Hi Katie - Below is the link to the Chris Hedges column.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_sm_election_20121105/
All - Please Note: My comments below are mine alone and do not indicate official endorse of PBJFlorida. Please feel free to add your own opinions to the conversation and our candidates, whether you are for Romney, Obama, or another candidate. PFJFlorida encourages free speech, thought, and expression in a respectful manner.
I have stayed mostly silent but today is a very important day. I think Chris Hedges is brilliant, caring, a scholar and a gentleman, but here I slightly disagree with his latest article. We can vote today for anyone else, but it's going to be Romney or Obama that will be president for the next four years. We keep saying that we have no alternative but to choose the lesser of two evils. Well, name me a president that was a saint. In fact, no one I know is a saint - and put into a position of great power, I wonder how we would be able to hold on to our sanity.
It's true that many people have died under Obama. Over half a million Americans died under Lincoln. Japanese Americans were put in concentration camps under Franklin Roosevelt's Administration. The Vietnam War raged under both Johnson and Nixon. Chris Hedges may be looking for a Messiah. He or she ain't coming as a U.S. president. "We the people" had our chance to turn things around for the better with the Occupy movement, but we blew it. We have few alternatives. And no, Obama and Romney are not the same. Yes, they both cater to business interests, but the philosophies are different. Obama wants to make business work for the people and Romney or the current Republican party wants business to rule people. I don't believe that corporations will ever be an overall force for good but at least climate change under Obama has a better chance of being mitigated. Women's rights, Muslim rights, Immigrant human rights, gay rights, and health care, Education, and the Arts for all have more of a change of surviving (at least a while longer) under an Obama administration. There is also a chance that there will be less wars in an Obama administration. There is some breathing room for us if he stays in power.
Obama has tried to keep things under control. In doing so, he has had to make very hard decisions, involving our own private rights and life and death decisions of non-Americans. He has made mistakes, big ones. But with so much to deal with, no mortal human being can be expected to be perfect or even good. He did what he could with the mess he inherited. And it was a huge mess that may never be fully corrected.
Unless "we the people" are willing to do what it takes to take the streets and stand up for our beliefs of fairness, cooperation, and community no matter what the repercussions, we will be left with few choices in leadership. And that tells more about "us" than either Obama or Romney. But Obama could have been much worse. He could have been the continuation of the previous administration. He was not. And for that alone, I will vote for him again.
Miguel
Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2012 07:54:14 -0500
Subject: Re: {PBJFlorida} Did you read Chris Hedges today?
From: gillett.katie@gmail.com
To: pbjflorida@googlegroups.com
Hi Penny, could you send the link? I'm very interested to read a Chris Hedges article that you don't endorse!
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http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_sm_election_20121105/
All - Please Note: My comments below are mine alone and do not indicate official endorse of PBJFlorida. Please feel free to add your own opinions to the conversation and our candidates, whether you are for Romney, Obama, or another candidate. PFJFlorida encourages free speech, thought, and expression in a respectful manner.
I have stayed mostly silent but today is a very important day. I think Chris Hedges is brilliant, caring, a scholar and a gentleman, but here I slightly disagree with his latest article. We can vote today for anyone else, but it's going to be Romney or Obama that will be president for the next four years. We keep saying that we have no alternative but to choose the lesser of two evils. Well, name me a president that was a saint. In fact, no one I know is a saint - and put into a position of great power, I wonder how we would be able to hold on to our sanity.
It's true that many people have died under Obama. Over half a million Americans died under Lincoln. Japanese Americans were put in concentration camps under Franklin Roosevelt's Administration. The Vietnam War raged under both Johnson and Nixon. Chris Hedges may be looking for a Messiah. He or she ain't coming as a U.S. president. "We the people" had our chance to turn things around for the better with the Occupy movement, but we blew it. We have few alternatives. And no, Obama and Romney are not the same. Yes, they both cater to business interests, but the philosophies are different. Obama wants to make business work for the people and Romney or the current Republican party wants business to rule people. I don't believe that corporations will ever be an overall force for good but at least climate change under Obama has a better chance of being mitigated. Women's rights, Muslim rights, Immigrant human rights, gay rights, and health care, Education, and the Arts for all have more of a change of surviving (at least a while longer) under an Obama administration. There is also a chance that there will be less wars in an Obama administration. There is some breathing room for us if he stays in power.
Obama has tried to keep things under control. In doing so, he has had to make very hard decisions, involving our own private rights and life and death decisions of non-Americans. He has made mistakes, big ones. But with so much to deal with, no mortal human being can be expected to be perfect or even good. He did what he could with the mess he inherited. And it was a huge mess that may never be fully corrected.
Unless "we the people" are willing to do what it takes to take the streets and stand up for our beliefs of fairness, cooperation, and community no matter what the repercussions, we will be left with few choices in leadership. And that tells more about "us" than either Obama or Romney. But Obama could have been much worse. He could have been the continuation of the previous administration. He was not. And for that alone, I will vote for him again.
Miguel
Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2012 07:54:14 -0500
Subject: Re: {PBJFlorida} Did you read Chris Hedges today?
From: gillett.katie@gmail.com
To: pbjflorida@googlegroups.com
Hi Penny, could you send the link? I'm very interested to read a Chris Hedges article that you don't endorse!
Happy elections day to all. I am sitting with a pit in my stomach and fingers crossed, my absentee Florida ballot safely in the mail.
On Mon, Nov 5, 2012 at 10:49 PM, jim belcher <jimbelcher350@me.com> wrote:
Hedges speaks his truth. I believe he is trying to wake us up.What he says about education rings true for me. "The role of education, the elites believe, is to train us vocationally for our allotted positions and assure proper deference to the wealthy. Disciplines that prod us to think are—and the sneering elites are not wrong about this—"political," "leftist," "liberal" or "subversive." And schools and universities across the country are effectively stomping out these disciplines. The elites know, as Canetti wrote, that once we stop thinking we become a herd. We react to every new stimulus as if we were rats crammed into a cage. When the elites push the button, we jump."Most educators around me have lost all critical perspective. The have given in the the bidding of the elite. The state rules education now. We've all but given up.
And we keep watching the ugly drama unfold silently from the grandstands. Where's the indignation?I have admired CH many times--his honesty, his insight, his articulate response to injustice, but today's Truthdig was too much. CH was brutal and I'm not sure he was correct/accurate. That coupled with the Fish drawing made me feel sick, both for the possible truth and the depths these two intelligent men have sunk to.Penny
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