Foregone conclusion

They look so different. One a good-looking, smiling, tall black man. The other short, old, white and seemingly without the ability to smile without scaring children. The differences between them are not just superficial, they come from different parts the USA, they have grown up differently, they have joined political parties who see themselves as on opposite sides of the spectrum. Yett, despite the tussles, the millions of hard earned dollars they have spent insulting each other, the apparent disparities, they are not such a world apart.

Subscribing to capitalism is to be expected in a country that has spent the best part of the last century locking up, torturing and waging wars upon those who oppose it. Barack Obama's tax rise for the rich is seen as radical, but as he keeps insisting 95% of people will not see a rise. The logical inadequacies are there for all to see. In a country where there is widespread poverty, inadequate healthcare for 30m, a crumbling education system and racial inequality like almost no other place on earth, noone is talking about redistributing the wealth of the 'poor over taxed middle class' and sending it the lowest earners in society. Politics needn't bother itself with the working class: They don't vote, they don't pay much tax and there aren't enough of them anymore. The United States could look no further than its European allies to realise the benefits of progressive taxation.
Why in a country that has such high expecations of the services they use is there not a mass movement for a truly fair health system that is free at the point of use?

Capitalism is not the only subscription that the three hundred million Americans are exposed to. In a world with increasingly little resource for more and more people it seems only too obvious that we must try and use less, buy less and conserve what we have. Not in American. Less is bad. More is good. Why buy less when you can buy something else? Why drive less when you can buy a car which is slightly less harmful to the environment? In fact why not buy two? Why not invest in coal and oil technology and blindly sign up to nuclear power instead of trying to curb your embarrassing appaetite for energy? Why not, when you have 3% of the worlds population, use 25% of it's oil? Why don't they wake up? I don't think anyone's realise that they are sleeping yet.

I want to look forward to a bushless world. A world without aggressive neo-liberalism, without post-colonial war projects, without a neo-conservative christian crusade but that is what we are signing up to when we hold our new, black, young hero aloft. We are signing up to god-driven, nationalistic, war supporting, free market capitalism with just a few tweaks. I don't resent you America but we're all fucked.