Mirror Images: Romney and Obama

NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART

The results from the Michigan primary suggest that Mitt Romney is the presumptive Republican nominee for president. His opposite number, Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee and Mitt are mirror images of each other. The birthers might have noticed that their fathers were foreign born: Mitt’s father George was born in Mexico and Barack’s father in Kenya. (So much for the perils of immigration.) Mitt made a great deal of money in the private finance sector as a predatory capitalist, according to his fellow Republicans. The Obama administration bailed out the bankers at the expense of the 99%. The projected billion dollar fund-raising campaign for the presidential sweepstakes is in full swing on both sides of the aisle.

The two fit looking gentlemen—never a hair out of place–along with their faithful and attractive spouses are running against their former images. Mitt was a moderate governor of liberal Massachusetts. Barack, who campaigned on promises of change and hope, igniting a generation of social liberals and young people, has deserted his supporters. Both have deserted their alleged principles and denied their records in favor of catering to Corporate America.

Mitt denies his contributions to health care restructuring that Obama copied in his own amorphous national program, wherein insurance companies are empowered to replace health care providers as decision makers. Barack has gone along with tax cuts for the elites and businesses, which have benefitted the likes of millionaire Mitt, who only pays 15% of his income in taxes. Barack rescued Detroit so Mitt could keep driving GM’s Cadillacs.

Both men went to Harvard (not Yale this time). They remind me of the 80s Yuppies: Young (now graying) upwardly professionals, whose lifestyle removes them from the everyday tumult of experience. Their sympathy for the average American member of the 99% appears feigned, not sincere when you look at their actions. I don’t remember if either of them ever served in the military, which veterans they proudly support in the killing fields round the world.

Both men apparently believe that cheap talk can keep the voters from looking behind the veil at the actions that confirm their aspirations as perennial politicos in search of validation by the corporate masters of finance, the arms, and oil industries—the private contractors and lobbyists. They continue to support policies that are destroying American self-sufficiency—globalism, war mongering, empire building–sapping the country’s financial and moral strength, making America daily less secure, increasing the number of enemies abroad.

Despite their Ivy League educations, Obama and Romney–in word or deed—lead the charge to deny the truth of climate change at international conferences. The abuse of Mother Nature has consequences just like borrowing billions of dollars daily via complex financial instruments to keep taxes on the rich from rising. What we see is Huxley’s Brave New World merging with Orwell’s 1984 even as we undergo Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine.

Due to social conservatism, the Republican war on women and reproductive rights, the right to an education or health care, and people of color has flared up–again. Meanwhile, the Democrats have acquiesced in denying due process to “detainees,” support “indefinite detention” and target American citizens for assassination by drone.

In other words, leaders of both the Republicans and Democrats, bribed and blackmailed by Corporate Lobbyists, are targeting the American people at home and the hoi polloi abroad. Both Mitt and Barack, in their suits and slick haircuts, are uncommonly decent in their indecency.

Rome declined due to elitism on the one hand and a vulnerability to the religious virus on the other, according to historian, Edward Gibbon. We unexceptional Americans are the new Romans. The realities are coming.