So, obviously this is a presidential election year and presidential elections offer an excellent
opportunity to survey the social landscape.
In a year like this, coming on the heels of the breathtaking Occupy movement, the land
is particularly rich.
If we look at it carefully, there are paths to building stronger, more radical mass movements,
but the landscape is also full of pitfalls, obstacles, and dead ends.
And perhaps the biggest dead end of them all is elections.
Elections tend to suck all the oxygen out of the brain.
It becomes hard to think beyond talking points and the minutia of elections.
So in the media we get endless discussion of ad campaigns, fundraising, get out the
vote.
The main issues of the day are will Romney release his tax returns?
Is Biden racist for saying you all?
Did Paul Ryan include or not include $716 billion of Medicare cuts in his budget?
These tend to be a sideshow.
Now occasionally though, just like a broken clock is right twice a day, sometimes important
issues do surface during the electoral circus.
One of those came courtesy of Missouri Senatorial candidate Todd Akin, his comments about abortion
and legitimate rape.
It brought welcome attention to the fact that his medieval perspective on women is the mainstream
of the Republican party.
Yet despite the literally thousands of articles written about his comments, one commentator
has pointed out yet that as part of Obama's health care reform, he signed an executive
order that endorsed the exclusion of abortion coverage from any health care package.
And it prohibited the use of federal funds for abortion except in the case of incest,
rape or threat to the woman's life.
In other words, Obama and the Democrats legitimized the rights misogyny.
They held the door wide open for the Republicans to try to redefine rape because if you argue
that there should be limits to abortion rights, what you're really saying is women can't
be trusted to make their own health decisions.
And if they can't be trusted to make their own health decisions, well, they may lie about
rape.
So therefore we need to define what is legitimate rape or not.
Now in a better world, we would have a real political process.
And since it's an election year, we should be asking, what does democracy mean?
We know it doesn't mean elections.
It should mean that communities and people have an equal say in the social forces that
affect their lives.
For instance, it means having a real voice in issues about...