US News

Off The Cuff: How Do You Start A Revolution?

Presenting The CaseI am thinking a lot about the concept of revolution, these days. At this point, most people in the United States can agree that something has gone terribly wrong. We may disagree about when it started to go that way (my personal contention being “with Teddy Roosevelt”), or how far away from our original promise we have come (I would contend “a long, long frickin’ way”), but we all know that something’s amiss. In spite of the assurances we keep getting that the economy is fine, in spite of the assurances that people are happy, in spite of the assurances that things are going to get better…we all know that none of this is the case. Our government is a trainwreck happening in interminable slow motion, and most of us feel powerless to stop it. The tool we were given to change the system was voting, and the powers that be have effectively neutralized that. So now what?

Well, the only other option is revolution.

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Beyond Race, Gender, and “Experience”: The Real Reason To Vote For Obama

As Super Tuesday is upon us, the arguments over which prospective Democratic candidate should be chosen has grown steadily more heated here in the United States. Along with the candidates themselves engaging in pointed sound-byte rhetoric (all of which seems to come down to Hillary’s “experience”, and the massive parcel of baggage that said “experience” has earned her), citizens all across the country have also begun to dig in on each side of the contest. Predictably, much of the “reasoning” tossed around by the loudest and most adamant of the supporters on both sides is really nothing more than baseless emotional appeals and inflammatory muck. It is time we got past such nonsense and got down to the real two questions in this election: what are the meaningful differences between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and could either of them survive the general election to gain the chance to put their ideas into action?

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