�Sometimes you hear somethin�g s����o ridiculous you have to laugh, because if you don’t, you might start crying. That President Barack Obama, a moderate to the point of maddening frustration to true progressives, democratic socialists and Marxists, is somehow depicted as a “radical” Marxist leftist by the falsely advertised, war-mongering, chest-beating, xenophobic “small-government conservatives” is insane. They’ve turned reality completely on its head. The term “radical” needs to be fundamentally reframed, reexamined and redefined, for the term has been so watered down that it lost its meaning in Washington political circles and in the media.

In reality, moderate liberal archetypes like Obama aren’t radicals at all when the term is assessed honestly. True radicals see certain things as fundamentally wrong in society, and only with radical actions can these radical injustices be undone — Obama hasn’t behaved in this manner in the slightest. Instead, he represents the Washington D.C. moderate Beltway status quo in its purest form. He has become, as Ralph Nader forewarned might happen in 2008, an Uncle Tom for Corporate America when he could’ve been an Uncle Sam.

Calling Obama a “radical” might win votes and elections for neo-conservatives, but it waters down the honor of the term and does honest political discourse a total injustice. It’s an absurd claim to diehard members of the left to hear the neo-con artist thugs call Obama a flaming liberal or the next reincarnation of Karl Marx. If the far left were only so lucky.

This brings us to Saturday evening’s “Obama and the Left: What Happened to Change?” event, which featured a five-person panel of those from the radical left. Unfortunately, the crowd was rife with Madison middle-aged community members and not with students, who hold the keys to the future but were only sparsely scattered throughout the audience. Student political activism at this university is, for all intents and purposes, a joke. But that’s another topic for another day.

For those naive enough to be duped into electing this fraud of a candidate, this would have been a good event to attend. For those who spent countless hours of their lives doing grassroots work to get Obama elected in 2008, his first year in office was a rough slap to the face from reality on many fronts, showing that electing seemingly favorable candidates to office does not always equal getting favorable public policy results. It’s an inherently flawed model, yet most students falsely believe the ballot box is the panacea for America’s problems. It’s not, nor has it ever been.

The event discussed all the downfalls of the Obama Administration, but also taught the crucial lessons of the now late legendary historian and author of “A People’s History of the United States,” Howard Zinn. Those who’ve read Zinn know elected officials have never been responsible for sweeping social and political change and indeed, generally have been the ones responsible for halting it. It’s always been mass “radical” grassroots movements of political activists — the Vietnam War protesters, the civil rights marches or labor union strikes and picketing — that have lead to social change domestically and in foreign policy decisions.

John Nichols, one of the panelists, as well as The Nation Magazine Washington correspondent and associate editor of the Capital Times, put it eloquently, “Americans have a sickness. They believe they can go to the ballot box and elect officials, and then sit back and hope and pray that the elected officials act in the public interest. But this is just playing right into [their] hands. There needs to be a cure to this sickness.”

The cure is political activism: group efforts to call into your representatives’ offices and pressure them to stand up for just causes, boycotts of those who fund the military-industrial-media complex, sit-ins in politicians’ offices, protests, etc. Working to elect dishonest public officials has been a losing strategy from time immemorial, which is why it is never worthwhile to join an organization like College Democrats or College Republicans, which serve as nothing more than conduits for the two corporately and morally corrupt parties and the continuation of the practice of electing officials who by no means act in the public interest, but instead, in the corporate interest.

“What matters is not who’s sitting in the White House. What matters is who’s sitting in,” said Zinn. Next time you consider working on a campaign or joining a group like College Democrats, think about the hundreds of millions, both domestically and abroad, who are suffering at hands of our government. Should we be fighting for the fundamental decency and equality of humankind, or should we spend our valuable time and effort electing officials who seldom act in the public interest? Life is short. Choose wisely.

Steve Horn ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in political science and legal studies.