Understand that I get that it's a performance. But, last night, it was a good show. I enjoyed it.
OK, I can get it as entertainment. Morbid entertainment perhaps, but entertainment still. Sort of like watching WWE then.
That, and I think that on the scale of cynicism, I'm over in the same area as you, but I think you're further down the path than I. I still, whether naively or not, believe that most people involved with government are patriots. Maybe that's just something to help me sleep at night, but it is what it is, I guess.
Yeah, I got pretty much none of that anymore.
In my opinion, there may be lots of politicians who go into politics with noble goals and lofty ideals, and I am not saying that in a snide way. But the system itself destroys them, it has to. You cannot win major elections without serious money behind you, and that money never comes without strings. Campaign finance reform means nothing - even if we had it, it would have zero effect. It's all quid pro quo, one hand washing the other, and the revolving door of elected officials to lobbyists to appointed heads of government agencies, back to elected officials again, it never ends. No one in DC would ever let this frickin' Kabuki theater end; it's the only way to keep things going.
That freakshow, Jesse Ventura, called it a 'work' and he was absolutely correct; it is no different than professional wrestling. The candidates take shots at each other; but none of it matters in the least. The Senators and Congressmen make speeches and call each other vile names and behind the scenes, they wheel and deal, they buy each other drinks and party it up with their money connections. It's fake, it's manufactured, it's all sound and fury, and signifies, as the Bard said, nothing. Fake outrage, manufactured consent, and nothing that would jeopardize their reelection chances; but even those who fall on their swords are taken care of behind the scenes; unless they are absolutely not team players, they never get cast aside, they only drop out of the public eye.
There are sides; obviously the pockets of business that want one thing or another find either the GOP or the DNC more sympathetic to their point of view or native to their interests in some cases; but not all; it's not that unusual for some large corporations to push huge chunks of money at both candidates; they don't care who wins, they just want a sympathetic ear.
Do I think politicians at that level are crooks? Yes, I do. All of them, without exception. They only vary in what kind of crooks they are. There are no mavericks, there are no heroes, there are no outsiders. Everybody plays by the same rules, even if they are on different sides of the aisle.
The Tea Party was only the most recent group inside of one of the major parties to be subverted. They only have clout now because once they struck a chord with a lot of angry voters and started getting voted in, the corporations found parts of their platforms to like and started pouring money into their coffers. Do you think the Tea party is beholden to the Koch brothers, or Rupert Murdoch? You're damned right, they are. They're the Koch's beyotches now, and they'll do as they are told. It was only after they got elected that they became targets for money, and it was only after they made it clear that they were willing to play ball with major sponsors that they were able to fund elections that got others of their kind elected and to keep office themselves. But as I said, campaign finance reform won't change any of that, money can change hands in all kinds of ways, and there is always and will always be a way to funnel money legally to candidates and officeholders. Nothing can change, nothing will ever be allowed to change.
Do I believe in some grand conspiracy? No, I do not believe anyone, not even politicians and bankers, are capable of keeping secrets that well. I don't believe that people will work together towards hidden goals that well; there's always someone who feels they've been ill-treated who is willing to trip the alarm. No, I do not believe in the big conspiracy theory. But I do believe in lots of tiny little crapass shitbag conspiracies. Tiny minds conniving together and scheming behind the scenes, shifting alliances, secret backroom deals that the public isn't generally aware of at various levels, that come and go and ebb and flow over time. Even the conspirators don't know all the conspiracies, only what happens in their squalid little worlds.
The system is bankrupt, corrupt from bottom to top, and utterly, completely, broken. No accountability, no restraint on power at any level, and no way to stop this train until the electorate has finally had enough.
So far, no elected official has ever failed to leave when voted out of office. We have never lost the power of the ballot box, and I do not believe that our electoral system is fraudulent, there is no need for it to be, since it seldom matters who is elected, especially at the federal level.
When the day comes that we actually do not have the power to remove the crooks from office, then our Republic will be over. Until that time, we have ceded all power to the scoundrels, the ne'er-do-wells, the morally bankrupt criminals we place into power and keep there. We're bought off with promises of tax relief and happier days ahead, we're given poison and told it's medicine, and we have managed to convince the hard-core partisans that the party they believe in actually wants the things they claim to want. If the DNC was against poverty, poverty would be over now. It's not, and you know why? Because once a person is no longer poor, they have no vested interest in having their wealth taken and given to the poor, which they no longer are. The DNC would never allow that, think about it. If they kept a single one of their promises, they'd alienate their own base by turning them from people with something to gain into people with something to lose. And the GOP is no different, I don't think there's a nickel's worth of difference between them in the end.
It's all words, and it's all meaningless. Until we, the electorate, have had enough, and I mean enough in a very real sense. Until we ignore their outrage and have some of our own.
I will never vote for a member of the GOP or the DNC ever again. I will never vote for an incumbent again. They are all crooks and liars, and I don't vote for crooks and liars. And if that is throwing my vote away, so mote it be. When enough people join me, things will change. Until then, enjoy eating feces, because that's what you're being served.
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