VIDEO BLOG: Trust No Incumbent

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I am doing what I can to address the destruction of our democratic system.

Without taking back our government, nothing will change.

In my new book, An Unlikely Truth, I offer an electoral strategy which I believe can effectively remove the crooks and liars from office, and begin to restore representative democracy to America.

An Unlikely Truth (Literary Vagabond Books) is now available worldwide in every popular ebook format and as a deluxe edition paperback.

An Unlikely Truth is a critical read for anyone who shares the progressive vision of a more peaceful, more humane, more democratic America.

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Throw the bums out!

72% of American voters are for raising
taxes on the wealthy.

That equates to 108 million people.

76% of American voters want to cut back
on military spending.

That’s 114 million people.

72% of American voters want a federal minimum wage of $10.00 or more.

108 million people.

74% of American voters are for ending oil subsidies.

111 million people.

79% of American voters want no cuts in Social Security and Medicare.

Over 118 million people.

93% of American voters want labeling of GMOs in their food.

That’s nearly 140 million people!!

But none of this gets done!

The simple and insulting truth is that a mere 500 or so men defy the will of millions, that the very people we elect and send to Washington to create laws that protect our interests, refuse to represent us, ignore our clearly stated will on these crucial issues and many more.

They ignore “we the people” and do the bidding of “we the rich”. Until we confront these play-for-pay lapdogs, they will continue to serve a tiny elite minority of rich and powerful oligarchs and America will continue its slow but certain decline. You and I will live like beggars and America will become a Third World country.

We’ve all been appalled by recent events. We’ve watched as our government was shut down. We’ve been horrified by the fight over the debt limit. We’ve seen the systematic destruction of our democratic way of life.

So what can we do? With millions of dollars of fat cat money floating around, the voice of the regular guy has been drowned out. There has been no way to get rid of the crooks and liars. But I believe now there is.

How did that old expression go?

“Throw the bums out!”

We do this using a new, unique and powerful strategy for taking on the corrupting cancer of money in politics __ an end run around the iron grip which Wall Street, big banks and corporate oligarchs now have on our political system. This sledgehammer approach gives the 500 corporate toadies in Congress, who arrogantly sit inside the Washington DC bubble and ignore the very people who voted them into office, a simple straightforward ultimatum: Do your job and start representing “we the people” or collect your pink slip.

It’s a no-nonsense, take-no-prisoners method for cleaning up the corruption among our elected officials and putting people in office who will do our bidding. It forces the men and women we choose on election day to start taking their orders from us, instead of the deep-pocketed puppet masters who have effectively stolen our government by buying off our senators, congressmen, even our president, with huge campaign donations.

This is an election year and people are frustrated and angry. Congress started the new year at a historically low 13% approval rating.

I say we channel that frustration and anger into a unified and constructive effort to restore true representative democracy to our country.

It’s up to us. But something has to happen immediately. We are fast approaching a point of no return, beyond which the specter of a rigid totalitarian state looms. Either we replace our current legislators or they will replace our country with one we don’t recognize.

Look around. It’s already happening.

So either we rise up now in a bloodless coup at the polls or we rise up later in the streets. Revolution in the streets will not be bloodless and I suspect it won’t end well. The blatant and ruthless dismemberment of OWS was a warning.

Time to unite and act decisively.

Hopefully it’s not too late.

Sometimes truth comes from an unexpected place and from an unlikely messenger.

It doesn’t matter the source. It’s still the truth.

Posted in Political Analysis, Political Rant | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Change We Can Believe In

According to recent polls . . .

Approval of Congress stands at an all time low. Only 13% think they’re doing their job.

Almost half of American voters “think their own member of Congress does not deserve reelection” while only 25% thought they did.

This is an election year __ perhaps the most important election year in recent history __ meaning we have a choice to make.

Will it be more of the same?

Are we going to be obedient little robots again and pull the lever for the guy with the clever campaign ads and teeth-whitened smile?

Or is it time to take this seriously?

Our situation is certainly serious. Despite the massaged statistics we are fed and the latest Wall Street bubble courtesy of our Federal Reserve, our economy is in shambles. Popular and highly successful programs like Social Security and Medicare are still under attack by the viciously selfish 1%. The rich still don’t pay anywhere near their fair share of taxes, and they seem bent on starving the most vulnerable among us by cutting food stamps, heating oil subsidies, unemployment benefits, child care, school lunch programs. Jobs continue to be shipped to slave wage countries in Asia and profits bankrolled in tax havens around the world. Corporations get the royal treatment and we regular citizens get the shaft.

Had enough of this?

It’s time for some major change in this country.

It starts November 4th.

Here are some related blogs:

Trust No Incumbent
It’s Nothing Personal
VIDEO BLOG: It’s too complicated
VIDEO BLOG: “Take me to your leader!”
Guillotine or Exile?
Real News
The Day That Changed The World

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Ship of State

Our ship of state cannot find a new, better direction by rearranging the deck chairs, hiring a new trumpet player for the band in the Captain’s Lounge, or repainting the life boats.

It really comes down to setting an entirely new course, even turning the ship 180º around if it’s heading entirely in the wrong direction. Nothing less will get the job done.

Yet, our often bitter national conversation — sometimes a shrill shouting match — is always focused on the tiniest details, irrelevant details which serves both to distract us and obscure the larger issues which are the real source of our national conundrum and chronic paralysis. Whether this is intentional or not, it has poisoned all of the air in the room and killed progress on the many critical — as in life-or-death — challenges confronting us.

We argue about capping student loan percentages and whether bankruptcy should be allowed for individuals who can’t pay for their student loans. Public funding for advanced education has been coming up short both at the national and local level. Public universities facing insolvency are either depending more on private — as in corporate — funding, or being completely privatized. Tuition is shooting through the roof. To assure profitability, institutions of learning are becoming more beholden to private industry. The disturbing upshot of these trends is that higher education is becoming unaffordable for the majority of young people, at a time when employers are demanding even more education of their prospective employees. Nevertheless, all we seem capable of doing is nitpicking away about the burgeoning student debt problem.

The real question is what kind of country doesn’t educate its population? Conservatives say the money isn’t there. Yet we spend in the over $1 trillion a year — that’s trillion with a ‘t’ — on our military. We really need to ask: Books or bombs?

We argue about the upsides and downsides of Obamacare, wrangle over the exemptions and loopholes in the program, condemn governors who are opting out certain aspects of the Affordable Healthcare Act. These are certainly genuine issues but not the problem.

The real problem is twofold: There is nothing keeping the cost of health care under control — we spend 17.7% of our GDP on health care, next closest are Holland at 11.9%, France at 11.6%, Germany at 11.3%, Canada at 11.2%,  — and much of what we spend on services is turned into corporate profits. You get sick, corporations make money. The sicker you get, the more money they make. Am I off here but isn’t there something bizarre or even cruel about turning human misery into an ATM machine?

So forget the details of this sub-clause and that policy rider. We need to address a very fundamental question about what kind of society we want. Is America a country where the proper care and health of its citizens is a fundamental and integral part of “the general welfare” — is a basic right — or is it a service commodity like getting your car tuned or your house painted? There is no other modern industrialized nation which does not lean toward seeing health care as a right, like voting, free speech, freedom of religion, and so on. America distinguishes itself by ignoring this most fundamental aspect of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Only in America will you be left to die just because your insurance doesn’t cover your problem or like 40 million others you have no health insurance.

We talk about whether we should go to war with Syria or Iran, whether we should continue to use drones, what we can do about North Korea. Yes, this is a dangerous world. But we ignore a simple fact. We are the ones making the world a more dangerous place. We are now viewed by the rest of the world as the greatest threat to peace and stability on the planet. With maybe a few obvious exceptions, we are the problem, not those we are constantly demonizing. We are becoming a pariah in the world community.

Because of the wholesale takeover by the military-industrial complex of our foreign policy apparatus, meaning wholesale embracing of a neocon imperialistic world view, we don’t even consider peace as an option. We don’t work for peace. We don’t think about peace. We rarely mention peace. The military option, from targeted drone bombing to full-scale war is apparently the only option. We have a one-size-fits-all strategy: Bomb, kill, destroy.

The real question is:  Do most American citizens want America to rule the world by force?  Do the imperial ambitions and delusions of global hegemony of our leaders truly reflect the values of the majority of our citizens? What insanity is Washington DC championing here on our behalf?

Who’s version of America arms the world — we are the biggest arms supplier on the planet — antagonizes every other world power, bullies its friends and foes alike, never takes ‘yes’ for an answer unless it’s a ‘yes’ for armed confrontation, and expects to survive?

This is a survival issue. Because if any significant number of the countries becoming increasingly fed up with America’s my-way-or-the-highway tactics unite, no amount of bombs and bullets will rescue us. Think about this:  America hasn’t won a war since WWII. Oh right . . . forgot. There was Grenada. A country of with less than 1/4 million people with no standing army. We trounced them.

Then as we spend about as much on the rest of the world combined on our vast military machine, we scream and yell — perhaps rightfully so — about our national debt, about both our personal and public indebtedness, about home mortgages, foreclosures, credit card debt, of course, again student loan debt, how much we owe China and Japan, etc. Sure these are important matters. But they are only the dirty wine glasses on the Titanic.

Because the real question is:  Why doesn’t the nation we pay our hard-earned taxes to have control of its own currency? Why don’t we as Americans have any say whatever in the way the money of the richest country in the world is handled by its central banking institution, the Federal Reserve? The Federal Reserve is not federal — meaning a part of the federal government — any more than Federal Express. It is a privately owned-and-operated corporation! Our currency is not issued by Uncle Sam. It’s issued by Uncle Ben, as in Ben Bernanke! How can we get our budget priorities in line when we don’t have any control over the very currency we use? This sounds on the surface like some abstract question but it is fundamental to creating a sound economic system. He who controls the purse strings controls the world.

And now is the really big one, which spawns all of the others. This is the big daddy sitting at the top of this shit pile of self-deception causing all of the yelling, blather, incoherence, gridlock, confusion, frustration, helplessness — the ultimate bargain with the Devil.

We argue about Republican vs. Democrat, conservative vs. liberal, we have our standing jokes about Libertarians and spoiler candidates from the Green Party, and we point at the ultimate lepers of our time, socialists!

But the simple truth is that it’s not about Democrat vs. Republican. It’s about tyranny. The tyranny we have invited by our apathy and our self-invoked declaration of surrender. The tyranny that marches in when hope is replaced by hopelessness and toughness traded out for submission and compliance. It’s the tyranny of the power elite that fills the vacuum of citizen engagement and self-rule. It’s the tyranny of rule by a tiny core of elite oligarchs when voting becomes an exercise in futility, if not a complete joke.

All of this contentiousness, bickering, in-fighting, out-fighting, cage-fighting is irrelevant. Because we don’t have representative government anymore.

DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA IS DEAD!

Now that’s the real issue.

And until we address that issue, nothing else will get done. Politics will be a board game, about as relevant to governing our nation as Monopoly is to the real economy.

The evidence for this is clear.

No matter who is in power, Democrat or Republican, most everything just gets worse.

Ralph Nader made the controversial claim in his 2000 campaign for president that the two parties were Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum. That was both perceptive and prescient. Now in the coming mid-term and 2016 elections, it is even more the case than ever. Real choice within the two-party system is an illusion. Third party and other independent candidates are almost totally shut out, shouted down, or mocked by those who benefit from having a two-party system beholden to the corporate aristocracy.

So the questions we need to address here are not the hot issues of the day. The questions are practically never what is being discussed in the 24/7/365 tsunami of scandal, rumor, manufactured crisis, and drama queen reporting that passes for news these days.

The most important question is whether we can become a functioning democracy again.

Whether a Democrat or a Republican supports gay marriage or gun control or legalization of marijuana may seem like life-or-death issues. This is what we constantly hear from both media pundits and politicians alike. But these issues — these “details” — pale against the real question, the big question.

Do these men and women in suits — Democrats and Republicans — support America?

Do they support America, or is their true loyalty to the huge transnational corporations which are looting our treasury via corporate welfare and off-shoring their profits, turning our country in a big wasteland devoid of real opportunities for real Americans, trashing the environment, and bankrupting our political system by buying our elected representatives?

So what’s the point of all of this?

It’s very simple . . .

Until we fix the big problems, nothing will get resolved. Our educational system is rigged. Our health care system is rigged. Our foreign policy is rigged. Our tax system is rigged. Our monetary system is rigged. Our democracy is rigged. So . . .

We can sweat the small stuff but all we will end up doing is standing in a puddle of sweat.

I talked about this problem of scale — the big fundamental systemic issues vs. the narrow typically charged and highly divisive ones — quite some time ago in a previous blog called “You Don’t Use A Microscope To Find The Cow That Left The Barn. I also discussed the epic levels of exaggeration which issues from our government institutions supported by the talking puppets in the media, essentially propaganda designed to convince the public that the dysfunctional blowhards we elect to public office are actually getting something done. That blog was called “Differences That Don’t Make A Difference“.

Back then — respectively April and March 2011 — neither seemed to make much of an impression. But considering it’s been almost three years now and things are just getting worse, maybe this would be a good time to revisit them.

As to the important business of steering the ship of state . . .

Maybe it’s time for a mutiny.

Posted in Banking, Corporatism, Political Analysis, Political Rant, War and Peace | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 11 Comments

It’s Nothing Personal

I don’t hate America.

I don’t hate our government.

I don’t hate our government officials.

Many of our elected representatives are probably nice people — I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt — even ones who appear to be complete butt heads. I’m sure their families and neighbors think they’re pretty swell.

Maybe we even share some common interests, the same movies and books, or my personal passion for bicycling and hiking, donuts and ice cream, lovely walks on the beach, rainbows and beautiful sunsets.

But it’s irrelevant.

Whether they appear to be good family men and women, look great on television, put up the most wonderful campaign ads, dress sharp, go to church on Sunday, shake hands and kiss babies, root for the home team, is not what’s important.

Their public persona is especially not important now that campaign consultants and handlers can massage and package image so perfectly, that some of the most implausible individuals end up holding office for years, despite their obvious shortcomings for public service. You know who they are.

The only important point we need to consider is that right now the majority of elected officials in Congress and the White House, and their appointed judges of the Supreme Court and throughout our justice system, do not reflect the values of the majority of Americans. They don’t represent us, the way we think, the things we hold dear, or what kind of America we want for ourselves and our children.

America is supposedly a democracy. Our leaders are supposed to be a mirror of those who elect them. Their values and priorities are supposed to agree with those of the majority of Americans.

But they don’t. It’s that simple.

There are vast consensuses which cut across party lines and political ideologies on a number of important issues (see Trust No Incumbent and “Throw The Bums Out!“).

But the job is not getting done. If anything, Congress and the President are heading 180º in the wrong direction on most of the critical issues — those challenges which literally threaten the survival of a recognizable America.

I say it’s time for some serious house cleaning.

Over the next three election cycles — starting this year in November! — we need to seriously think about giving over 500 of our congressman and senators their walking papers. You’ve had your chance guys and gals. You flubbed it.

It’s nothing personal. These folks just cannot continue in public office in any official capacity. They’ve done enough damage already. Time to go bye-bye.

What causes their disconnect? Why have these mostly intelligent, well-educated, certainly well-positioned and well-connected individuals gotten so far off course?

That could be the subject of many volumes. While I’m not sure I even care — the abysmal record speaks for itself and the explanation is not pertinent — there are a host of reasons. Many obvious symptoms of their pathological insensitivity to the majority of American citizens immediately come to mind. Here in no particular order are a few:

They’re rich.

They live in a power bubble, completely insulated from being able to hear us, and rendered incapable of talking to us. They talk at us. They talk down to us. They talk and talk and talk but it counts for very little.

They have delusions of grandeur, both about themselves and about our country. There’s no doubt that America is wonderful in many ways. This does not make these men all-knowing and all-powerful, infallible and omniscient. A little humility would go a long way in DC. Less chest-thumping, flag-waving, exceptionalist bullshit might steer them back into something resembling reality. But it won’t happen with the current bunch of megalomaniac blowhards.

They’re misinformed.

First, they don’t listen to the people who elected them. They listen to lobbyists, invested think tanks, play-for-pay academics, every shape and size of expert who are tethered to the enormous financial interests of the rich and powerful. All of these function purely to make the already filthy rich even more wealthy.

Second, they listen to themselves. They spew out all sorts of nonsense, carefully crafted to improve their poll numbers and electability, then start believing their own hollow blather. They think saying the right thing — what they believe we want to hear — is the same as getting something done. Mesmerized and infatuated with the sound of their own voices, they ignore what might actually be in the best interests of America. Good speeches and simplistic beatitudes substitute for real leadership and vision.

The President’s recent State of the Union address is a perfect example. Pundits are falling over one another to praise Obama’s noble sentiments, ignoring the fact that we’ve had six years of stratospheric oratory but nothing of substance has been accomplished to address the real challenges. If anything we continue to careen on an unsustainable course of more war, more plundering of the economy by the imperial corporatists, even more destructive wealth inequality, and less of the things which would serve the vast majority of American citizens.

Lastly, as the expression goes . . . follow the money. As I said earlier, giving the benefit of the doubt to all of the pathetic knuckleheads we sent to Washington to do the incredibly daunting job of running the country by assuming they are nice people who sincerely mean well, unfortunately all too often — 98% of the time — they can’t in point of fact do the right thing.

That is, the “right thing” as you and I might define it.

Every one of our democratically elected representatives lives from one election cycle to the next, tossing and turning every night at the prospect of losing. But thank the lord on high, there’s one thing that guarantees their job. MONEY! Lots and lots of money. It pours in from big banks, Wall Street, incomprehensibly rich donors, multinational corporations. It rains down on them like manna from the Creator Himself in Heaven. All they have to do is always keep in mind these wonderfully generous folks who sit at the top of mountains of cash, when a vote comes up on the floor of the House or Senate, or that bill comes to the presidential desk for signing. It’s not bribery per se. It’s a camaraderie thing. It’s an attitude of gratitude. It’s backslapping. It’s just taking care of those who take care of you. Gosh! It’s bringing tears to my eyes just thinking about how touching it is to see such beautiful bonds of friendship in action.

Here’s the point. Regardless of how you feel about your elected representative, your senator, your congressman, your president, regardless of how charming and swell this person may personally be, whether the guy is married, Christian, honorary coach of his neighborhood Little League team, and a regular attendee at the Ladies Auxiliary Love Thy Neighbor Meals-On-Wheels Bake-A-Thon and Pie Eating Competition, as the eloquent Mr. George W once said (I love paraphrasing such an articulate and thoughtful man as George) . . .

“They’re either with us or they’re against us.

And if they’re against us, it’s time for a pink slip. Time to find candidates who will listen to us, then go to our nation’s capital and fight for our interests. Time to vote out the old and vote in the new. There’s no room for sentimentality here. The future of our nation is at stake. The future we create for our children is in peril. It’s up to us to turn this around.

We need to put in office the right individuals, ones who listen to and are accountable to we the people. We need to elect people who will build the country we want.

We need to elect people who will exclusively serve our interests, instead of endlessly pandering to the power elite.

We need to elect people who will put an immediate halt to both the suicidal militarism of our foreign policy and grotesque militarization of our lives in America itself.

We need to elect people with a positive vision of a strong America, which incorporates an informed, educated citizenry, actively participating at all levels in shaping the future for our children and future generations.

We need to elect people who will turn around our misguided and twisted visions of world conquest, military and economic hegemony, delusions of historical preeminence, paranoid and patriotic puffery. American exceptionalism is a dangerous myth. It’s days of chest beating arrogance are numbered — or America’s days are numbered.

We need to elect people who genuinely embrace equality, opportunity, justice, fairness, so that America can live up to the high-sounding speeches we always hear at election time.

It’s sad that we have to replace some nice people because their not doing the job we elect them to do. But it’s what we have to do.

It’s nothing personal.

 

Posted in Corporatism, Political Analysis, Political Rant | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Why feed the beast that feeds us nonsense?

I recognize that television is fun.

But it’s more than that . . . and less.

The late cultural critic, educator, social scientist, and futurist Neil Postman, a renowned professor in the Department of Culture and Communication at NYU, wrote a book in 1985 that changed my life. This truly groundbreaking work is called Amusing Ourselves To Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business.  I read it in 2000. I was so inspired, moved, appalled and frightened, that I turned off my TV. For good!

Postman posits that television presents us information as graphic-based montages, as opposed to ordered conceptual hierarchies. Hierarchical organization is the basis for language and literature, and has been responsible for what we credit the progress of many centuries, producing civilization, industrialization, modernity. Juxtaposition of imagery on TV and computer screens is not necessarily a bad thing, just different. One offering not only a different world view but creating a totally new untested mental environment for solving problems. We don’t know what kind of future associative image-based “reasoning” will produce, if it becomes the prevalent vehicle for shaping our social and political interactions, our economic relationships, our future. It’s certainly easy to be pessimistic, considering how “uncritical” thinking typically is these days, and how relatively impotent we as individuals seem to be now, in the 24/7 deluge of frivolous information and propagandistic blather.

But the more frightening prospects comes from a more sinister aspect of the medium.

Postman argues very persuasively — enough to get me to turn my TV off forever — that television doesn’t just feed the brain with a different menu of highly delectable treats. It actually REWIRES the brain. Excessive television changes the neurology of the human mind — the way we process ALL information, not just what we’re viewing. He goes on to say that this restructuring of our neural pathways compromises, perhaps in the end totally disables our capacity for clear, logical, nuanced, multi-layered reasoning, regardless of its intent and application. It could be an effort to design the next generation of microchip, the attempt set the priorities for embracing a sustainable, Earth-friendly economy, or creating an environment for fostering equal and humane relationships among humans. Or it could just be trying to read a map, a skill I see rapidly vanishing.

I don’t want to carry on for another 800,000 words going into all of the research that backs this up. I will say, this sure goes a long way toward explaining why I can’t carry on the most basic conversation with a lot — maybe the vast majority — of people these days.

By the way, Postman’s thesis would appear to apply to much of what is being weaved into our lives as convenience, then necessity. Smart phone, iPads, Google Glasses, smart tablets — note that these are all image-based technologies.

So it’s not just television. But TV is the gateway drug. It’s more addictive than heroin, and if Dr. Postman is correct, more onerous.

By the way, I’m not a Luddite. I am not writing this blog on the back of a shovel with a chunk of coal. I own several computers, sophisticated electronic recording technology, a Samsung smart phone, though quite honestly I only look at it briefly a couple times a week, and understand that living in Japan am surrounded by more gadgets and remotes than I know what to do with. And I truly love the wondrous things that complex devices and powerful software applications are capable of. AI is extremely impressive, in ways both good and bad.

So I too have to fight it. This stuff can suck you in more thoroughly, more bewitchingly than watching Angelina’s lips on the big screen. I catch myself checking my email too often, looking at the stat calculator on this website more frequently than is necessary or healthy, just taking a “quick peek” at FB way too much, scanning the news aggregator websites with serious intentions but being subjected to a lot of celebrity gossip and salacious pseudo-journalism, and generally tending to be more OCD about all this marvelous gadgetry than I prefer. It’s really really addictive stuff!

This hypnotic enslavement is a predictable side effect for all of this flashing, dazzling junk. It’s what is termed “contraindications” on prescription drugs. I think they should print on the side of most of these devices something to the effect of: “May cause obsessive behavior and other forms of neurosis, enslave unsuspecting individuals to living life inside the tiny confines of a high-resolution screen, break up relationships, decimate entire generations of families, encourage delusional fantasies of epic escape into totally non-existent and unproductive artificial worlds, and produce numbness in anterior parts of the human anatomy and critical areas of the cerebral cortex.”

Truth in advertising, even if the print is very very small.

So . . .

Turn off your television now!

Unplug your smart phone!

Get out a sledgehammer!

You know what to do.

 

Posted in Deconstruction, Nihilism, Philosophy, Social Commentary | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“You wanna fight about it?”

To listen to the politicians and pundits, you’d think we can’t agree on anything. This is a self-fulfilling and very dangerous fabrication, completely contrary to the energy and spirit of everyone who came before us and built this amazing country.

It’s become increasingly clear — at least to someone who is outside the constant barrage of 24/7 bullshit that passes for news and a national conversation — that all of the fighting and bickering is intentional. We have the war on terror, the war on Christmas, the war on free speech, the war on marriage, the war on free trade, the war on capitalism, the war on the uterus, the war on voting. What else?

The war on twerking?

What’s the point of all of this?

Well, in terms of accomplishing ANYTHING constructive at all, there is no point. Except maybe . . . to keep us from accomplishing anything constructive at all.

AHA! Could it be?

I’m not a conspiracist. I’m a realist. And I know this. The best way to control people is to frighten them, confuse them, divide them, set them against one another. The rest is easy. You can just lean back and let people destroy any sense of civility, community, decency, caring, sharing. And when the exhausted masses are lying in a heap, you can take their wallets, maybe pass around some stale crumbs and chicken bones, explain that’s all they get but thank god they aren’t living under the crushing thumb of socialism, then tell them how incredibly good they have it just being an American and living in a country where they’re free to bicker and fight and self-destruct.

Perhaps this all sounds abstract and you think I have my head in the clouds — or maybe inserted in a dark anatomical posterior tube. So let me offer a somewhat tongue-in-cheek example of what I’m talking about.

Let’s say the only thing a person could see or read about for an extended period of time was whether fire-breathing dragons should be regulated by the federal government or locally by the states. As the heat of debate is steadily cranked up and the pros and cons are bandied about, the ridiculous underlying premise becomes further reinforced, and woe be anyone who has the audacity and courage to point out that there is no such thing as fire-breathing dragons.

The public would be polled:

“Is the proposed regulation of fire-breathing dragons good for America?
Do you feel safer?”

Politicians and pundits would grandstand:

“Again we see the tax-and-spend liberals in another example of overreach,
as they impose their socialist world view not only on fire-breathing
dragons but on the rest of us who have to foot the bill.”

A huge divide would open up as opinion became more polarized and attacks more vicious. The media would dazzle their viewers with graphics!

“This map shows where things stand. The red states are the ones who believe
they themselves have their fire-breathing dragon situation under
control, the blue believe that the crisis requires greater
oversight from Washington DC.”

In the meantime, the myriad of real problems would be ignored. No time to discuss the unsustainably high unemployment rate, the loss of manufacturing jobs in America, the illegal foreclosures on homeowners, the continuing abuse of money in politics, the increase of unnecessary surveillance on American citizens and their loss of constitutionally guaranteed rights, the bleeding of the U.S. Treasury by big investment banks, the pursuit of unnecessary wars and building more military bases throughout the world, the declining safety of food in the country, the bankrupting escalation of health care costs and the tens of millions of people who still could not afford private health insurance, the strangling of the economy by the ballooning national debt, the absurd and anti-constitutional surrender of control of the nation’s money supply to private banks, the debilitating dependence of America on foreign suppliers for its addiction to oil and the lack of a comprehensive national energy policy, on and on and on.

But at least we would inch closer to getting those pesky fire-breathing dragons under control!

Think about it.

Or maybe you’d rather fight about it.

Posted in Corporatism, Political Analysis, Political Rant, Satire, Social Commentary | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

VIDEO BLOG: They just don’t care!

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I am doing what I can to address the destruction of our democratic system.

Without taking back our government, nothing will change.

In my new book, An Unlikely Truth, I offer an electoral strategy which I believe can effectively remove the crooks and liars from office, and begin to restore representative democracy to America.

An Unlikely Truth (Literary Vagabond Books) is now available worldwide in every popular ebook format and as a deluxe edition paperback.

An Unlikely Truth is a critical read for anyone who shares the progressive vision of a more peaceful, more humane, more democratic America.

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Posted in Deconstruction, Nihilism, Political Rant, Social Commentary, Video Blog, War and Peace | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

VIDEO BLOG: It’s too complicated.

______________________________________________________________

I am doing what I can to address the destruction of our democratic system.

Without taking back our government, nothing will change.

In my new book, An Unlikely Truth, I offer an electoral strategy which I believe can effectively remove the crooks and liars from office, and begin to restore representative democracy to America.

An Unlikely Truth (Literary Vagabond Books) is now available worldwide in every popular ebook format and as a deluxe edition paperback.

An Unlikely Truth is a critical read for anyone who shares the progressive vision of a more peaceful, more humane, more democratic America.

______________________________________________________________

Posted in Corporatism, Political Analysis, Political Rant, Video Blog | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

VIDEO BLOG: “Take me to your leader!”

______________________________________________________________

I am doing what I can to address the destruction of our democratic system.

Without taking back our government, nothing will change.

In my new book, An Unlikely Truth, I offer an electoral strategy which I believe can effectively remove the crooks and liars from office, and begin to restore representative democracy to America.

An Unlikely Truth (Literary Vagabond Books) is now available worldwide in every popular ebook format and as a deluxe edition paperback.

An Unlikely Truth is a critical read for anyone who shares the progressive vision of a more peaceful, more humane, more democratic America.

______________________________________________________________

Posted in Corporatism, Political Analysis, Political Rant, Video Blog | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments