Cynthia McKinney: the Ballot or the Bullet

People who still think the U.S. is a two-party system should have gotten their wake-up call yesterday when Cynthia McKinney lost her seat in Congress for the second time. Not only was her ouster the result of a bipartisan effort, as clearly evidenced by the reaction of her fellow Democrats to her constant harrassment by the white members of the Capitol Hill police force, but also the entire U.S. news media is united -- Conservatives and Liberals alike -- in their glee at her defeat. Cynthia McKinney was a radical anomaly in Washington. Not content to focus on the petty squabbles that divide the U.S. ruling class, largely tactical issues on how best to bleed the people at home and perpetuate U.S. hegemony abroad, McKinney used her position in Congress to fight for REAL equality and justice. Her only mistake was that she believed she could lead the struggle within a political apparatus whose raison d'etre is to maintain a system of inequality and injustice. It's hard to believe that she really harbored any illusions about the system, however, since she suspected that the U.S. government had a hand in the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the murder of Tupac Amaru Shakur and the attacks on September 11, 2001. I think the last straw was her persistence in denouncing Israeli war crimes and supporting the Palestinian cause -- strictly forbidden in U.S. politics. She probably would have gotten wacked outright if the man weren't so good at rigging elections these days. It looks like 2007 might turn out to be a repeat of 1964, like Malcom X said, the ballot or the bullet. What can the man use now to fool us after he kicked Cynthia McKinney out of Washington?