With Medievalist Santorum out of the race, we are faced with a stark choice in November

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With Rick Santorum and his medieval ideas out of the race, we are faced with the stark contrast between Obama and Romney.

Obama believes that America is still a society... a national community in which the members are committed to a fair distribution of resources and wealth; health care, housing and life's other necessities for all its citizens; and a role for government in ensuring prosperity and global competitiveness.

Romney, who built on his inherited wealth by acquiring and gutting companies and firing their employees, believes that we should all fend for ourselves in a free-for-all competition.  While he contributes 14% of his millions in annual income to the commonweal and believes he's done his fair share, young Americans, who despite college degrees can't find well-paying work, and earning little more than $20,000 a year, will pay about 20% of their meager earnings in taxes next week.  This is the GOP idea of "fair." But, hey, they all have an equal chance to grab the brass ring, right?

The question facing us in November is: are we one nation whose citizens care about one another --- including the least of our brothers and sisters (to sound a bit Santorumesque) --- and pull together for mutual success, or are we only a vast array of atoms, buzzing wildly around one another, each one on its own and left to its own fortunes and devices?

In my opinion, the Great Recession marked a turning point.  We are not merely experiencing another economic cycle.  There is an underlying structural change.  Forces at work include the globalization of capital and the onslaught of the smart machine.  Going it alone will leave millions of Americans in the dust.  They will not lie there meekly.  Anger already runs rampant in the land.  Those who are the "winners" in the race that Romney wants will not be safe for long in their gated communities.  When the law --- e.g., our tax code; Citizens United --- consistently favors the privileged, the rule of law will erode, as cynicism replaces respect.  The "Occupy" movement will give way to ever more violent reactions to the gutting of the middle class.  Americans won't go quietly into that dark night.

We have a moment in time next November to perhaps prevent such a dark age.  But the GOP, who continually confirm P.T. Barnum's famous adage --- "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people" --- may yet again persuade a majority of us that we still live in the Wild West, where rugged individualism ought to be the order of the day.

I hope not.