The past week has been an exciting time in New York City. We have seen a popular uprising grow and expand—aided by a tin-eared billionaire mayor and a violent and over-zealous police department dedicated to protecting the wealthy. As with many of the dictators that have fallen around the world recently, these New York officials are as lost and isolated as Gadhafi was in Lybia or Mubarak in Egypt.
There is a global trend at work and it’s in reaction to the huge and growing disparities in wealth and political power throughout the world. Today’s government leaders have hit bottom—enabling and supporting a culture of shallow commercialism, intellectual bankruptcy, corporate corruption and phoniness in everyday life that is crushing ordinary people.
Honest, objective news media has evaporated, entertainment is becoming no more than corporate-created fluff and public education has come down to brainwashing a generation that the best life offers are financial deals that make money.
Art, music and the creating of anything that enhances human life is minimized in today’s over-commercialized culture. All that matters in the short term is a soul-killing chase for bucks and the drudge work that usually goes with it.
Today, the rich actually “make” very little. Manufacture of goods is done offshore at poverty wages. The wealthy today essentially create shady schemes to shift money around and charge the masses for their efforts. Those that aren’t devious enough to find success at that—and that is most of us—are left out.
I, for one, am sick of it. I want a different life. I want different values. I want out of a system that has created fiendish values and meaningless work that pays little and does nothing but enhance the lies perpetrated by the wealthy drones and the two political parties.
So what’s next? I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. It is clear that both the Democrats and Republicans offer zero for the future. Both parties are bankrupt of ideas and controlled by lobbyists for the wealthy or right-wing whackos that are now self-destructing.
Before this election cycle, I would have said that third parties had little chance of getting elected in the United States. But times change and I think the day has arrived that a third-party candidate could be elected president. I also believe that most Americans side with Occupy Wall Street, despite what fraudulent institutions like “Fox News” or its pundits say.
The problem is who would run? It would be need to a strong, Ralph Nader-like progressive. Elizabeth Warren comes to mind, though she is already running for the Senate in Massachusetts.
I came out of the 1960s and realize the major fight ahead is for a younger generation. For so long I worried they didn’t care or weren’t energized. Now that has changed and the corrupt power structure has done all the right things to magnify their efforts throughout the world. This now must be translated to political action that can have a lasting effect in the world. The street protests are fine, but the movement needs to grow.
What’s needed is a presidential candidate with all the charisma of a Barack Obama, but this time with the spine to carry the things out that need to be done and not collapse to the interests of the wealthy and special interests. We also need progressive members of Congress to support this new president. That's a big order, but the time is certainly right.

