Obama and the Lottery

Has an extremely large lottery jackpot enticed you to purchase a ticket?
The slogan, a dollar and a dream, is hard to ignore. The dreaming starts when the clerk at the gas station hands you the newly minted ticket. At that moment, the mind can systematically spin out of control while one systematically spends every dime of the winnings. At night, one goes to bed secure in the knowledge that come the dawn, like a lowly crawling caterpillar, one will blossom with gossamer wings of wealth and forever fly above the trials and tribulations of those who have to work for a living. The rude awakening comes when the numbers are checked and then you realize that you got to be in it, to win it can be reduced to the actual two chances you had to cash in on the prize, 1) slim and 2) none. The lottery, as one observer noted, is for the statistically challenged.
So, it was with my belief in the campaign slogan, Change you can believe. To have actually believed in a campaign slogan is to suspend all one's accumulated knowledge. With the young, it is easy. Life's experiences with this population are few. But for one, like me, who has been voting since the election Lydon P. Johnson, to suspend my first hand experiences and to actually believe that the tide of foolishness and corruption in politics that I have witnessed in my lifetime was coming to an end was an act that could be clinically diagnosed as insane.
To think that a politician, any politician, is different is oxymornic. To think that a politician from an established party can usher in change in a system that has been honed by the elite to serve the elite is an act of sheer fantasy. Barack was a lottery ticket for the masses. He was a product, a brand that was skillfully crafted to play upon our most cherished beliefs and hopes. Like the next amazing slimming product, or the soap that will wash out every stain, he was sold to us. And it was easy given the choice, a doddering bitter trigger happy old man and his wacky goofy sexpot. I like millions of others watched as the new candidate Obama went about talking of change. After eight years of the most corrupt and cynical administration in history, the sell wasn't that hard. After all, one need only make a small contribution and dream.
Perhaps Obama is more than a new product. Perhaps he is a man of substance. But the way he has caved in to the likes of Liberman and Nelson indicates a desire for something anything; yet the compromise is a poor substitute for something real. The way he has drawn upon the experiences of the foxes of the new financial order for his economics indicates that he has exposed us chickens to the rapacious predators who have savaged our economy and out currency. The way he has taken the counsel of the Doctors Strangeloves whose only plan is to drop more bombs and sacrifice more young men is an indication that peace is the last option, so much for the peace prize and references to King and Ghandi. And just like the pitchman on an “infomercial” he and his operatives can spin and spin till we buy the product. But the product is only what it is, not what we make it in our mind's eye. We are left with packaging and stained clothes or a ticket whose worth is equal to less than the flimsy paper that held the numbers that we invested so much hope and dreams upon.
To see, the smiling faces of Nelson and Liberman, the two who dashed any hope for meaningful medical reform, is to look into the farcical nature of our political system. To see McCrystal hint that the struggle is not going to be easy, or to hear Gates and then see him kowtow to Karzi is to know that new order is the old order. Insurance executives along with the bankers along with the industrial defense chieftains rubbed their distended bellies preparing for another gluttonous feast at the expense of the masses who placed their lives on hope for it is only hope that we have to spend. In the meantime, our dreams disappear in the light of the reality that is our lot. Like every lottery holder, we must examine the numbers and realize all we bought was but a few moments of revelry for our fate stays in the hands of those who have brought on the miseries we live with.