Revolution Number Now (Or: This Populist Moment)

Yo, right-wingers, take a chill pill for a half a second and put your thinking caps on. No, not your ninny-caps, your thinking caps, damn it. You know, the one’s marked: Thinking Cap.

There. Good. Now think. About this: Why are you so willingly being the dupes of the corporately-controlled medical, pharmaceutical and insurance industries?

It can’t feel okay to your “freedom-loving” spirit, can it? Because there’s nothing that even remotely involves both your freedom and your bizarre willingness to shill for the corporate honchos who so happily have their boots on your neck (and wallet).

You’ve been fooled. Deal with it.

Think, for a second, how Obama’s hope-brigade feels about now. Hint: They’ve been fooled too.

I know, I know, you’re angry. So am I, and for many of the same reasons.

But we have a common “enemy”: Those in the self-proclaimed “civil middle” who find our passion distasteful. They’re the ones wringing their hands over our so-called threat to democracy while sending mountains of cash to their representatives. Oh, the irony.

It’s easy to preach civility when your checkbook is doing your political talking.

“Shhh,” their wagging fingers declare, “your passion is interfering with our contributions and connections.”

But most of us don’t have that luxury. We only have the rawest of raw democratic tools at our disposal: Our voices, our actions and, yes, our passion.

Sorry, but I’m not convinced that the right-wingers’corporatally-orchestrated angst aimed at health-care reform has much of anything to do with health-care reform.

Nope. It’s more about the wily lobbyists and movement manipulators stoking the flames of discontent toward a simpleton (and self-serving) message of: It’s them! It’s them! (Read: It’s not us! It’s not us!)

Because, to the corporate, media and political elite the truth hurts. And it’ll be a cold day in hell when they use their primetime stage to declare the truth: It’s us! It’s us!

Follow the money.

Until then, they’ll keep counting on their network connections – Disney! GE! – to diss the passion of the masses who dare to upset the proscribed plan of non-change.

The left failed to rally their grassroots passion when Obama & Co. doled out billions for Wall Street and its bankers. They were, as you’ll recall, still in the haze of hope when Obama was pulling off his soothing glad-handing to the economic elite that declared nothing but: “See, I’m really no threat.”

But the right is not similarly missing its opportunities when it comes to health-care reform. The only problem is that it’s half-baked and fully submissive to more of the same corporate think (and strategies).

The losers? Us. Or, we, the people, who are unable to ante up what it takes to play politics in modern America.

Imagine if the passionate left and the passionate right could use this moment to see the populist light at the end of our ever-shrinking democracy tunnel and declare as loudly as possible: We only have our passion, our freedom, our hopes, and our majority status to fight the true enemies of democracy: The corporate bastards making a sham of our dreams and ideals.

It’s worth a shot.

[Addendum: After writing this, I ventured over to my friend Dave Lindorff’s site to find a similar rant. Go read it And weep. Or, better yet, act!]