Bill Walz

This is the season of change according to the Presidential candidates and the braying pundits. The people seem to realize we are being led over a cliff and are calling for a leader who will turn us from catastrophe. “The Long War,” loss of standing in the world, soaring health care and energy costs, real estate and the dollar plummeting, looming recession, out-of-control deficits and balance-of-trade, ecological crisis, legislative grid-lock, deteriorating cultural and political climates, America is not in good shape. And the American people are awakening from their Rip Van Winkle sleep to realize it isn’t the 50’s or even the 80’s anymore when America was fat.

So, the shapers and followers of American opinion, the media, the corporations and the politicians, are jumping on the “change” bandwagon. It’s like when in the 90’s corporations began using 60’s anti-establishment rock music in their commercials. Shameless exploitation of whatever works to lull people back to sleep.

There’s a shell game going on out there. Watch closely now. Change candidate, change candidate, change candidate, tell me which is the real change candidate?  Pick the wrong one and everything stays the same. Pick the real change candidate and possibly win the prize - a better future, government for the people, not the moneyed and powerful. Who will it be?

Even if we pick a candidate who really does represent this kind of change, the game goes on. The forces that got us into this mess will use every trick they know, and new ones they haven’t thought up yet, to hold on to power and continue things as they have been. Watch for more of those oil company commercials featuring pristine nature scenes vaunting that Exxon and Shell are out to save the world while they actually continue to pollute and reap record profits and we pay record prices.

And so it will be. Banks will tell us it is only our financial security that motivates them. Health insurance and pharmaceutical companies will seek to convince us that securing our health is all that they exist for.

Boeing will seek to convince us that the defense industry stands bravely between us and the terrorist destruction of everything we value (forget that bombers have nothing to do with fighting terrorism).

But most of all, politicians will tell us that only they are the true agent of the change we seek. Most will be politicians who only a short while ago were voting to get us into the mess we’re in, but like they say, “in politics, six months is a lifetime.”

We desperately need change. There might even be a candidate who sincerely stands for the change we need, who is not just using the word “change” to keep things like they have been. It’s up to us to figure out the truth. We can start by looking closely at these candidates to see whether their lives have been dedicated to ideals of peace and economic democracy or their own power and wealth and the preservation of the powerful. We can also open our eyes to see through the corporate lies and demand of our politicians that they stop giving our country and our liberties away in the name of free enterprise (it’s true name: naked corporate capitalism). The Bill of Rights was created to protect citizens from government, not to give license to corporations to take citizens rights and interests away. Free speech is not about allowing those with the most money to drown everyone else out. Freedom from unreasonable search includes by our employers.

Wake up America. Hold these candidates accountable to prove whose side they are on. And be sure you are on your own side and haven’t been sweet-talked by a commercial into believing it is you that is valued and not your purchasing dollar — or your vote. Then, if there really is a candidate of change, they might actually be able to change something — with an alert public behind them.

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Bill Walz is a UNC Asheville adjunct faculty member and a private practice teacher of mindfulness, personal growth and consciousness. Contact at bill.walz-at-worldnet.att.net or 258-3241.