What Is To Be Done?*

I despair the politics of this era, the lies and distortions that impel it, the money that drives it. Mitt Romney is its perfect symbol; Paul Ryan is the embodiment of its deceptive promises of reaction snake-oil.

The Economist asks, 'Who, really, is Mitt Romney?' I doubt he can answer, except: he's determined to win the Presidency; he has no goal, other than winning it. He's been both a moderate liberal as governor of Massachusetts, and an "extreme conservative," (his own words), while running for President, even after winning the nomination. He was pro-choice, and now, he'll run on a Republican platform in which even rape and incest are not exempt from its absolute ban. He insists, after Akin's blooper, that he'd allow abortion for either reason, but who knows whether he would, or could, given his party.

Romney even threatens a Gold Commission to investigate returning to the Gold Standard--presumably to mollify Ron Paul supporters.

Then Senator, George McGovern, wrote an awful forward to The Promise of the Coming Dark Age: McGovern touted the Khmer Rouge as a beacon! If Mitt is able to buy the Presidency--that's what it would be, a purchase, costing several billion dollars--then the Dark Age could be upon us: the Roman Senators of old couldn't match the callous disregard the elite bear today for the rest of us. Romney would cut services (Food Stamps, Medicaid) for the desperate and cut taxes for his (lightly taxed) class of multimillionaires and billionaires. He'd also increase Defense spending, possibly for fighting another war: Iran, probably, although he'd also start a trade war with China the day he's inaugurated.

Romney appears to have chosen "extreme conservative" over moderate liberal, although he's still claiming he lives in Massachusetts (there is a question whether he did, when he filed taxes and voted in Massachusetts, claiming residence in his son's basement, a possible felony). But Romney still resists political, as well as geographic, definition.

His party tries to rally natives against immigrants, whites against blacks, men against women--its absolutist anti-abortion position is only a small part of that--but all is subsumed in the general war against all who are not owners of significant capital.

Capital is the contemporary version of the gold, land and slaves controlled by Roman Senators in the fourth and fifth centuries. Unlike the wealth of old, however, capital is expandable, and radical. Roman Senators could do only a small fraction of the damage that can be done, is already being done, by our contemporary elites, from eviscerating the safety net, environmental pollution and impoverishing the non-rich, to global warming, global immiseration and buying this election.

Can sanity stop them? Even the sitting President, Obama, doesn't have the money to beat back their misinformation, smears, and outright lies: example, their claim that Obama is reviving welfare.

What is to be done?

*Lenin used the same title.