The richest, most powerful nation on Earth is going to have a new President in 2008. I’m so excited! What’s more, the new president could be black: remarkable how far the USA has moved on since slavery was abolished in 1863 – it’s only taken, what? 145 years for black people to reach equity in the Land of the Free. That is if Barack Obama is elected.

But it’s also exciting that John McCain has been brave enough to criticise the execution of the Iraq War — here’s a man who knows his mind and for whom age is clearly no impediment. Way to go Republican voters!

So, who is it going to be: Obama or McCain; blue or red; donkeys or elephants?

Do you really think it matters?

Sorry to upset your political sensibilities — if you feel that party politics is a big deal — but it makes no difference at all who becomes president; and here is why.

It has always been the foreign policy of all civilized nations to maximise the amount of resources it can obtain, whether that be fossil fuels, metals, farmland, fish or slaves — like the people who make most of our clothes and consumer goods. Civilization requires natural resources and labor in order to keep it running: failure to secure these is economic and political suicide. The USA is no different: neither Obama nor McCain will change that policy, because one of them will become head of the most powerful civilized nation on Earth. Their raison d’etre will be to ensure the continued success of that nation on the world stage, and so their primary objective will be to secure resources — that’s the way it has always been; that’s why all civilizations have sought to create empires.

In fact, as resources become more scarce the policies of the USA will become more imperial than ever. Iraq has become part of the American Empire so that it can control the 3rd largest oil reserve in the world, and Iran is top of the list to provide the next gulp of unregulated oil. The Philippines and Mexico meekly turn over their people to become wage-slaves to the US Empire, and ever since its instigation, Israel has provided the best possible outpost for US hegemony in the Middle East: why else do you think Obama’s first speech after becoming nominee-elect for the Democrats described the USA’s link with Israel as, “unbreakable today, unbreakable tomorrow, unbreakable for ever”?

Do you really think that things would have been any different had Al Gore defeated George Bush Jr. eight years ago, or John Kerry had defeated the same nemesis four years later?

Try this for size.

I find it charming the way partisan commentators claim “their” candidate will make a difference, desperately trying to tease out the differences between the two sides, while all the time knowing that, regardless of who is elected in November 2008, it will just be business as usual. Your vote will not make the slightest bit of difference.

That’s the price you pay for living in the “Free World”.