Changing an agent of change

Corporate America’s hand-picked change agent was created, thanks in no small part, by a large scale marketing campaign that gave the American people what they really wanted: a two-person horse race between a woman candidate and a person of color candidate. In other words, sensationalism. It was a marketers’ wet dream, 24-7, for over a year. When it was all said and done, America awoke on that chilly January day feeling all warm and fuzzy inside.

A gifted speaker, blessed with natural charisma, natural leadership skills, and a classic example of the all-American family, Barack Obama is a far cry from his predecessor. However, he walked head on into a buzz saw of inept and corrupt and deceiving hypocrisy, allowing himself to be bought and paid for by corporate America, the very elements despised by those who so vocally supported his “spectacular” election campaign of hope and change.

Could anyone have even imagined the number of bubbas that existed within the woodwork of America? Eight months ago no one would have even cared. Today, they crawl around like maggots on dead meat, infecting the moral fiber of the country. The problem lies in underestimating, perhaps even misunderestimating, one’s opponent. Do not think for a moment that the political environment and political management are not related. Sore losers are one thing. A public humiliation in the form of a political ass-kicking over the course of two elections is an entirely different matter. The race card, in the name of a godless god called organized religion, is laid on the table.

While we should be united in a just cause, with signs and banners and political statements waving across every street in the country, we instead allow religion and race to become hot-button topics. The enthusiasm of a voting majority from a year ago is replaced with a complacent attitude, content in its overnight success, blindsided by corporate America’s next move in the transfer of wealth.

Instead of being united on all fronts and banging pots in the streets over finance reform, over global warming, over the pharmaceutical industry’s takeover of the American way of life, over the killing of innocent men, women and children in foreign lands with despicable weapons allowing a military industrial complex to thrive during a global recession, we are a nation divided. Over a tea bag. In some god’s name. For good measure, don’t forget the n-word.

As the days turn into months we begin to realize the seriousness of the situation. Corporate America, brilliant in its efforts, calls itself a two-party nation, effectively keeping divided the very element that could bring it to its knees. The only good thing about the change agent being worse than we thought is that it’s highly likely that the competition was far more incompetent than we imagined.

The severity of the situation does not stop there. Six months ago the grand old party was being written off. The overall assumption was that they would never regain power, at the very least taking decades to recover. Their recent disaster, political in nature, was overshadowed only by the planet’s financial disaster. Today’s honest betting man would give them a thumbs up for the o-ten elections. That is provided they can keep the mouths of Dick Cheney and Sarah Palin shut until then.

Will political management change? Can it change? An effort to reach out across party lines, to bring in the minority group is met with derisive laughter. The bully shows no class. Our system as we know it is broken, in need of repair. Lobbyists representing big money run the show and rule the roost. Politicians are bought, paid for, and sold off as the streetwalkers they all are.

We as a nation refuse to change behavior. Instead of a political economy dependent upon the demands of the people, we are pawns, led by our noses into the arena, walls crumbling around us.