Because if you are, you deserve to be able to make it in America. That's what the American Dream is all about."

Truth is polar opposite. Hard times keep getting harder. Growing millions of unemployed, underemployed, and ill-served when most in need deserve better.

Not in America. Beautiful for wealth, power and privilege alone. Republicans and Democrats reflect two sides of the same coin.

Throwing out bums assures new ones. US-style electoral democracy is pure fantasy.

Dysfunctional. Unaccountable. Beholden to monied interests alone. Duopoly power excludes choice. Elections are a convenient fiction.

Legitimizing the illegitimate. Perpetuating a broken system. "(V)alidating the unaccountability of government," says Paul Craig Roberts.

Run by crooks and scoundrels. Giving ordinary people no say. Fooling enough of them most often to matter.

Perpetuating what belongs in history's dustbin. Replaced by governance of, by and for everyone equitably.

Real democracy. Not fantasy like today's. What Americans never before had. For sure not now.

Elections are a convenient fiction. Institutionalizing business as usual. US-style democracy is none at all.

Pretense can't change things. Rotten-to-the-core reality reflects them. Realpolitik should scare everyone.

Democratic values don't exist. Peace, equity and justice are four-letter words. Freedom is dying in plain sight.

Elections provide fig leaf legitimacy. Phony by any standard. People power alone works. Grassroots commitment matters.

Americans did it before. They can do it again. Anti-war activists helped end war in Vietnam.

Abolitionists ended slavery. Civil and labor rights were won. Now lost because energy waned.

Ordinary people have power when they use it. Change requires longterm struggle.

Former Supreme Court Justice William Douglas (1898 - 1980) once said: "Power concedes nothing without a demand."

Community organizer Saul Alinsky (1909 - 1972) said the way to beat organized money is with organized people. Always bottom up. Never top down.

Authority can be challenged and beaten. Social movements are pivotal forces. Disruptive activism works.

According to Political Science Professor Frances Fox Piven:

"Ordinary people (have) power." They do so "when they rise up in anger and hope, defy the rules...disrupt (state) institutions (and) propel new issues to the center of political debate."

When they force "political leaders (to) stem voter defections by profering reforms."

"These are the conditions that produce democratic moments."

Electoral politics doesn't work. It bears repeating. Replacing bums with new ones assures business as usual.

Things are too corrupted to fix. Scattered reforms won't work. An entire makeover is needed. From the bottom up.

For revolutionary change. Through truth-telling in times of universal deceit. Disruptive power when most needed.

No other way works. Not Western ballot box democracy. For sure not US-style. Assuring same old, same old.

It's long past time for real change. Noted cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead (1901 - 1978) once said:

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has," she explained.

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Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks World War III".

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

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