How do we become, again, a people who govern themselves?

I haven't written for a while. Sorry. I don't have my own computer and my "writing time" is thus extremely limited. I only get an hour of internet time at the library, and I usually dedicate that into trying to figure out what's going on in the world, as I've done away with television altogether (and I highly recommend this for anyone fed up with the fluffy distractions TV offers).

The Democratic National Convention is coming up this Monday, and I have a deep sense of foreboding about it. (Not that this means anything, I've had a deep sense of foreboding for about 7 or 8 years now ... ) But I find the whole thing depressing, for some reason, when much of the country finds themselves inspired with hope at the prospect of a black man, a man who speaks of hope instead of fear, a person with undeniable charisma, obvious intelligence and a cool and stable character, finally secured a major party nomination. Barack Obama seems like a real statesman. He makes McCain look like a buffoon who would only ramp up his predecessor's historically disastrous policies. Why am I not elated by these developments?

For one thing, the Democratic Party itself has revealed itself to be defunct -- not a voice of the people, but just another wing of the corporatocracy that has been running this country for decades. They've been playing "good cop" to the Republicans' "bad cop." But how much are things really going to change with Obama at the helm?

Obama (along with Nancy Pelosi) voted away our 4th amendment by voting for the FISA bill that gives telecommunications companies retroactive immunity for spying on American citizens. Anyone that screws with our bill of rights is a domestic enemy in my estimation. He's also said he wouldn't rule out surgical strikes on Iran. At this point, Barack Obama is looking more and more like a black (Bill) Clinton. While my life was certainly better under the Clinton years than it is now, a lot has changed since then. We need *real* change at this point, not a bunch of insubstantial rhetoric. I now see that Clinton may well have been responsible for the deaths of over a million Iraqis under sanctions, may well have been behind the Oklahoma City bombing, presided over the Waco fiasco, and may well have been (in a much slicker way) just as criminally corrupt as the Bush administration. We fired on a news media outlet in Belgrade, as surely as we did in Baghdad.

So anyway, I ran across this article where I encountered this question: How do we become, again, a people who govern themselves? I think that's one of the central questions facing our times.