Bite or Be Bitten

"American capitalism is predatory, and American politics are corrupt...My friends who will not recognize this fact seem to me like a bunch of musicians sitting down to play a symphony concert in a forest where there is a man-eating tiger loose. For my part, much as I enjoy symphony concerts, I want to put my fiddle away in its case and get a rifle and go out and settle with the tiger."

             Upton Sinclair, 1918.

At times like these, when President Obama seems constitutionally incapable of answering the Republican cannonade, it is reassuring to remember this is not a new thing in our history. There have always been men, leaders even, who are not up to the fight, who would fiddle while the republic burns, thinking somehow they are not dealing with predators but rather with nice gentlemen in smoking jackets who will want to retire for cigars and bourbon after the debate. 

President Obama should be saying:  "The Republicans are bought and sold by billionaires like the Koch brothers, and all those who sail with them. They dance on the string manipulated by these rich, shaddowy men, and if you vote Republican, you are on the end of that same string. It is a string which connects the Republican Supreme Court, which has ruled, rather which has created rules which make it legal and Constitutional for rich men to buy and own politicians. This is the difference between me and my opponent and his party. I am owned by no one. I am owned by the American public, and I believe that public without a strong and vibrant middle class is terminally ill."

Dream on, Mad Dog. The vicious will bite and the kind hearted will be bitten.