[Peace-discuss] Clinton stumping for Clinton on C-SPAN

[C. G. Estabrook]

The answer is that there is a contradiction rather than a convergences 
between the interests of the few who hold wealth an power in the country 
and the majority.  The Clintons and Obamas are working for them, not for 
us, and their job is marketing -- to convince the majority that the 
contradiction doesn't exist.

But the contradiction has become more apparent over the last forty years 
as inequality in the US has increased.  Today it's increasing ever more 
rapidly, according to the Congressional Budget Office last month.

For most Americans, real wages have been flat for most of that period. 
Up to the 1970s, a young American graduating from college could acquire 
a spouse, a car, a house and children on one salary.  By the 1990s, a 
couple of my students graduating from UIUC were lucky if they could 
count on renting an apartment with two (or more) salaries -- and not 
much thought of anything beyond that.

This confiscation of the lives of the middle class is the unnamed source 
of much of the angst roiling the body politic.  And it's up to people 
like the Clintons to keep the lid on, by promises of "hope" and "change" 
while in fact helping only the rich get richer.  Of course the threat of 
terrorism helps: our leaders promote it and promise protect us from it, 
usually by killing people in a foreign place, actually to the interest 
of the small US elite, as in the case of ME energy.

The resulting unacknowledged panic in the population is likely to emerge 
in madness -- rage toward immigrants, say, or support for Ron Paul... 
--CGE

John W. wrote:
> At 02:23 AM 1/2/2008, Jenifer Cartwright wrote:
> 
>> Did anybody catch Bill stumping for Hilary yesterday on C-SPAN? 
>> Helluva speech --organized, substantive, knowledgeable. Nobody in US 
>> politics today can deliver up that level of offhand yet sincere 
>> oratory like Bill Clinton. I had to keep reminding myself of all the 
>> awful things he did while in office, it was */that good/*... I 
>> actually liked, admired, and was less terrified of Hilary when he was 
>> all done. Wow. (Sorry, but -- in my defense -- there */is/* something 
>> reassuring about brains, smarts, and an actual */program/*, ya know?)
>>  
>>  --Jenifer
> 
> 
> The perennial question is, why do these candidates with brains, smarts 
> (at the risk of redundancy), and an actual */program/* never seem to 
> IMPLEMENT the program once they're in office?  Or, to the extent they 
> implement anything, why does it end up being something like the very 
> OPPOSITE of the program they espoused when they were candidates?
> 
> These days Bill Clinton and Al Gore, like Jimmy Carter, seem to be the 
> very personification of wisdom and statesmanship.  Where was that wisdom 
> and statesmanship when they were in office?
> 
> John Wason
> 
> 
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