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.