29 March 2012

Legalize It

In the winter of 1959, Alexander Trocchi, in the dark upside of his infinite night crouched behind his typewriter…a chair, a typewriter, a table, a single bed, a coal stove, a dresser, a cupboard, a man in a little wooden shack…and bared his soul to the only art he could ever comprehend…the black liquid ink of the words he was yet to write.  A (30) year heroin addict before his death in the spring of 1984, he left an unimaginable trail of broken lives and shattered dreams in his wake – his own included. As with most tragic assholes, he outlived those closest to him.  His eldest son died of cancer at (15): his youngest returned to Kensington a few years after his father’s death and jumped from the fifth floor of the family home to his death in the street below.  Before her untimely demise, before and after the tragic death of his first son, he had aggressively pimped his wife for money to score junk.  That’s some legacy, eh? 

Critics have said that he was little more than a “junkie with an Olivetti”.  Those who see reality from a different perspective (myself included in a previous life) speak of him as a visionary – one of the few who were able to see the hell in which they were drowning and capture it in words.  It’s a powerful truth when one can recognize himself silhouetted against not only society’s obvious, but his own critical light.  The phrasing he employees is as stark and vivid as anything I’ve ever read – in some respects as striking and essential as Hemingway.  By most acceptable cultural critiques, he was the scum of the earth and there is an obvious truth hidden in that indiscreet assessment. He was ill-equipped from day one of his life to understand and even less equipped to confront his own veracity. 

Aldous Huxley captured the essence of a drug in a positive light in his seminal work The Doors of Perception: Trocchi captured the flipside in a way that only he could in Cain’s Book…he gave color to the darkness that is drug addiction.  He was aware of the empty shadow in which his existence orbited and was acutely aware of how he was perceived by his contemporaries.  His is one of the saddest stories I’ve ever heard based on this fact alone – the great tragedy of Alexander Trocchi’s life is that it was all avoidable and it was all of his own doing.  He sealed his own fate the first time he injected himself with the black liquid of his own life.  He once famously acknowledged that he was on an unavoidable collision course with his own self and that he had actively committed suicide for the entirety of his (59) years on this earth.    

In his defining work Cain’s Book, a semi-autobiographical novel, he writes about his perception of the U.S. government’s inept attempt to “control” drugs (remember that this is the 1950s):

I would recommend on the grounds of public safety that heroin (and all other known drugs) be placed with lucid literature pertaining to its use and abuse on the counters of all chemists (to think that a man should be allowed a gun and not a drug!) and sold openly to anyone over twenty-one.  This is the only safe method of controlling the use of drugs.  At the moment we are encouraging ignorance, legislating to keep crime in existence, and preparing the way for one of the most heinous usurpations of power of all times …

This is what rehabilitation “professionals” flippantly call ‘a moment of clarity’.  Even as an occasional admirer of his work, I call it the only cogent thought he ever corralled and put on paper.  Of course, the gravity of what he writes is diminished and is easily dismissed as little more than the wishful aspirations of a heroin addict but if you can look past that for a minute there is an inescapable wisdom in his thought, however ill-conceived it might have been.

One might articulate any number of hateful evaluations of this man and this statement - loser, derelict, good riddance, what a waste.  I come at this from a different perspective.  He would have been a junkie regardless of any government decree.  The arc of his life would not have been altered if his method of procurement had been.  In all reality, there is nothing that could have been done to save him.  I’d like to spend some time with this line of thinking and work it to the end, so bear with me if I ramble over the next so many lines... 

I think that I agree with the legalization of all “illicit” drugs on the grounds of our nation’s economic stability and future ability to sustain itself.   I say not only legalize it, but regulate it, control it and tax the shit out of it.  And by “it”, I mean everything – all drugs.  (And yes, I’m aware of the irony of starting my argument with the words of a degenerate drug addict.)

It seems unacceptable doesn’t it?  How can the United States of America be a party to such nefarious endeavors?  The legalization of any drug is too distasteful a subject for most of us to broach in private much less in the bright light of day, but since this is my unedited train of thought I will continue.  Hear me out.

Suspend for a bit your obvious predilection to say that drugs are bad and therefore this conversation is over.  Yes, all the drugs that I’m referring to are bad and I agree that the people who partake of these indulgences are idiots, but that isn’t the point I’m making.  I think we could all agree that the world would be a better place if “recreational” drugs were not a part of it.  The same could be said for the drugs that are legal though, right?  How many cups of coffee do you have everyday?  How do you feel before you have the first one?  Alcohol.  Tobacco.  The price of a pack of cigarettes has skyrocketed in the last few years but it hasn’t stopped many from smoking has it? To paraphrase my good buddy Dennis Leary, you could paint XXX on the pack and call them Tumors and people would be lined up around the block to buy them!  Ridiculous, I know.  As a smoker I can admit that.  I still pay the price and honestly don’t even think about it.  The state of Georgia reaps the benefit of those tax dollars at my own personal financial expense and I will certainly ultimately reap the "reward" of my own demise as a result of my weak dependence upon said “drug” if I don’t kick.  If the U.S. were to legalize narcotics the same would be true.  Know this – we do not live in a “Just Say No” world anymore.  If you believe the Mayans, we are in the end of days anyway so let’s make a profit on these imbeciles while we can.

That last part seems insensitive I know, but there are already entire industries in this country whose core principal and unshakeable foundation is buttressed by this very idea.  Credit cards are marketed to people who can't afford the things they have been convinced by pop culture’s stranglehold on the citizenry that they must have.  So they buy the thing and pay an additional (25) bucks or so for every (100) they spend.  How stupid is that? Turning a profit at dim-witted humans' expense is not only an acceptable business model in this country it is the norm.  It's woven into the very fabric of the American experience.  How would this be any different?

Speaking of “Just Say No”, does anyone remember the last time a politician of any bent declared a “war” on an issue that they actually won?  Johnson’s war on poverty?  I still see poor people.  Reagan’s war on drugs?  I still see crack heads.  Bush's war on terrorism - don't even get me started.  As soon as it is verbalized on a public stage it is almost certainly doomed to failure.  We should take those good intentions and turn them into something that is actually meaningful.  Drug users have been using our tax dollars forever, I think it's time we start to use some of theirs.  I see this as an opportunity to take a negative, a blight on our humanity and turn it into a positive.  Drugs will never be eradicated in this country - it's a sad cultural fact.  The "drug war" wasn't winnable  from the start and certainly wasn't in the manner it which it was waged, but that's another conversation.  

In Atlanta, our good mayor recently lauded the strides the state has made in regard to our employment deficiencies.  We are actually celebrating the state unemployment rate dipping below 10%!  I guess in the absence of actual good news, any news will suffice.  Think for a moment about the jobs that could be created if we were to put my plan into play.  We could take a bit of the street out of the street, right? 

I spent a few days in Denver recently where medicinal marijuana is legal.  Driving around the city it seemed there was a “shop” on nearly every corner, with obnoxious names like “Over the Rainbow” and “Attitudes”.  While there, I saw a documentary on this recent phenomenon and there is apparently a huge groundswell of local voice against this newly adopted policy.  Rightfully so – nothing of this magnitude should be undertaken without full public disclosure and debate.  The piece of the piece that I latched onto was the fact that some of the shop owners are in fact former drug dealers.  One individual spoke about how taking his “business” off of the street and into the storefront had saved his life. Think about that…giving the hopeless hope.  It seems like an American ideal, no?  Hell that is almost the definition of the “American Dream”!  “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses...your struggling drug dealers…blah, blah, blah…” – Emma Lazarus approved.

“But how can we legitimize criminal activity?” you might ask.  “How can we not?” I retort.  IF it’s not the foundation upon which this country was built, it certainly is the one upon which we operate today!  Who has the power in this country?  You don’t.  I don’t.  The assholes on Wall Street and K Street and Capital Hill do.  Just because these tools have a white collar, does it make their activity less criminal?  I don’t think so. How can we suffer for their decisions and not endorse similar behavior?  IF we are going off the cliff (as anyone who is paying attention sees) then let’s all get in the same car and go off together.

I don’t think I’m being facetious when I say Legalize It. 

It would not be an easy process.  We would finally and unequivocally have to take and retain control of all of our borders.  We are understaffed to do so at the moment (obviously).  That’s job creation.  A code of standards would have to be written and approved in the Legislative by which these new “businesses” would not only operate but be approved upon.  The ongoing activity is that there are government employees that inspect such facilities on the regular.  That’s job creation two-fold.  Business licenses would have to be applied for and approved and paid for.  That’s job creation and tax revenue.  That's just the tip of the iceberg and I could go on and on, but surely you get the idea – its snowball economics, right?  Government controlled and monitored and heavily taxed and the populous benefits by having better schools, safer highways, stronger police protection etc. etc ad nauseum.  

Can you see it?  It’s ugly isn’t it?  I submit that we are only a shy removed from that Babylon – it’s not a stretch that we should go there.  Is it uglier than where we are now?  I’m not sure.

3 September 2001:

Two “potheads” were gunned down by federal agents on their own private property.  You never heard about it because 9/11 happened just after. Tom Crosslin and his partner Rollie Rohm were the owners and proprietors of a pro-marijuana, libertarian campground in rural Newberg Township, Michigan.  Rainbow Farm as it came to be known was a staple on the oft-ignored ‘pro-legalization’ circuit.  Tommy Chong, Merle Haggard, Big Brother and the Holding Company are among the many “known” acts that appeared at their annual ‘Hemp Aid’ and ‘Roach Roast’ festivals.  At the end of Labor Day weekend that year, (2) American citizens lay dead and the air was thick with smoke from the smoldering remains of the structures on their farm.  The life that they had endeavored to create for themselves and those like-minded literally had been reduced to ashes scattered around their lifeless bodies.

All these two wanted was to live in a country, a world free from judgment of not only their sexual orientation but more importantly their constitutional and God-given (in their opinion) right to smoke weed.  They ran Rainbow Farm for (5) years until the powers that be finally had enough.  The rumor was spread that this, by all accounts peaceful commune, was amassing an arsenal of automatic weaponry.  One has to wonder if the final decision to move on this didn’t have something to do with the inhabitants’ ‘outlaw’ sensibilities and their perceived disbelief in and defiance of what was socially acceptable.  Here are (2) individuals, though not like me and you necessarily, who were true patriots and who believed every single word of the Declaration of Independence and The Bill of Rights.  I re-read Burning Rainbow Farm recently and I’m convinced their intentions were nothing other than honorable.  But as happened in Waco and Ruby Ridge, their hand was forced.  That’s what drug laws and gun laws do for us.  For the record, I’m strenuously against the idea of private gun ownership. The 2nd amendment is about arming an organized militia against a foreign threat – not arming a bunch of blood-hungry rednecks.  But again, that is another conversation, isn’t it?

The only reason I bring Rainbow Farm into this ramble is to illustrate our government’s misguided enforcement of an archaic philosophical viewpoint.  Archaic in that, it is not aware of the world in which we live and in which it is a part of.  Hey, I don’t like it anymore than you do, but we can’t hide behind our Bible and throw sand at the Devil and hope that it all just goes quietly away.  Part of surviving is adapting to your environment.  That’s a hard concept for creationists to accept but it’s true.  We adapt or we falter and fade away.  A. Trocchi couldn’t adapt.  Fail.  Rollie and Tom chose not to adapt.  Fail.  Had the laws of this country been different I’m not sure the end result would have been.  Some people fulfill their destiny in ways unimaginable to me, but that is part of life.  There are those among us who will meet an untimely end regardless of all other possible factors.  The point I attempt to make is that bad things are going to happen to good and bad people regardless of the laws of the land.  Therefore, I endorse and support an enhanced natural selection process that will at least allow our tax coffers and payrolls to be filled again.  I think we should legalize all known drugs and as I said earlier, regulate and tax their distribution heavily.

It’s as pragmatic a viewpoint as I have ever entertained, much less embraced and / or advocated vocally.  I’m as shocked as you are by this actually.  I hate drugs, drug users, sellers, etc.  But I do love a cold can of PBR and his creepy cousin Camel Lights so what does that say about me?  Am I different than "they" are?  Are you?  Desperate times call for desperate measures and maybe we should try to think even farther outside the box than we are comfortable with.  I don’t entertain any illusion that this would ever happen in this good Christian nation of ours. (By the way, many of the founding fathers were Deists, not Christians – that’s basically a Pagan belief structure.)  However, I don’t think that my proposition is outside the realm of possibility and I don’t think my new-found philosophy is so far fetched that it shouldn’t be considered.

I do fear that the idea of having and / or discussing a viewpoint of any sort outside of the 1940's pseudo -"greatest generation ever" bullshit that we've been fed our whole lives has become taboo...out of "respect".  It’s not yesterday.  We can either get with today or dive back into our sweet played memory.  Either way, we should be talking about this and about a million other things that are more important than.  This is most likely the last you will ever hear me say on this subject because there truly are a million or more things that are more important and command my attention.  I am always interested in a debate though and if philosophical debate is dead then what’s left of this great Democracy?

Perhaps the only point that I wish to make is that we should be thinking...

...all the time.





20 March 2012

Spring is 9,369…

…more reasons than ever to run outside.  Or the number of naps Maynard will take in the sun as I attempt to reclaim my backyard from a winter’s long neglect.  Or the number of times Belle will drop her ball in front of the lawnmower so I have to throw it.  And how many street festivals I will attend in the next (60) days.  The number of excuses I will make to leave the office early to squeeze in the full (18) holes before sundown.   The number of times I will suffer through a dipshit client’s disorganized meeting daydreaming of the weekend hike.  Today is the first day of spring! And there are at least 9,369 reasons I love Atlanta this time of year.  It is also the number of pollen particles per cubic meter of air today – the highest pollen count in Atlanta’s recorded history. 

A thick dull fog has descended over the city nearly choking out the sun.   You can see it billowing down the freeway, mindlessly dancing along the traffic wind…resting peacefully on the back of every sleeping dog or anything else that sits still for a minute or more…gleefully attacking the bronchial passages of the unfortunate.  I will be happy to cough and sneeze and curse it 9,369 more times until that first excellent rain rolls in and washes it all away.  It’s not really spring until that glorious first cleansing, when the dusty haze is erased and the city explodes once again into its perfect color. That’s when I know that the dark of winter is done.  You can almost literally see the blood pumping back into the heart of this town. Spring is nature’s dawn, right?  I will spare you the 9,369 other tired “spring is a rebirth…” clichés but rest assured they are all spinning wildly in my brain.  I can’t sit still.  I can’t concentrate.  I’m effectively useless, strangled by anticipation of the 9,369 outstanding memories I will soon make.

Or the 9,369 epic trips to Lowes to buy supplies for the 9,369 projects I will never finish.

The 9,369 ideas for new ink I will entertain but not get.

I designed (2) nearly complete building concepts in the span of (30) minutes today, put them into production and will not be able to sleep tonight for the 9,369 other ideas I have for 9,369 others.

Throughout the day, I weighed the pros and cons of no less than 9,369 paintings I should do, or stories I should write, and plays I would run if I were the coach, or lessons I would teach if I had kids and thoughts I would think if I had 9,369 seconds in every minute of every hour of all 9,369 days of every year if I were to live for 9,369 years after this.  It seems like that long since I’ve felt this creative.

There are 9,369 rituals attributed to the Vernal Equinox; virgin and animal sacrifice, Bacchanalian orgies, beheadings and other benign activity.  I’m not much of a Pagan so I celebrated the dying of the night by watering the dogwood I planted a couple of years ago in the front yard.  I sat there on the stoop and quietly enjoyed the first of the 9,369 PBR’s I will have on the exterior this season and, in my mind at least, watched her grow.   I thought about the shade this beauty will provide 9,369 days from today, how tall she will be and how long the shadow she will cast.  That little tree represents as close to “roots” as I have ever managed to put down in my life.  If I’m lucky enough to be here 9,369 days from today I will tell you a little more about it - if I'm not, spread my ashes at her feet. 

She’s a good tree…and there are 9,369 reasons why. 

11 March 2012

Being German...On the Road


I passed time on a recent flight with a lady from Germany going to see her brilliant engineer son in Ft. Collins – (10) hours from Berlin to Atlanta, (3) more to Denver, an hour’s drive to Ft. Collins + (5) years of his college...”long trip” she said to me.  Long indeed, I thought to myself. It was her first time in the states and she was less than impressed.  Her name was Eva.

Flying west always brings up Kerouacian visions that may or not be true or real other than in my faded memory. To be Dean Moriarty was my dream at seventeen years and I ventured west to realize that fantastic concept as soon as I was able. I could never be that 'mad, wild Dean’ though…

She saw my tattoo and immediately said something in German I didn't understand and I had to admit that I was pure American and the tat was a nod to my ancestry only. I was proud of my heritage and embarrassed of how little I actually knew of it at the same time in near equal measure.  Her first time in the U.S. and she speaks better English than many Americans that I know. I can say Deutschland and California uber alles because of the History Channel and Jello Biafra not because I understand what it truly means and certainly not because I understand what it is to be German, or even German-American for that matter. Embarrassing. I should drop the three bills and get Rosetta Stone already. It's an offense to my own sensibilities that I don't comprehend the words of my forefathers when they’re spoken to me. I haven't earned the right to have the German flag inked through my flesh, but I do nevertheless. That's just me.

I listened to this band Kik Tracee in the late ‘80s and they sang this song Big Western Sky...shitty song, shitty band through grown eyes but I thought it was the deal then.  It connected me to...I remember when...I remembered this song flying across the plains into the sun Wednesday night, throughout the exceptional glowing Thursday and again over (acceptable by even my standards) biscuits and gravy at DEN watching the sun rise and dance along the snow-capped tops of the Rockies Friday morning.  I sometimes forget how wide the world is open and I forget how big the world used to seem to me when this song was in my constant rotation.   I do remember lying on my back in the desert of Joshua Tree when I was eighteen watching airplanes silently streak slowly across the stark black night.  In my mind every one was going somewhere new and exciting and I told myself I was going there too someday.  I’ve increasingly allowed myself to dismiss that wonderment as the ‘hubris of the young’ or whatever but I’ve seen a need lately to find my way back to that notion.  Every time I’m west of the Mississippi, I start to remember the yester of my day and wonder if I had been as bad-ass as I thought I was then how different my life would be now.

I’ve been to the Holocaust Museum in D.C. a couple of times and I always feel a certain amount of shame based on nothing more than the spelling of my last name.  I find myself trying to hide that tattoo when I’m there.  Why?  My family had emigrated long before the horrors of the Third Reich but because I’ve attached myself to that heritage now I can’t help but wonder.  How do I really know my ancestors weren’t goose stepping right behind that consummate lunatic maniacal asshole?  I read Tearing the Silence – On Being German in America recently.  The book is a series of interviews with German immigrants who were alive during the Holocaust and how and what they remember and feel about their native country and the atrocities perpetuated in its name during this dark time.   The overwhelming sentiment of all is shame, even though most of those interviewed were children during WWII and many remember no country other than the United States.  Some of their fathers had been a part of the Nazi machine and were forced to “work” in the camps.  These were the hardest stories to read and internalize.  Can you imagine your father being a party to these unspeakable acts, whether against his will or not?  I cannot imagine the shackles of guilt they must have bore especially during an immediate post-war America. Not knowing the full German history of my family past my great-grandfather has always troubled me.  There’s always been a bit of a “what if” shrouded in my vocal pride.   For the record, there is nothing sinister about the German flag that I have – it’s my heritage whether I know enough about it or not.  The pride I feel is more familial than national and has nothing to do with…all of that.

I suspect Kerouac’s Denver is different from what I experienced but I understand the pull to it he had.  It’s the underlying unspoken theme of On the Road…that Jeffersonian, ‘Go West young man’, manifest destiny thing.  It’s the idea that we can, as Americans, do whatever the hell we feel like doing.  I have certainly lived my life against a different philosophical backdrop than the mid-century America his characters and he himself lived but the message is still the same.  It may have been the Bible to the Beats but it is still relevant today – it might even be more relevant now.  If ever there was a time to see America in all its glorious vitality before it all goes to hell it hasn’t been in my lifetime.  It’s not even that so much as it is the ability to understand and recognize the limits of one’s own time on this earth and to have the foresight to take full advantage of every fleeting moment before it is gone forever.  It’s possibly the ultimate cliché for me to espouse the ‘wisdom’ of Jack Kerouac and I realize that by doing so I subject myself to the potential criticism of being labeled a hipster douche bag and I’m okay with that.  I’ve read that book (20) + times in the last (20) + years and I see it through a different theoretical and emotional prism every time.  Dean’s and my Central City and dark street don’t occupy the same universe much less the same reality.  But I get it.  In spite of “progress”, I see what Dean saw.  However faint, I can still see that wide open world.

What Eva had said to me was, “Woher kommst du?”  She was kind enough to explain to me that it meant, “Where are you from?”  The truth is that I had no concrete idea where my family had lived in Germany.  I vaguely remember someone mentioning the Black Forest once, but I don’t know anything about it.  She could see that I was uncomfortable when I didn’t know how to respond and gripped my hand with both of hers in the way only a mother could and said, “Schon gut.” – “It’s okay.”

Later, after we’d helped each other navigate a new airport we were standing outside in the blistering wind waiting.  I couldn’t think of anything to say.  I’d learned more from her in (3) hours about Germans than I had in my whole life prior and I felt like there must be some way for me to repay her.  As I statued against the night lost in my thought, Eva disappeared into the back of a taxi.  As the door closed I heard her shout, “Dankeschön. Gute reise!” – “Thank you.  Enjoy your travels!”  My phone was ringing, and I was cold and I didn’t have any cigarettes and I finally realized that I’m not all that German but I felt full in spirit for the first time in a long time.  Thank you, Eva. 

I bummed a smoke from a cabbie, sat down on the curb and thought about learning how to play the piano or hitchhiking to Nicaragua or...

“…they danced down the streets…, and I shambled after as I’ve been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes ‘Awww!’…”

I could pack a lot, most everything that matters, in my truck and I could take a left and I could take another shot and head west again. I could be west of the big dirty before dawn.  I’d be lying if I said it hasn’t crossed my mind more than a stitch the last (48) hours.

"…somewhere along the line I knew there'd be girls, visions, everything; somewhere along the line the pearl would be handed to me…”

The only thing keeping me here now is me.

03 March 2012

The Trouble With Politics

Mitt is a bastard unequaled (in my opinion) but he is nearly assured at this point to win the Republican nomination.  Witnessing these types of events unfold makes me wonder how human beings have survived on this planet as long as we have.  It seems that we as a species haven’t captured or even minimally harnessed for a moment the ability to evolve, or to scarcely possess intelligent, coherent thought.  There is something ideologically and emotionally and rationally flawed about someone who could and would be willing to make a living doing what he’s done – a very lucrative living, I might add.   But we are so blind to the obvious that we’ve become a nation of retarded, intellectually neutered monkeys following whatever dancing banana our favorite trainer dangles. 

The private equity firm that ‘Mittens’ founded, Bain Capital’s sole business strategy was to make money – to look for blood in the water and attack.  That’s fine. I get it.  That’s business.  We all want a smokin’ hot piece of American Pie.  But because his reputation as a “business man” is founded in and supported by his belief in big business devouring and destroying weaker small business to give his business larger margins, he can’t have my vote. That fact is capitalism at it’s finest but it’s not indicative of the true spirit of the pure principle and certainly does not accurately characterize my unshakeable confidence in capitalism.  His way of conducting business is not even as kind of an idea as a dictatorship – that’s total economic control.  Consuming the weak and commandeering their assets for “the greater good” of the whole – whatever that whole might be?  That’s a communist ideal.  Incidentally, I’ve always been a fan of Communism on paper.  To see it manifest itself in modern America is troubling though to say the least.  Whatever our founding fathers thought we would become, this surely isn’t it.

Yes, he certainly seems presidential though doesn’t he?  And I agree that we need someone with a business mind in office, but he’s not it – his is not the business acumen that will lead these great states out of this economic wilderness.  If you end up voting for this prick, please don’t tell me you did.  Choosing the lesser of two evils doesn’t mean that you made an informed choice.  I’ve chosen the lesser of two evils before…I was forced to vote for John Kerry for crying out loud – I understand the pressure that Republicans must be feeling.  Faced with no reasonable alternative what do you do?  Romney is simply the latest in a long line of supposed “middle-of-the-road” Republican charlatans selling an uneducated populous the bullshit that they’ve been programmed to buy because they are too stupid to look away from Fox News. 

If you disagree with this, I suggest that you go pound sand.  It had to be said.  Even if you are a Dem, the same criticism is valid – change the name and the network but the end perception and truth is the same.  Tunnel vision destroys democracies.  No one person is going to “save” this country. No single ideology is going to trump the other.  No one voice can drown out the crowd.  The trouble with politics is that no sane intellectual can believe what they are presented with as either the voice or the crowd.  The trouble with politics is that we as a nation have forgotten the core principle upon which we were founded – the melting pot.  It’s not just a mix of cultures that makes us who we are, it’s the mix of ideologies and philosophies that’s makes the U.S. the rich cauldron of progressive thought (or at least should) that it is and has always been.  We hold a very high opinion of ourselves don’t we?  And rightfully so! 

No one candidate is going to possess all the qualities that you wish they would.  It’s easy to find and emphasize the differences between “us” and “them”.  It’s easy to agree with a popular voice that you hear everyday.  It’s easy to cast your lot with those who may (or may not) have your best interests at heart. It is clearly easier to let others think for us and then bandwagon onto their thoughts.   Maybe that’s the problem.  Americans always want the fastest.  The best.  The easiest.    Why should having a voice in that which affects millions of people be easy?  That’s what your right to vote is.  Who said membership in this club was going to be easy?

It somehow makes us feel better about who we think we are individually to “speak” with a crowd.  It is easier to cast stones against that which we don’t understand or agree with than to try to see the other side.  I’ve done that here for the last however many words I’ve written and have vocally cast a million more stones towards our last president.  That guy was an idiot.  The only good that came of that verbal assault was that I got it off my chest.  I’m not sure that I was truly taking part in the process though.  I felt handcuffed in my ability as a citizen to affect change in what I saw as wrong and I lashed out in the only way that I could.  The truth is that neither side of the “aisle” is giving the citizens the actual reality, and few if any of “them” or “us” are aware of the actual news.  The sadder truth is that none of “us” seem to mind.

Agree or disagree with my perspective, the American public must be smarter than falling for a candidate whose base platform is that he can unseat the current president.  Regardless of what you believe, you must surely believe in more than “the opposite of that guy”, right?  The scariest truth about Romney is that he is the most logical choice – if I were red, he’d def be my guy.  He is the closest apparition of an embodiment of a “candidate” the elephants have mustered in quite some time, and he, in spite of that strange glow is getting a big, if unexpected, push from the ultimate fiery Christian lunatic Rick Santorum. 

At least Mitt understands the game.  For many years, the Republican Party has fooled good, hard-working Americans into believing that they are for them.  The truth is Republicans hate the working class.  They’re only purpose is to help fill the coffers of the uber-rich and to pad their own in the process.    Tricky Ricky is pandering to a base that maybe never existed and certainly doesn’t exist anymore – but “Republican” voters by and large have no idea they’re being schooled.  They see themselves as the “last bastion of all that is good and just”, but they are simply pawns in an incomprehensibly large power play. That feel-good, Reagan era, trickle down economic, family values, “Just Say No” bullshit is over and is finally starting to be illuminated as the ultimate political scam that it was.  Some of those same “pawns” are waking up. 

It’s not a social election this time guys. “Family values” won’t get your sorry ass a Pennsylvania Avenue mailing address. In Michigan, among those for whom abortion was the most important issue, Santorum won by a staggering 64 points. But they made up only 14 percent of the electorate. Seventy-nine percent cared most about the economy or the deficit. Romney won them by 17.  And he won but only by three points, a weak showing in Romney’s native state where his (former governor) father is a freaking legend and where Romney outspent Santorum 2-to-1.  Americans simply want to go to work and help restore our place in this world.   I won’t even get into the inherent flaws of Uncle Newt and everyone’s favorite grandpa Ron Paul.  I will say this for all you Paul pushers, read this article and get back to me.  The bottom line is that the Republican Party in its current incarnation is not capable of producing a viable candidate.  And no matter what “they” tell you, “they” will not win. 

I take no joy in this.  Our country was founded on the principle of a multi-party political, competitive system and that hasn’t been fact in years.

I voted for Barrack Obama and I will certainly vote for him again come November.  That fact doesn’t mean that I support and / or believe in all that he does, supports or even says out loud.  It simply means that his voice is closer to mine than all the others.  I tend to take the aggregate of the conversation.  I have friends who say they are “socially” this way and “fiscally” that way…whatever.  I look at the message and the philosophy as a whole.  And I’m not stupid enough to believe that one term of even the perfect president will “fix” this. As members of the electorate we have to possess the cerebral wherewithal to ascertain the big picture and not just get snowed by the blistering pixels that the so-called “Liberal” media relentlessly tattoo onto our brain on the daily.  That’s one of the biggest lies ever perpetuated on the American public by the way.  Rupert Murdoch nearly owns the whole of American media and certainly the “right” from a “news” perspective – he gave 1 million Georges to the Republican Governors Association in 2010, was the 38th richest person in the U.S. in 2011, created Fox News in 1986. 

I’m not even sure why I’m writing this.  I’d rather be watching That Metal Show.  At the end of the day (one of the most abhorrent phrases ever btw) what should I care?  What should you care?  I’ve got “mine”, right?  Maybe we should want more than that.  Maybe I should listen to my own rhetoric.

I clearly have a ‘left’ bias, but I don’t think my concerns are that far from the intellectual ‘right’, however few of them there might be left.  If we could all come together in the middle, we could have a conversation.  Even the dipshits in power know that there is a balance they have to maintain – why can’t the American populous hold themselves to the same standard?  We are a competitive society but this election isn’t about my guy versus yours.  It should be “our” guy against “them”, right?  It’s not personal.  I just don’t think that anybody on the main stage is having the right conversation.  And regardless your political leanings you have to see that we are losing this thing, man.  We’re better than this.

The trouble with politics is that it makes smart people say stupid things. 

The trouble with politics is that there isn’t enough difference between the two dominant parties on the most important issues for one to feel good about the choice they are forced to make.

The trouble with politics is that the only way to win is not to play the game (a thinly veiled War Games reference).  All politics in America today and for the last recent memory is gamesmanship.

That’s a sad testimony on the greatest society that ever inhabited the earth.