Commercial advertising and public relations are the forms of propaganda activity common in a democracy. In the United States over a very long time now these methods have been honed by incomparably more skill and research than in any other country. Journalists from the print and electronic media such have been campaigning for Wall Street while appearing to be objective and neutral In their theatrical debates both cadidates avow their allegience to “the free enterprise system” (capitalism) despite the profits system’s long and ongoing record of savage, murderous history. The essence of capitalism is one of ever mouting misery, bloody wars, and smiling politicians.
Behind the media story-line of a contest between two “very different” and “sharply polarized” parties and candidates, Obama and Romney agree to the wishes of capital. It is now hardly controversial to suggest that these ruling parties primarily serve the interests of wealth, the corporations and Wall St., and that they exercise dominant influence over the Republican and Democratic leadership. The two parties benefit the big corporations at the expense of the American working people and the society in which they live. Both supported deregulation of the financial markets that facilitated the recession.
The Democrats gesture politically toward the working class and the unions though they have received nil-to-negligible benefits from the arrangement. Unions are weakened by pro-business legislation and other barriers to labor organizing, and as working class incomes stagnated, the Democratic Party hardly did anything to protect the workers despite labor’s near-total support for Democratic candidates. In fact, many of the gains won in struggles of earlier years are in deep jeopardy today, with little more than a rhetorical fight-back from the Democratic Party grassroots. Many in 2008 thought President Obama was a “good” candidate who would govern from the liberal or progressive “left,” but in practice this was shown to be fictitious. They will now vote for him again in 2012 as a lesser evil candidate. Party insiders well understood that Obama was the corporate candidate backed by Wall St.
Look at the record: Remember what happened to single payer/public option health care. Remember bank bailouts but the lack of financial reform to rein Wall St. Remember the continuance of Guantanamo, the Patriot Act yet civil liberties attacked. Remember the environment ad global warming being sidelined yet offshore drilling, "clean" coal, and "safe" nuclear energy prioritised. Remember immigration deportations, the continuing Cold War sanctions on Cuba and Iran, and the rise in the Pentagon budget to pay for Obama's wars. Remember, remember, on the 6th of November!! Come the election, the “betrayed” progressives, the “disillusioned” liberals, and the “disheartened” labor movement will join together and vote Obama against the right wing menace because he’s the current “lesser evil.” Inevitably, lesser evil voters face disappointment. Voting on the hope of perceived social gains in the short-term is not only erroneous; it is without a true understanding of what it is going to take to bring about real change. In purporting to support the "lesser evil" they are promoting the "greater evil".
Politicians like Obama knowingly market themselves to lesser evil voters by constructing phony sales pitches, making themselves look more progressive than they really are. Obama is not a lesser evil. He is on par with any other Republican. Of two evils, choose neither. Abstention from voting, but more importantly spoiling your ballot, is a valid legitimate expression of a person’s political position. It is an opting out from the system and declares, to a degree, dissatisfaction in the system.
The 17th-century Spanish philosopher Baltasar Gracián y Morales warned, “Never open the door to a lesser evil, for other and greater ones invariably slink in after it.”
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