There is a code that must be strictly adhered to if one is to become president.

It involves capitulation to forces we no longer hear from directly. One has only to look into what happens whenever any president as astute as Barack Obama tries to really do something for the people: chaos results, followed by failure to launch his ideal.

To be fair, we can't see everything as he would see it, nor can we view all the behind-the-scenes pressures he might have encountered to date. My guess is, there are corporate forces denying anything which may have an effect on fiscal policy, to the tune of billions lost to us every year.  Not being able to prove it makes it seem ephemeral, unwelcome in our conversation. But the signs are there. We just mainly don't want to look at them anymore. They are unwelcome because they cannot be proven entirely, even though suspicion runs high.

Whenever corporate interests have less to do with us and more to do with fulfilling their goals for more monetary greatness in the world, children tend to suffer, and hindrances are provided for everybody who wishes to gain strength  over and above their parents' ability to take them forward.

The globe will remember this era well, just as it remembers the MacCarthy era, with fear and dread, with loathing and suspicion. We don't know who's running the show anymore, but keep on pretending it will all come out right in the end.

Meanwhile, our middle class is barely fair to middling in its fiscal health, our poverty level has risen, not shrunk, our elitism has gotten the better of us at last, and we are being taken down, bit by bit, by a pro elite establishment the which we have yet to name or identify. It's this we prohibit ourselves from dwelling on, in that it can be so frightful.

But the reality is we must achieve peace through right means, and cease to allow ourselves to be propagandized into the future. We must wise up, and clean up our lifestyles, and cease to befriend those who harm us--namely, government offiicals bent on their own survival and not everybody's as a collective achievement; special interests groups which rank among the Fortune 500 and those which rank even higher behind the scenes; stores such as Walmart, whose soulless policies wreck our planet's ability to recover (I don't care how much cheaper they sell it for, don't kid yourselves); as well as those bent on commandeering the environment (take Monsanto, for example).

Where and how we spend our money and our time means everything today. Which is why I've turned off the TV, listen to NPR when I want news of the world, and am careful where I hang out online that I am not bombarded by overmuch propagandistic advertising.

If anything, this has helped me see what's what a lot more often. I just don't buy the popular view anymore, as it has become too laced with the evils of modern commerce run amok. 

Be careful what you dream of or do.... life doesn't revolve round a screen, but from our hearts and minds. We must recall our Selves to ourselves, and cease prattling about things which have no bearing on the present level of denial in these semi-United States.

Our making sacrifices consciously, just as some like our No Impact Man have made, in order to make up for the wealthy elite's negative impact on our globe may be our only answer. It's sort of like cleaning up after a party to which gatecrashers showed up, and who made nasty messes they'd rather not take care of themselves. Somebody's got to do it. May as well be those of us awake enough and sober enough to really clean and take better care.

No sense resenting what's been done, just get out the mop and bucket and clean up the "effluvia" of commerce's befouling nature.

Blessed Peace to all who read these lines.

PW