A LIBERTARIAN PERSPECTIVE - This US presidential election is absolutely different from any other election I have experienced for several reasons. First, the buzz is almost audible from the anxiety, anger, fear, and disgust over our current economic condition. Everyday I am surrounded by men who are commiserating over the economy and the loss of work or income. I have become acutely aware of men repeatedly sighing, subconsciously releasing the pent up frustration and hopelessness they feel.
Second, pretending that we are in recovery is just maddening. But that is what everyone wants to hear. So we try to put a spin on our statistics to make one candidate look viable. We are unwilling to say the word “Depression” despite the fact that every country is facing severe economic stress. And even as I say it, it is as if the hounds of hell have been released by its utterance.
I gave Obama a fair shot at his Presidency. I knew he inherited 50 years of bad foreign policy, an economy on the brink, and a massive military industrial complex that heavily impacted the economy. Not his fault. Clean slate.
But the military needed drastic cut backs and realignment so that our neglected infrastructure could be restored. That’s how you put America back to work, you reinvent F. D. Roosevelt’s “The New Deal”. You don’t bail out banks and auto dealers. That was definitely his fault. Dirty slate.
This election cycle was supposed to offer us new ideas, new hope, and some lessons learned from our mistakes. The 2012 presidential candidates weren’t offering solutions, they were like sock puppets waiting for button eyes and noses and someone to move their mouths. Perfect for corporate and lobbyists hands.
Still, a lone voice kept telling the truth, repeating that truth, offering real solutions, and the people came to slowly embrace Ron Paul. The more he spoke the truth, the more the media silenced him by not covering him. He was the only relevant thing happening in modern politics as far as I could see. The youth, the libertarians, and basically disgruntled Americans were sold on Ron Paul. The media’s lack of coverage was the third shocking part of this election.
I was shocked when Al Gore lost his bid for presidency in Florida due to some shenanigans with dangling chads. It appeared to be a brazen robbery of the presidential election. Now Ron Paul was getting robbed of a fair chance at his bid for presidency by the media, despite Americans crying foul.
The fourth surprise was Romney’s Republican nomination. His horse was lame prior to the starter pistols discharge. How he managed to wrangle the nomination is bewildering. He does make a fine cartoon character though and he can do no worse than Obama’s last term.
The fifth surprise was that I, a 35 year voting democrat, could shed that skin and become a Libertarian. 9/11 most certainly became the turning point where the constitution was all but abandoned and my party had become part of the problem not the solution.
The surprises aren’t over yet. Green Party Presidential candidate Jill Stein and her running mate, Cheri Honkala were protesting the fact that only two major political parties were taking part in the debate at Hofstra University and the rest of the third party 2012 candidates were being excluded.
They were arrested by local police in Hempstead, New York when they tried to enter the grounds of Hofstra University. The Commission on Presidential Debates is accused of unfairly excluding other candidates. I agree. America wants to hear from all the candidates.
Stein and Honkala were shackled to chairs for 8 hours and then released from police custody late that evening on Oct. 16th, and Stein released a statement saying, “This is a great day for democracy”. It would have been a far better day for democracy had she been able to protest unmolested by law enforcement. But our expectations to be protected by our Bill of Rights is so diminished under the Bush and Obama administration that a candidate running for higher office is arrested for using her freedom of speech.
Jill Stein is a Harvard-educated physician who plans to give "every American willing and able to work" a job on renewable energy projects as part of her "Green New Deal." This was not her first arrest, she was also arrested in Philly at an anti-eviction/foreclosure rally.
Back when I was a teary eyed Obama voter, I envisioned him protesting at the rallies, getting arrested, and standing up for American rights. Now I have to watch the one candidate actually doing it, kept from the debates. And if I am misting up anymore, it’s not from hope, or pride in America, it’s for all that we have lost since 9/11 and for how far we have fallen.
Still, I reserve the right to be bored to tears by empty promises, angered over faulty statements of facts, and disappointed by the passive tone of the debates, by each and every candidate in a fair debate. But it appears that a fair debate is a thing of the past.
(Lisa Cerda is a contributor to CityWatch, a community activist, Chair of Tarzana Residents Against Poorly Planned Development, and former Tarzana Neighborhood Council board member.) –cw
CityWatch
Vol 10 Issue 84
Pub: Oct 19, 2012