If voting could change the system, it would be illegal.—Theodore Adorno

Actions follow beliefs, beliefs follow culture. Cultures are organic: they germinate, bloom, then fade in accordance with the climate of their times.

American culture now blooms with paranoid delusions and wishful thinking, and it bears strange and terrible fruit indeed. Its oily wood limits its use as timber that might be used to build anything constructive and is mostly suitable for crucifixes and coffins, or to build a bonfire large enough to set the world ablaze.

Many Americans dream of St Hillary coming in two years to rescue the nation from this dark and terrible place. Instead, I offer this fantasy: the best thing that could come to pass in our crumbling republic is for the total destruction of the Democratic Party—and then from its ashes to rise a party of true progressives.

Obviously the better thing would be for the leaders of the Republican Party, out of a deep sense of shame (as if they have the capacity for such a thing), commit seppuku, the act of ritual suicide practiced by disgraced leaders in feudalist Japan. Because there's no chance of that ever happening, the dismantling of the Democratic Party is in order. How have I come to this despairing conclusion?

While I harbor little affection for the corrupt establishment of the Democratic Party, I don't believe, as is the case with the present leadership of the Republican party, that they're a bunch of insane, death-smitten apocalypticists. However, I do believe that a craven desire for power and privilege has transformed them into morally bankrupt, lickspittle, corporate stooges. They have disgraced themselves too, just not as much as the Republicans. Does anyone believe that the denizens of K Street have begun enriching the coffers of the Democratic Party because the lobbyist class now harbors a secret desire to create a system where a greater diversity of views can be promulgated? Sure, and Jack the Ripper stalked the streets of East London because he wanted to draw attention to the wretched plight of underclass women in class-stratified Victorian England.

Regardless of which political party controls congress, the empire will continue to unravel. Corporate leaders, like feudal lords of the past, will continue to ruthlessly wield power and seize dominion over our lives no matter the outcome of the midterm elections of 2006.

“Free market" propaganda will continue to be our culture's defining mythos; its corrupt priesthood will continue to fleece the dazed and hapless flock. American roadways will remain as clogged as the arteries of the junk-food bloated commuters, sitting stalled and stupefied in traffic within their grotesque motor vehicles in the time-grinding limbo created by the international petroleum state.

Wealth, power, and privilege will continue to be consolidated by the wealthy, powerful, and privileged. Public schools will continue to fail to educate. The over-fished, pollution-afflicted, global warming-decimated oceans and seas will continue to die. Official lies will still proliferate like swarming locusts. The public will still grow outraged and demand more of their own rights and civil liberties be curtailed. The poor will disproportionately suffer while the rich will sleep the untroubled sleep of the kleptocratic class. And our fabled Shining City on the Hill will still suffer ongoing brownouts.

This year, the voting public is being offered a choice between Empire Lite of the Democratic Party or the Republicans' Empire Mad Dog 20/20. Both political parties have participated in the bacchanal of bribery that passes for business-as-usual. A vivid illustration of the hopeless mindset of chronically diffident Democrats is their failure to demand the use of traceable paper ballots this election cycle.

What belies Democrat’s inability to agitate for meaningful change is that, at a deeper level, they realize that in order to live in the manner to which we have become accustomed, we must continue our complicity in the crimes of empire. Deep down, we know that our actions are not only unethical, but unsustainable as well. Our minds have difficultly grasping this fact; its ramifications are too overwhelming. The knowledge that we maintain "our way of life" on the bartered blood of the innocent is too unnerving. Its implications are too damning. Therefore, we banish such thoughts to the darkest regions of our unconscious, and pretend the Democrats represent change.

"It's always darkest, right before it goes completely black."

Perhaps if we Americans were to unburden ourselves of the illusion of exceptionalism, our load would lighten. If we relieved ourselves of the weight of so many lies, self-deceptions and rationalizations, as well as the other onerous byproducts of our denial, change would not be so heavy.

But given the abysmal levels of mass ignorance, self-deception and delusion at large, are we Americans even up to the task? Or has our pervasive disconnect from civic life deteriorated to such an extent that a majority of us are incapable of even apprehending the dire circumstances confronting the nation?

I'm mortified as to where we as a nation are headed, regardless of the outcome of Tuesday's midterm elections. Given the bender of destruction we've been on, our nation needs far more help than a simple changing of the party affiliation of our corporate enablers. It needs an intervention.

But that line of thinking would probably lead to a seizing of power by an Oprah/Doctor Phil junta and the empire would still collapse, beneath the weight this time of self-help platitudes and positive affirmations.

philangie2000@yahoo.com.

You decide how much it's worth to you: