Well, I think all USA presidents and presidential candidates are figureheads. I've thought so for a long time. You don't even get to run for that office, in my opinion, until you've already been bought and been given your script by those who paid for you. Once you're in office, you do what they scripted you to do...or else. I won't elaborate on what "or else" entails, but leave it to your imagination.

Obama is not an "or else" kinda guy...not when it comes to his own mortality. ;-) Neither is Romney. That makes both of them perfect for the media soap opera of an American election. They'll say whatever keeps the ball rolling, and whichever one of them gets elected, he'll do what he's been put there to do, which is cater to corporate and imperial agendas while blathering on about "freedom" to anyone who is foolish enough to listen...and to believe what he's saying.

American elections are the lengthiest and most costly in the world...a pity to see so much time and money wasted over what is a hollow charade. But that happens in many other countries too. They just have the sense not to make it last so damn long and cost so damn much.

It's a way of periodically renewing a vague sense of hope in a jaded and increasingly fearful and frustrated public...the hope that changing their political leaders will actually change the awful decline that is occurring in our economy and our political morals. Without that periodic false hope put tantalizingly in front of them, people in our so-called democracies might lose all belief in their leaders and launch a revolution. The elections are a way of forestalling that from happening. They keep offering false hope still one more time. And people reach for it like a drowning man reaching desperately for a thrown stick. Like a starving dog lunging for a bone...

I've been watching that electoral charade for a lifetime. I no longer believe in what it promises. But I do believe in myself, in the goodness of life, in the goodness of most people...and it is in those very ordinary things that I place my hopes, not in our false political systems or our corporate servant leaders...or their phony election campaigns.