I’ve been reading my Twitter and Facebook newsfeeds and increasingly see police action against Occupy Wall Street demonstrators. Not only in New York, but all over the US. Tonight there’s talk of police raids in San Francisco and Oakland.  Is the US not a democracy and every citizen guaranteed the right to assemble peacefully?  Aren’t we afforded the right to speak freely? How then, do we have leaders elected to office in state and local government telling the police forces to use rubber bullets and tear gas against demonstrators? Don’t we abhor this sort of behavior in the Middle East? After all, those people were just fighting for their freedom, better jobs, a better standard of living. What, pray tell, are the Occupy folks doing? Oh, right, they want better jobs,a higher standard of living, and freedom from the shackles of corporate interests.

There’s no difference really, in what is taking place here in the US versus the Arab Spring. We all want better. Yet our President saw fit to admonish the leaders of Egypt, Yemen, Syria and Libya to tell them stop using such force against your people who just want democracy.

Strangely enough, the demonstrations in Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana barely registered a blip from the White House. Now that Occupy Wall Street is taking the nation by storm, I have yet to hear Obama address it and tell local officials to back the hell off.  Isn’t it funny that the one thing we claim to have and envied by the rest of the world, is the very thing we are in dire jeopardy of losing? Our freedom; our democracy.

Our President won a Nobel Peace Prize in anticipation of the good works he was supposed to do. Instead, more innocent lives have been taken under Obama’s watch by drones. The wars still haven’t ended. And now, not a word regarding the police violence on demonstrators, on Americans, the same grassroots people that voted Mr. Obama into office, the same people, highly educated, sinking middle class. The same people who blogged, Facebooked and Tweeted about the change and hope Obama would bring in the post-Bush era.

If by some sheer miracle (meant loosely, because the GOP field of candidates is so dismally appalling), Obama should win re-election, I hope he decides to take a page out of Bush’s playbook. But instead of catering to the wealthy, listen to his citizens and help them, give them true resources. Not some half-assed bill that you can have the Senate turn down time and again, holding this country hostage and on its knees.