Friday, July 13, 2012

Good-bye America

I am ambivalent about politics of late. Somewhere between 2005, when I had started up my blog, and was very passionate about the slow take-over of our democracy by the “right wingers,” and today, where seven years of outright lying, a lackadaisical news media, and a misdirected and ill-informed public, I’ve given up. Literally. With the promises made by a presidential candidate in 2008, who won (in my mind) with overwhelming support, and the follow-up of consistent failure to keep those campaign promises, coupled with a very real embrace by said president of certain ideologies that are antiethcal to the very nature of our democracy (i.e., renditions, killing American citizens abroad without warrants, trials, and the like, deporting more people out of this country than Bush ever did, failure to properly and timely embrace the GLBT issues that he ran on, etc., and not to mention the very same reliance on the banking industry that his opponents also embrace) have molded me into a non-believer in today’s version of our democracy.

This is a fully corrupt nation, with zero regard for the 99% of those that make up this country, work hard, and have tried to believe in the greatness of America. Instead, we have countries disparaging America based on the hypocrisy of its ideology vs. the practice. We prop up dictators, deal with our enemies, and wage wars on innocent people and nations. We are trillions in debt and yet not a single legislator on any level of government is taking up the mantle and running with the torch for the American people.

I had a guy tell me yesterday at my local watering hole that it is the corporations like GE, the oil companies, and others, that “pay the majority of taxes” in this country. I literally almost fell off my bar stool. I told him he really must stop watching Fox news, stop reading the Wall Street Journal, and for goodness sake, turn off talk radio. You will not get the truth from such areas, and that is why you, my friend, are ill informed.

It is hard to stand for truth and justice when there are so many politicians that have jumped on the bandwagon of corrupt methods of gaining and maintaining their free ride in government. “Can I please have some more” is the cry of the populace with the answer from the politicians being “hell fucking no” even as they cash their social security checks, get their federally funded (or state mandated) insurance coverage that is denied to anyone not in politics, and tell the average worker to go fuck themselves. Hell, the thought that the 1% think it’s okay (for example, Scranton, PA) to cut police and firefighter’s pay to minimum wage ($7.25), even after a court ordered the mayor NOT to do that, is just to mind boggling for me. The 1% are clearly not aware that to live in today’s America, minimum wage just does not cut it. And to believe that the majority of Americans want to suck off the teat of the government (the only people the suck off the teat of government ARE the politicians) is preposterous. A decent wage, the ability to put a roof over you and your family’s head, and raise your children with a decent education, has now gone the way of a “dream” and is actually, according to many politicians, no longer a “right” for Americans. The only “rights” that these politicians believe in is their right to pillage and destroy the America I grew up in, and turn our government into a corporate owned subsidiary. One person, one vote? Got rid of that. Power to the people? Got rid of that. A decent working wage? Got rid of that. Home ownership for the average American? Got rid of that. Where a corporate executive can work one day, retire, and take home $44 million in severance, bonuses, etc. (think Duke Energy’s CEO Bill Johnson), while there are millions and millions of people (including many Iraq war veterans) who are literally homeless, on the streets, with no real income in sight, as well as the rampant starvation of our children, I get sick to my stomach. And to top it off, a great deal of this rhetoric is pumped up by the false assertion that these politicians and their supporters are merely following Christian (read “bible”) themes, which totally distort the reality of what “Jesus” actually preached (according to some relevant history that seems to be methodically erased from the propaganda of what current Christianity means to this country).

Many of our elected officials are boneheads and seriously stupid. Deranged and empowered by corporate fueled laws and rights that come hand-in-hand with corporate money, it is time for me to check out. The power of the people, or the lack of it at this point, will be demonstrable in the 2012 elections, when it becomes obvious that millions of people will be disenfranchised as voters, where gerrymandering has resulted in lopsided and illegal power grabs, and where many more millions like me will simply fail to show up to cast our worthless vote.

Good-bye America. I will dream of your resurgence in the future. I only hope I live long enough to see the second Revolution and the fight to regain the rights that constitutionally belong to the American people.

2 comments:

Bob said...

There are Americans - if they had a one million dollar medical debt on a chronically ill child, had their job outsourced by Bain, a home in foreclosure, & a public school with fifty kids to a classroom, still wouldn't get it. It's the same mentality - goes way back - that got several hundred thousand southern white men to die for their 1%.

txpeloton said...

You remind me of a lady I know named [Jane].

She was also down about things, until she saw how
one simple sentence can cut through all the lies,
and change the world.
Now she is all fired up and ready to go.

For more information, google Talking Points for the Peloton.

Don't give up.