"Well, at least they're better than George Dubya Bush." This statement is often given with a final exhale, a sort of culminating punctuation mark on the wearying tedium that is Ms. Clinton, Mr. Obama, and the entire 2008 Presidential campaign. And it stands as perhaps the most dangerous statement - and there have been many - uttered during this latest political circus. First of all, it is irrelevant. Whether Ms. Clinton or Mr. Obama is or is not better than the example lain down by Mr. Bush is of no practical worth in gauging their capacity to lead the most consequential nation on earth into the most consequential era in our human history. If a close friend of ours is diagnosed with terminal breast cancer, and we respond to her tearful news with the statement, 'Well, at least it's better than pancreatic cancer, that'll kill you in like two weeks', have we not missed the point entirely? The affected organ is not the issue, it is the cancer and its consequences that is at issue. And giving relevance to an unremarkable statement of fact throws up an illusion of change that skews our capacity to recognize what is truly at stake in our country, and what is truly in need of transformation.

The teams of Ms. Clinton and Mr. Obama, though perhaps less amplified, less toxic examples of our departing leader's cabal, are born of and beholden to the same corporate over-lords and so-called 'business interests' hurtling us toward a wholly predictable and catastrophic social and environmental demise. Let us look at Ms. Clinton first. She is the candidate who is backed by the most defense industry dollars, the most oil money, the most private health insurance and pharmaceutical dollars, and, despite the fact that she is a woman, the one most backed by the 'old-boys' network in Washington and on Wall Street who truly make the decisions that shape our collective world. She is an unapologetic champion of the Iraq War - a war that has cost at least 500,000 human lives. A monstrous fact that we, to our eternal shame, continue to flip a shrug of the shoulders at - as if it was just some other policy decision out of our control. Ms. Clinton is from, and actively supports the expansion of, the established moneyed elite of this and other countries bent on tearing down all remaining political, military, and economic obstacles to an even greater U.S. led, multi-national Corporate domination of the world's resources and its peoples.

Mr. Obama - despite his obvious charm, languid charisma, and Utopian rhetoric - offers perhaps an even scarier prospect. Because his handlers and would be Cabinet (and let us be clear, Presidents don't choose handlers, handlers choose Presidents - unless you are JFK, and we saw how that attempt to implement true executive power worked out for him) is driven by the politically embedded, long-time Washington insider, ultra-hawk Zbigniew Brzezinski. Brzezinski, a Polish-born, Harvard Ph.D. rather obsessed with Russia's threat to U.S. global hegemony, is perhaps best known as being Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor. But his resume is much more complex than that. He is also a long-time intelligence operative, a member of Ronald Reagan's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, co-chair of Bush the Elder's National Security Advisory Task Force, a close associate of Henry Kissinger, a best-selling author, and an influential former Professor at Columbia University where, in the early 1980s, he had one Barack Obama as a star student.

Most tellingly, however, Brzezinski is a long-time member of the Bilderberg Group, the Council on Foreign Relations, AND a founding member, along with the infamous David Rockefeller, of the Trilateral Commission - all three tight, unelected, wildly influential groups made up of leading corporate executives, media elite, European royalty, intelligence agents, and - in direct violation of the Logan Act - official government representatives. All three organizations work openly and unapologetically to siphon more and more power away from the dull, strung out masses of humanity into the hands of an ever-shrinking class of global, corporate-model elites. Members of these groups talk overtly of the need to expand a U.S./European Corporate-led empire across the globe. And knowing the American population's general tendency toward ideals of democracy, equality, and freedom, they spend a lot of time discussing ways of manipulating public support for their insane agenda. Brzezinski, for example, in his 1997 book "The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives" (sic), wrote that the American public would be brought around to support his notions of imperial mobilization into the oil-rich regions of Central Asia, in which we are now embroiled, only in the event of "a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat" - just like the American public was only willing to support "America's engagement in World War II largely because of the shock effect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor." A few years later, he got that event.

Compare this widely published Brzezinski framework to the now infamous "Rebuilding America's Defenses" document published in September of 2000 by PNAC (Project for the New American Century), a Neo-Con think-tank riddled with soon to be Bush Administration officials. In this document, PNAC called for a radical restructuring of U.S. government and military policies, advocating the massive expansion of defense spending, the re-invasion of Iraq, the military and economic securing of Afghanistan and Central Asia, increased centralized power and funds for the CIA, FBI, and NSA, among a slew of other policies that would, in the then near future, be enacted upon their ascension to power. In the same document, they cite a potential problem with their plan. Referring to the goals of transforming the U.S. and global power structure, the paper states that because of the American Public's slant toward ideas of democracy and freedom, "this process of transformation is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor." Sound familiar? One year later, they got their 'New Pearl Harbor'.

So the question posed to us, especially those of us who have thought or have uttered the statement 'at least they'll be better than Bush', is this: are these camps really that different? That the teams of Obama and Clinton may coax and massage the Corporate-run, Neo-Con-like vision into reality at a pace and with an approach that is less blatant than Mr. Bush and his cronies does nothing to change the course of our collective heading. And in fact, the illusion that Barack and Hilary somehow offer a change from the previous regime may in fact speed up the catastrophic inevitability of our current communal heading. For in that perception of change, we may drop the guard we rightly raised from finally seeing the truth of Bush's suicidal course, and fail to see that the cabals of Clinton and Obama intend to take us down the exact same road.

Imagine, for a moment, that we are all traveling in a bus together. A bus being driven by Mr. Bush, careening down the highway at 80 mph towards a cliff we can all see coming. We panic, rush to the front, attempt to take over the steering wheel. And then Ms. Clinton and/or Mr. Obama emerge from the pack. They turn and smile reassuringly at us, ease Mr. Bush out of the driver's seat and back, finally, to his ranch in Texas. One of them gently applies the brake, slows the bus down to 40 mph, readjusts the mirrors to fit their liking, and we all exhale, head back to our seats, and lie down to take a nap after eight long years of being car sick. But in our slumber, if we fail to see that Ms. Clinton, Mr. Obama, and their coming cronies have no intention of altering the fundamental heading of our collective course, then we will simply pitch off the edge of the cliff at a lazier speed.

The fundamental problem we face is this: every four years, we are beguiled into thinking we participate in a vibrant, exemplary democracy. We are sucked into a media feeding frenzy of pie charts and pundits, hairspray and sound bites. We are told the candidates offer two 'clear' choices - the entire complex, nuanced universe reduced, apparently, into giant blobs of 'Republican' and 'Democratic' values. From a distance, with the entire spectrum of creative possibility at our disposal, are these two 'sides' really that different? Rolling out of bed a couple times a decade to punch a hole next to one of two names provided for us on a little card by a system only interested in perpetuating its status quo - with the occasional lean to the left, or yaw to the right of its one central, elite-driven, moneyed-class holding pin - is NOT a democracy. Replacing Mr. Bush with Ms. Clinton or Mr. Obama is not, in any real sense, change. It is a change in personality, of course, but not any kind of consequential flex of our democratic potential. Even when we DO vote and express our collective voice, does it even matter? Florida in 2000, Ohio in 2004, the coming 'super-delegate' fiasco the Democratic party will try to shove down our throats as they work behind closed doors to decide our fate.

Our power does not lie in voting. That is a ruse, whose widely held assumption keeps us from seeing wherein lies our true potential influence and impact. If voting could make any real systematic difference, it would be illegal. Our power and our democracy is a living, breathing system whose potency is dictated by the conscious (and unconscious) day to day engagement of its citizenry. It is not voting every four years for the candidate the system tries to frame as 'representative' of our values. We have to take the weight we give to our notions of voting and put it on our seemingly innocuous daily decisions - shopping, investing, commuting, working, reading, communicating, educating, participating in local issues, etc. We have to ask ourselves, if we are truly interested in democracy, what it is that we do day to day. What values do we actually animate day after day in the 1,460 days between elections? THIS defines our democracy and expresses our actual influence.

Knowing this comes with much more responsibility than watching six months of CNN, then trotting down to the local precinct to fill in our chosen bubbles. We have to ask ourselves much deeper questions. We have to look into what we are choosing to animate when, for example, those of us who claim to oppose the war in Iraq, even take to the streets to voice that opposition, keep our money in giant multi-national banks. Banks that, literally, take our money and invest DIRECTLY in the corporations that fund the 'think'-tanks and institutions that create the 'demand' for war, and their sister companies standing dutifully in line to provide the incredibly profitable 'supply' to engage in said war. Economics 101 in action. We have to ask ourselves what we are choosing to animate when we claim to abhor the no-bid war profiteering enjoyed by the defense, reconstruction, and private contract industries, yet give our hard earned dollars to mutual and hedge funds who funnel that money DIRECTLY into the boardrooms of Raytheon, McDonnell Douglas, Halliburton and Bechtel. When we do not practice honesty and accountability in our own personal relationships, how do we expect to have honesty and accountability in our collective lives? When we do not uphold ideals of democracy and liberty in our own homes, families, and/or office buildings, how do we expect those ideals to be held up by others around us?

There are hundreds of small decisions we make, day after day, in our personal micro lives that literally create the policies and shape the reality of the macro society around us. Voting for Ms. Clinton or Mr. Obama, wiping our hands clean because, well, 'at least they're better than Bush', and then rolling back over in bed comfortable in our belief that we have somehow participated in a great democracy will not absolve us of the consequences of their all too predictable policies. Rationalizing either of them as adequate gestures of 'change' - whether because she is a woman, he is black, they are Democrat, or at least 'not Bush' - represents our own easily ignored, dirty participation in creating a world we claim to abhor. Clinton will do nothing to challenge the existing system that so enslaves so many of our brothers and sisters around the world, where 50% of the world's population makes less than one dollar a day, and 70% make less than two dollars per day. Obama does not have the power to challenge the system that is careening us toward a collective environmental and social collapse. They and their handlers ARE that system, and we are slowly being convinced and reconciled by the other forces from within the exact same system to abdicate our power to one or the other, and get back to work or watching T.V. or shopping at the mall for another four years.

This election, and our democracy, is not about voting for Hilary Clinton or Barack Obama ( or McCain, Huckabee, etc.). It is not, as the media tries to convince us, about THEM. It is about us. Every four years, we cannot expect to uphold a vibrant democracy simply by electing a new president. We cannot simply punch a hole in a card or tick a check in a box - a tick that may or may not be counted, a hole that may or may not be honored - and then pat ourselves on the back for attending to our civic duty, for choosing a figure to 'represent' our voice. There is no such thing as a 'representative' democracy. Societies and democracies are built brick by brick, day after day, through each conscious and unconscious action and inaction we each choose to animate. Where we keep our money, where we spend our money, the debts we incur, the magazines we buy, the transportation we choose, the media we read, the voice we use with our children, the respect we show our neighbors, the food we eat, the classes we attend, the norms we agree to, the beliefs we accept, the personal power we surrender, the power we express, our relationship to plants and animals, where we travel, how we deal with sickness and adversity, how we share our good fortune, who we agree to identify with, and who we agree to be separated from - these are the things that animate our world. And each one of us is equal in our contribution. THIS is true democracy. THIS is the reality of things. THIS is what shapes and creates the world we live in and engage with. THIS is the true perspective of our collective, creative potential.

And from this perspective, the fact that Ms. Clinton or Mr. Obama (or any other pony thrown at us) may or may not at least be 'better than Bush' is so insignificant that to even utter its sentiment is to yet again ignore our true civic power and democratic responsibility. To engage in such petty, irrelevant statements of fact is to yet again abdicate our authority to individuals and to an existing system whose interests and allegiances lie far afield of our most basic needs, and our deepest human yearnings. The world is OURS to create, not THEIRS to lord over. We must remove the veils of ignorance and complicity that cast such long shadows over the true nature of our selves. We must throw light onto the true nature of our personal and collective power - our TRUE power - the power to heal the planet, the power to create, the power to honor and celebrate life.

In the end, there lies really only one fundamental social, political, and personal question we face in regards to unlocking our greatest individual and collective potential. And that is this: do we principally identify our selves as separate from, and in competition with the rest of creation, or do we identify our selves as part of and connected to an intimate, interdependent living whole. If we identify as the former, as separate, as man or woman, young or old, American or non-American, Muslim or Christian, Catholic or Protestant, Baptist or Methodist, high tax bracket or low, Republican or Democrat, PC or Mac, feminist or non-feminist, white or black, Israeli or Palestinian, Northern or Southern, East or West, or this or that, then our lives and the world we occupy can and will be nothing but conflict and competition. We will feel isolated and alone, and out of that fear we will look for some box or cage or group or club or race or nation to provide us the illusion of identity and belonging. We will attach our momentary feelings of belonging and purpose to that arbitrary identity. And those interested in controlling us will be only too happy to codify that identity into some kind of doctrine and dogma, provide proof of the requisite infidel 'outsider' or 'enemy' bent on destroying our arbitrary solidarity, and in the end, of course, ask for our 'faith' or 'patriotism' in allowing them to provide the necessary cover - no matter how violent, monstrous, or brutal - we and our fellow allies will need in the dark, dangerous, Darwinian world.

If we identify as the latter, however, as a single connected unit interlinked and interdependent within a broader living system whose enormous, mysterious pulse is the same force that animates our own momentary gender, age, race, and species assignment, then the world will be a very different place. We will walk through a garden or a park and hear bees in the trees, and we will have to stop and stare for a moment. We will not be able to keep from looking at the specks of fluffy pollen collecting on their legs and rounded back-sides. We will not be able to keep from speaking to them, from saying thank you for working so hard to pollinate the plants and trees and flowers that make the foods that make it possible for us to even be alive. We will not be able to look at another human being as somehow less worthy of the same basic rights we demand for ourselves. We will not be able to differentiate between Islamic and/or American terrorism. We will not see the difference between Israeli or Palestinian violence, or Catholic or Protestant hatred. We will not see such consequential meaning in the imaginary lines on a map that so entrance and inflame so much of humanity. We will recognize that all hate and separation and prejudice is an agreement to believe that we are somehow less than what we truly are. And because we see and commit to what we actually are, we will have no need to be put in a box or given an identity to squelch our fears of isolation and loneliness. Instead, these illusions will be faced head on, in our own minds and hearts. And we will cultivate the bravery of a warrior not to destroy 'others', but to destroy our own deeply embedded false selves.

Some of us will embrace this responsibility of facing the truth of ourselves, of facing the truth of our participation in animating the world around us. And some of us, of course, will gladly deny it. Either way we still make a choice. Either way, we are still bound to the consequences of our decisions. Either way, the truth remains that we are not separate, individual selves competing for a single agent to somehow represent our personal values from an imagined perch in Washington. We are a connected, living whole participating every moment of every day in a single, vibrant pulse. And the truest of all truths is that the texture and experience of this living democracy is ours, and only ours, to animate.