How Does It Feel Going To Hell In That Handbasket?

Partisan politics never played a part in my personal life since the 1970's when I was finally old enough to register to vote. I registered as a non-partisan, and have to this day, remained non-partisan.

I only began to think of politics as partisan after Bush was illegally installed in the White House as president. I was truly amazed that the Republican machine could actually get the United States Supreme Court to stop a recount of the votes in Florida, thereby denying Al Gore his rightful place as the President of the United States. The visuals on television of those Republicans forcing their way into the recount areas and being abusive and nasty and pulling the ballots out of peoples hands waiving the SCOTUS ruling in peoples’ faces as they giddily announced George W. Bush as the President scared the fucking shit out of me, and made me take a second look at partisan politics.

I know I wasn’t paying much attention when Bill Clinton was in the White House, and I sure didn’t give a crap about his sex life, having grown up with all the titillation of the Kennedy years and Marilyn Monroe! But, to some extent, I did notice that Republicans foamed at the mouth whenever you mentioned the name Bill Clinton, and it did strike me as odd. I still have an old political cartoon from some artist I clipped out of a paper and put in a frame, that has a bunch of Republicans beating the crap out of a dead horse, whose name was White Water, which still makes me laugh to this day.

But, by the time the 2000 Presidential election came around, I began noticing a “lock step” attitude emanating from the Republicans, en masse, as though they were under some spell, and it was creepy.

Now, 9/11 was the perfect opportunity for a president to unite the country with the rest of the world, and to be fair, I tried to give George Bush the benefit of the doubt for a while. But then, all of a sudden, and to me, out of the blue, came the Iraq/Saddam Hussein/WMD meme that every Republican (not to mention quite a few Democrats) were spouting, and I was like, WTF? Where did that come from? Having a working knowledge of some middle east traditions and history, I, personally, knew there was not a shred of truth in the Iraq, etc. connection, and that’s when I started to become alarmed. Truly alarmed. I would look around me and ask everyone “do you get this?” Then, it became abundantly clear there was a deep divide getting deeper – people on the left vs. people on the right. And although in my area (Los Angeles) people on the left outnumbered people on the right, in our government it seemed people on the right were running things ... and into the ground, I might add.

The invasion of Iraq did not give the Republicans, or the right wing nutjobs, what they wanted, but it did cost this country billions of dollars and thousands of American lives. We were lied to by the President, the Vice President, the Secretary of State, the Attorney General, and most of those in Congress, as to what the real cost of the war would be, and as history usually proves, there were no WMD, Iraq had no connection to the 9/11 bombers, and the war was never paid for by oil from Iraq. The same is happening now in Afghanistan, and the outcome will more than likely be worse then than of Iraq, specifically because of its proximity to Pakistan, which I might add, does have WMD!

That is why when the elections of 2006 and 2008 yielded a Democratic majority in Congress, not to mention the election of the first black president, I felt somewhat buoyed by that feat. The surge in Democrats being elected to congress was pushed along by the netroots’ funding of what was ostensibly considered progressive candidates. And Obama’s central theme was of change – something I deeply felt was needed. So, entering 2009, I was of the belief that election campaign promises would be part of the landscape.

Obama said he wanted America to move forward into the 21st century. He wanted to make sure that all Americans had the opportunity to be insured, like members of Congress and other public officials were insured. He said he wanted to close Gitmo. He said he wanted to repeal DADT. He said he did not support DOMA. He told crowds he supported civil unions and other GLBT issues. He vowed to end the secrecy of the White House and be transparent to all Americans. He promised to stop illegal spying on the American population, and end warrant less wiretapping. He claimed to represent the regular guy and would take the regular guy’s side vs. the corporation’s side.

Man, were we snowed by his pile of crap, not to mention the rest of the spineless Democrats that were elected in 2008. Democrats now control the White House, the House of Representatives and the Senate. And what, exactly, have they done for the little guy? Hmmm. Well, let’s see, they gave trillions of dollars to Wall Street and the banking industry, which industries have refused to account to the government or the American taxpayers about how they used such funds. We were told it was imperative or the world would collapse! And now, of course, we see huge bonuses are back and voila, the industry is making money again. Except, the American public is still losing their homes, losing their jobs, and no one, and I mean no one, can really get a loan these days. And of course, the banks keep finding ways to up the interest rates and unilaterally change their credit card rules so again, the average American gets fucked up the ass.

Then came the slow foot approach to closing GITMO. That started me worrying about whether or not this country was going to go to hell in a handbasket no matter who had control. And, to add insult to injury, the Obama administration is using all the same arguments that the Bush administration has used as to why it’s not possible to close GITMO! But the kicker was when the DOJ filed its brief in fucking support of DOMA, likening gays to pedophiles and implying being gay was akin to incest. Still, that didn’t ruffle any feathers up yonder at the Beltway connection. However, when the Obama administration started spouting crap about why it was not going to be able to do anything to repeal DADT, that’s when I knew the American public had been played. Of course, watching Obama pick his cabinet members (all from the banking industry, hmmmmmm) caught my attention, but I wasn’t alarmed until they coughed up taxpayer money to bail out their own buddies. The last straw for me was when the Obama administration played the same game as the Bush administration, claiming that visitors to the Oval Office are privileged and need not be divulged! It was like deja fuck me vu.

Now we have health care, an issue that Obama clearly ran on, and an issue that it is clear he is going to not give to the Americans that elected him. And I’m not even going to blame this on Republicans! America has long ago been handed over to large corporations vis-a-vis congress, as well as legislators in all of the 50 states. When I was growing up in the 1970's, breaking up monopolies was at the heart of freeing up competition in the market place, starting with the busting up of the telephone monopolies. Here we are, 30 years later, back where we started, with a handful of corporations owning everything in the world. And the few at the top are in control of what the rest of the world gets, from its news down to the products and services available to consumers. And the extent to which these corporations control Washington is amazing – even electing progressives to Congress has not halted their control, it has only unleashed an unimaginable amount of money flowing from corporations to lobbying groups to the palms of the legislators themselves. The money being spent by the health care industry to derail any form of real change in the way Americans are covered by insurance astounds me!

The really sad part of the past 10 years is the way truth is handled in this country. It is no longer unacceptable to lie. Lying is a way of life for news media, politicians, corporations, and Republicans (although quite a few Democrats have the lying thing down as well). Bald face lies, too. I have a feeling that Americans are tired of the lies, and I do think the voting over the past few years reflected a desire from the American people to be represented, and not lied to. But lied to, they have been. No one in our government, from the local up to the national levels, gives a rats ass about the people that elect them. Once they are on the gravy train, it’s all about them, and nothing about their constituents. And the media is really scary. I remember when the news was actually, you know, news. Now it’s sound bites, and talking points and endless gossip, wrapped up in a tidy ribbon and spoon fed to the public as “the news.” Journalism used to be a profession one aspired to because truth was relevant and exposing toxic lies was what a journalist did. Now, it has been dumbed down into a “he said, she said, oh well” spewfest, in which outright lying is up against the truth, and no one in media will expose the difference.

I am losing my patience as an American. Unfortunately, since I am getting older, I will have less and less of an impact on my country and what will eventually be a very big demise. The question is whether I will be alive when it happens, and what will Americans do when it does.