By Jim Hoover

For most Americans, it is too early for the nonstop verbal inanities of the 2012 elections. For the power base it is almost too late to begin machinations, which for most part, center around money, puppeteer candidates, and programs to manipulate the people. My guess is that for the presidency, the piles of cash are set; the candidates are set, and the strategy is set.

Obama can talk generally tough about the amorphous few who are holding economic recovery back, but he knows the game is over for millions who are unemployed. A stalled economy and unemployment is the Republican strategy. Their goal trumps the lives and fortunes of people. After all they have sacrificed the productive lives of millions – Americans and innocent foreigners whose countries we have attacked during the Bush years of failure. A few million unemployed is nothing, next to the grandiose plan of plutocrats.

Rick Perry can make his rash statements about big government, dodge statements about his radical right-wing pronouncements in his ghost-written books, and wait until after the primaries to unleash the moderate rhetorical wind to convince inattentive voters with short memories. Perry is pitted against a failed sitting president, characterized as wimpish and with a poor jobs record, something assured by Republican leaders. The public will be too displeased about stalled prosperity and poor prospects for the future to really know the differences in candidates, though getting smaller.

Do I sound cynical?

Should I not? We’ve been set up for failure; however you look at the picture.

We have been set up for free trade, a dying American manufacturing base, a service economy with low-paying jobs, and high unemployment. Seven or eight percent unemployment will probably be permanent, especially with cuts to education and higher education being out of affordable sight.

Our future involves more prisons to sequester a larger prison population of desperate unemployed, mentally unhinged, and generally broken populations – products of a plutocratic revolution.

Pick your poison. You want it fast or do you want it slow. Both paths are covered by big money – remember the Supreme Court opened the door completely to buying elections, but plutocrats realistically know that it could be Obama or Perry.

Plutocrats want Rick Perry. The demise of the middle class would be faster under him. He is extreme enough that the fraying fabric of the safety net for the middle class can be undone for those under 50 with reductions coming little by little for those over that age.

If Obama returns for a second term, which is possible because the rich will feed his campaign too – for insurance, Obama is already programmed to be careful not to promote any safety net extensions and will allow nibbling around the edges of social security, Medicaid and Medicare. He can always say that Republicans relentlessly pushed him in that direction – and believe it.

So you see the script is written, a whole network of actors have been hired and the lines variously written for them. The general outline of the script was crafted before Ronald Reagan. Act 1 and Act 2 gave us the props and the setting. Now, the final act nears, the time when no more drama is needed, just resigned obedience.

The leading actors – at least, on the stage — are the candidates –one from the lunatic fringe and one from the mollified center-right. Celebrity journalists within the corporate media play softball with them, and voters act in minor roles.

We all attend this farce, watching a drama called free elections in a democracy – voters in minor roles can play or not. Plutocrats got both covered in the script. Whichever acting faction wins, we lose.

Remember, plutocrats put on this play: Not As You Like It, but As They Like It.

Don’t worry. Prosperous lives, for the majority will fade slowly.

Just sit back and watch the show.