'Truly-Open Election'
Challenges Our Nation
As Never Possible Before

"Liberal" vs "Conservative" truths at stake, demand honest, open, inevitable comparisons.

Salem-News.com

(EUGENE, Ore.) - "A pox on both those failed parties!" may well turn out to be the famous-theme of this 2008 voter-choice struggle. "Failed choices" from both Democratic and GOP sides have dominated the past 50 years, forcing us all into permanent campaign-posture confrontation; precluding progress to what millions keep SAYING they want and, now MUST HAVE, as the 21st Century arrives.

That’s the open-for-action situation confronting the voters in this ostensibly once-democracy, in 2008. It rests firmly on the highly apparent failures of both "liberal" and "conservative" traditions once thought to be essential guiding beacons for the American nation.

With neocon/control of "conservative" governance in demonstrated disaster on every front, over every issue, and at every level, the once-elephant-GOP is now seen reduced to a sad creature, indeed: Not able to tell its once-powerful trunk from its massive far-end.

Now under neocon control, the once-massive party is surely still generating deficiently destructive designs; as in rumored "October Surprise" for Iran; despite all efforts to staunch its bloody path since our ONLY "preemptive war"; clearly provided by its sponsor-use of crassly-manipulated commercial-marketing methods.

Then there’s the testy, defiant Democratic duopoly of elite/and/prosperous and blue-collar/intense; once famed for continuous contention when in the minority, even when furiously split --as over the past 30-year ‘conservative’ ascendancy.

Nixon’s (in)famous "Southern strategy" set the national stage for that. Then Reagan’s "Morning In America" did the rest, equally infamously, now, especially for its killing-off the union-movement attitude and its consequences for our growing Middle Class, and their American Dream.

What’s left of once-predominant Demos --as in FDR’s time-- has been not-so-suddenly reduced to complicit cooperation all too frequently, for whatever reasons leadership now declaims all too constantly.

Perhaps the lowest-blow, despite generally accepted Amercan-right to organize at work, is the near-death struggles forced on union groups by determined, deadly corporate pressures definitely designed to "win at any cost" --a major part of political confrontation/consequences now absolutely obvious.

The infamous outcomes and completely foreseeable consequences now truly haunt each component of these two "political parties"; originated as essential equitable working-process for both these essential equitable basic philosophies.

Both have been growing naturally for many decades, supplying deep foundations for slow maturation of our democracy.

Prescient prognosticators have been predicting precisely this sad, unseemly, and now destructive outcome ever since the Seventies --even long before. That’s when the chaotic Sixties confrontations and coalescing trend-impacts were finally recognized for what/they/were: Growth-spasms unavoidable among emerging new components and constituent groups both joining-and-dividing us-all.

But true consensus doth exist among many millions of Americans today about what is REALLY now essential for our further progress into the 21st Century. That’s WHY the "pox on both of you" attitude is so clearly shaping what HAS already happened.

Those same inescapable forces --now at work with a new generation exercising its own values-- will now, almost inevitably, continue to shape, size, set up and force into inescapable motion what millions of Americans truly seek NOW from their governance system.

That, too, is among the greatest strengths of a democratic system: It provides for continuous change, under the control of more-informed, longer-experienced, better-prepared citizens, relating their youthful strengths, enthusiasms and passionate love for freedoms to what they have learned from those-before.

Millions polled or otherwise questioned, over decade after decade, have tolled off the top-list of simple and sensible developments-demanded: Secure economy; avoidance of war; equal rights under law for all; better access to healthcare; more, better, longer education for all.

The emphasis changes with the decade, but those same basic needs have been there as-listed since before the Civil War --as the new generation plainly knows. That’s WHY they demand CHANGE NOW, because it has been so/long/coming while "the parties" played political snatch-tag with each other’s prizes.

That’s WHY they seek solution, somehow, now, no matter whom it displaces, where or when or how. That’s WHY they are out there fighting for what they believe they MUST HAVE; and readying to vote.

They are --very rightly-- "tired of waiting"; which plain fact rings very loud warning bells for all-us-elders, no matter which failed-group we happened to support.

We are at heart, truly, an emotional people. Our entire history from our Revolution and the closely-following Founders-times on throughout our own inescapable record --and even with most of our costly “wasting wars” -- proves that positively; by what we intended-when-we-began, if not always what followed via "unforeseen consequence", sometimes all too easily "foreseeable" now.

Today’s powers of hindsight offer probing evolution of full-information from unrevealed resources-then. (As on interior details of the so-called "Reagan Revolution" and the Vietnam-vintage Johnson errors.)

For the earlier periods of that peculiarly unique American record among world development of nations-and-their peoples, "progress" depended on so many factors and fixtures and sometimes figments, too. We must accept what the pages of history now tell us about-then, when read with probing attitude.

But that the spirit of freedom-seeking democracy was deeply enmeshed in whatever we-as-a-people tried to do --at ANY point in our checkered history-- there can be little doubt; despite the differences in attitude and outcomes on that record between our two parties supplying that absolutely-essential political/process.

NOW, learning as we slowly mature into the nation we deserve to be, given the essentials of freedom and equality-under-law for all; free to develop to the very height of each one’s own achievable-levels; we are freeing ourselves in this coming election to make basic choices.

We can NOW reach those demanded and essential decisions-for-CHANGE sure to shape our nation --and ourselves!-- for this new Century.

What will we now DO? Retreat is impossible: There is no place to go but forward. How can we escape decisions? We CANNOT; too much is at risk, under threat of "that mushroom cloud." Why doth this fall to US?

Because it IS "our nation, one and indivisible" --and because we are the ONLY Americans --no matter origin, or color, or ancestors, or religion, or class, or dollar-pile status. NOW "we must stand alone --and ready to act". That’s how democracy works --when it does.

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Reader’s Note:
Quotes are shortened, compiled, condensed for space reasons here; verbatim sources on request with ID to Editor Tim. More than forty references including author’s files, news and columnist clips, and special reports were consulted for this Op Ed.

Books include:
1. Why Americans Hate Politics; E.J. Dionne,Jr.; ISBN: 0-671077877-3. Note: This exquisite analysis was published in 1991, and is noted for its “false choices” findings for both "liberal" and "conservative" groups ‘way back then, setting the stage for developments now.
2. WHAT HAPPENED: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception; Scott McClellan; 2008; ISBN: 978-1-58648-556-6
3. THE CREATION OF THE MEDIA: Political Origins of Modern Communications; Paul Starr; 2004; ISBN: 0-465-08193-2.

A list of all documentation used is available on request to Editor Tim, with ID, for direct contact.