The most obvious political reality of the past fifty years is that the status quo needs to be changed. It does us little good to tinker with a system so deeply flawed as the one our history has saddled us with. We don't need better leaders of the same old system, we need a new system.

The hippies and other non-conformists saw in the 60s that the path we were on was leading to ecological devastation, world wide pollution and natural resource depletion. While we have watched these dynamics play out, political and corporate defenders of the status quo have stalled, obstructed and lied about any and all efforts to change the underlying fundamentals that are driving us to our doom. Changing any of these things would interfere with the profits of the rich. The profits of the rich, it is reckoned, are more sanctified and important than the survival of our species. What matters, in the establishment's thinking, is short term profitability, long term consequences be damned. Who cares about posterity?

Well, we all should. If humans don't care about humanity, who will?

Would I ever vote for Joe Biden or Nancy Pelosi or any other establishment democrat for anything? Not in a million years, and I don't care if they arrange to run their guy against Satan himself. Take your Pied Piper strategy and shove it! I've had it up to here with manipulation, fear mongering and lesser evilism. The lesser evil is still evil.

How the Hillary Clinton campaign deliberately "elevated" Donald Trump with its "pied piper" strategy

An email released by WikiLeaks shows how the Democratic Party purposefully "elevated" Trump to "leader of the pack

Many, if not most, politically engaged people think of politics as something akin to team sports. The system encourages that view. It's our guys against their guys. Blue vs Red. Pick a team and back them, is what they'll tell you. I've got news for those people: both teams are playing for the same side – and the name of the game is preserve the status quo and quash any serious attempt to change anything.

Because of money.

Politics in the modern era boils down to money, greed and corruption. Anyone who plays that game becomes tainted. Politicians get rich in office (just ask Pelosi, the Clintons, Paul Ryan – or really any of them) and spend all their time raising money and hustling their supporters. All pretense at working for anybody but their own best (short term) interests is a giant scam and we're fools to believe any of it.

The only thing our status quo system is good for is protecting and enriching corrupt politicians and their owners/donors. Relying upon it for change is a fool's errand. We should know this by now.

Exxon Knew about Climate Change almost 40 years ago

A new investigation shows the oil company understood the science before it became a public issue and spent millions to promote misinformation

Because of our 'leadership' the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy has been stalled for decades. Likewise the attempts to better care for the weakest and neediest of our human family, and other humanitarian and common sense reforms have been stalled, exploited, misdirected. If it impinges on the profits of the rich, it dies a slow death under the present system. The opinions or needs of the people are not even a factor except when it comes to manipulating them for votes or money. People are chattel under our system and only as good as their bank account.

We've been enslaved by money and debt. We have been betrayed by our 'leaders.' We have been cheated out of a reasonable and desirable future for our children and grandchildren.

Johnson & Johnson knew about carcinogens in baby powder for decades: Reuters

The company reportedly has known about the asbestos in its signature product since the early 1970s.

They're only babies, right?

In addition to the horrors of American corporations poisoning us for profit and obstructing all efforts to make things better, the great American war machine, Eisenhower's Military Industrial Complex, has been doing even worse for the same base motive – money. They bomb the world for the likes of Raytheon and Dick Cheney's Halliburton (the immoral and unjustifiable war in Iraq ginned up on fake evidence cost us trillions and hundreds of thousands of lives but Cheney's Halliburton made $39 Billion in profit). And our wanton slaughter in multiple countries goes on and on. Does anybody really think any of this is justified?

US bombs are killing children in Yemen. Does anybody care?

The lack of outrage at the US’s key role in this humanitarian disaster raises troubling questions

American corporations and the MIC are poisoning, slaughtering and destroying the world for short term profits for their billionaire owners. And they're doing it with the full support of our hopelessly corrupt government (whom they also own).

We don't need better 'leadership,' we don't need to tweak or improve upon the system, we need an all new and much better system. We need a system that empowers us to meet the demands of the future. We need a science-based, sustainable and efficient grand mechanism for managing the converging catastrophies that the present system has caused, exacerbated and protected from all serious efforts to resolve.

'Planetary emergency:' After 30 years, leaders are still fighting about basic truths of climate science

The United States, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Russia -- among the leading producers of fossil fuels, which cause climate change -- stated publicly that they did not want to "welcome" the findings of a report the UN head had called an "ear-splitting wake-up call."

We don't need 'reform' and we don't need any further bullshit. What we need is a revolution. It should be peaceful - but it should be serious and definite.

I'm so glad to see the example being set by the French people. To be clear, when I praise the French uprising, I am not praising or advocating riots or violence. I am praising and advocating the rising up. I am advocating peaceful but overwhelming public protest. Because nothing in the past fifty years is more obvious than this: Our leaders have abandoned us and nothing's going to change in any serious way until we rattle their cages and replace the tools of the oligarchy with people who really care about humanity, the American people and the world at large.

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will." - Frederick Douglass

We must dramatically change the status quo in the near term for there to even be a long term.

Republicans and democrats are not going to lead us out of this nightmare, they led us into it. We can't vote our way out of this dilemma. We are going to have to hit the streets, demand change and stop taking NO for an answer.

We've tried this before and failed. If we fail this time it will have devastating consequences for our entire species. If we are to survive, we must rise up now.

The billionaires and their mega-corporations have bought our government and our politicians. We can lie down and be killed by their irrational greed or we can stand the hell up and fight back.

Peace, love and revolution...for my grandchildren and yours.