Does that sound funny to you? Think about it. It has been happening for a long time for a lot of people in this country. Bernie has been energizing people who have stayed at home in the past because they see a real choice in him.

I learned something from President Obama that I shall never forget. I learned that I am not as smart as I think I am. I learned that I forget hard learned lessons. Let me explain.

I first voted for President in 1960. Guess who I voted for? Nixon. I distrusted Kennedy and was correct in distrusting him. So I had to make a choice between bad choices. I have been doing that ever since. I would have never considered passing up my first chance to vote for president.

I have voted for Dick Gregory and Ralph Nader. But I have never not voted. I am one of the people, now a minority in many elections, who bought the notion that this is a democracy and that it is my duty as a citizen to vote.

I have a problem with my mind for it has contradictory parts at war with each other. While my upbringing and "education" told me that this is a democracy, I was also taught about what imperialism, colonialism, and slavery were all about. In the 1960s I became radicalized by the administrations of Kennedy and Johnson. I also grew up in Chicago the most patriotic city in the world. (Where else do the dead vote?) This conflict of ideas is at least a source of cognitive dissonance if not a symptom of schizophrenia.

Every election has been stressful because there never have been choices I could justify making. Gradually as my scientific work evolved I began to see the system for what it is and the central role of elections in keeping it that way. Then came Obama. I lost all I had learned and dove in head first. I worked so hard that I wound up with heart failure.

Yet the mind is not that easy to control. All the while I was parroting "change" and "hope" a voice back there was saying "The system is not going to be changed no matter who you elect. The person you elect is a product of the system and will therefore serve it."

Sure enough. Obama is part of the system and serves it well and we have lost even more precious time and ground these past eight years in spite of his efforts.

So here we are playing a different version of the same game. Lots of energy and resources being used to prove that you will not change this system by elections still one more time.

This time it could be different because it seems like people are waking up. That gets clouded over by the election BS but there are signs that it is happening. We had them before in the 1960s and 1970s but they were made impotent by the systems use of elections.

If Clinton is nominated as the oligarchy is engineering, I will not vote for the first time. Until I have a choice I will not vote again. I'm cured. It is over.

This system IS rigged. Too much credit is given to people like DWS. The system made her possible and she does its bidding. Too much credit is given to ads, money, speeches, etc. because people hear and see only what they are prepared to hear and see. No the system is much bigger and complex than the simple minded people who are its pawns

When the system fails, and it is failing, it will because it has run its course. It will fail because we used up too much without caring to replenish. It will fail because we have fouled our nest. Blame the republicans. Blame the corporations. What is going on is because the system has made you live a certain way and the corporations help you do that.

So whether or not people vote in these sham elections is really not the issue. The issue is whether or not people can get their act together before it is too late.

I, for one, do not need a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing.