Messiah President (Re-posted from August)

If only the rest of Congress consisted of representatives like mine, what a wonderful country this would be.

John Lewis

Every day intelligent people on the Left despair of war, poverty, and the destruction of our environment. Like me they see the waste and greed of capitalism unchecked and its keeping power through corrupt banking, a bad tax system, and the spending of the military-industrial complex. Because big money is needed to obtain office for most politicians, we end up with a puppet Congress, beholden to the corporations and a President who can only enact a bare minimum of legislation that benefits anyone but the already rich and powerful. Few liberals would disagree with this assessment. The question is what to do about it. Too many liberals are following the pied piper dreams of socialism and pacifism. They want a Messiah President to come and make everything good and righteous once more. Most forget that the closest we've ever had to such a leader is Jimmy Carter, who really did care about the poor and about humanity and the environment. But he dared to tell people to turn down their thermostats in the winter of their discontent. He dared to put solar panels on the White House. He was just too idealistic. We shall not see his like again. Presidents must be practical and that is the way it will stay. 2016 will offer us a so-called moderate Democrat, and a Republican who would give even more to the corporations, the oil companies, the war machine. meanwhile, this year, as liberals despair that Hillary is not one of them, the Republicans will overthrow what sanity is left in Congress by seizing control of the Senate. They will give us the absurdity of impeaching Obama two years before his term ends. That will allow them to increase "defense" spending, lay more polluting pipe lines, and fuck over the poor and the needy. The cruelest irony is that those on the Left who rant the most about inequality and war are, by their idealism and refusal to support the greater good that is electable, thereby bringing about the most destructive outcome imaginable. Perhaps Epicurus was right to see that the world is doomed, that the best we can do is to wall ourselves in with friends who are poets, artists, musicians, and philosophers as the Evil Empire burns.

Jack Miller
Posted by Jack Miller at Friday, August 29, 2014