After a particularly lethal and ferocious election period in this country, all I have to say about American politics is that it is one screwed up catastrophe. I have friends in other countries and the overriding comment they have to make about what goes on in this country, politically, is that our politicians appear to be whiny, juvenile putzes who don't know their asses from a hole in the ground.
It's true. Sadly.
I do not affiliate with either political party in this country. For the most part, our elections amount to merely voting for the lesser of whatever evils are on the ballot. But I can say that I am old enough to remember the days when, even tho we had this two party system, at least the members of both parties appeared to have a grain of common sense and enough smarts to work together for the common good. I sometimes wonder just when that ended......it was such a subtle and gradual shift, I did not notice until the past ten years or so that the two parties were becoming more and more polarized and now, they are in their own respective corners refusing to work together at all for anything, unless the public outcry is so great that they feel they have no choice. And even then, it is grudgingly and with an inordinate amount of rhetoric that does nobody any good whatsoever. They truly do act like spoiled little rich kids who just want their own way. Most of all, it seems they spend most of their time thumbing their noses at the general population from those *** elevated seats*** their asses sit in maybe one or two days a week at most.
Am I the only American citizen who is sick to death of this kind of mismanagement and misbehavior?
It seems that our Republican party has been taken over gradually by right wing nut bag zealots. Every election period, these Republican candidates want to tout their 'family values' and their 'Christian ethics', yadda yadda yadda. They scream about abortions, and gay rights, and God and country. And for what? Their favorite tactic has become inflaming the rest of the fringe element nut bags and working them into a lather. While they scream about all of their pet pseudo-Christian values, they turn around and fight against every piece of legislation that would benefit the poor, elderly, or disadvantaged. Their candidates make inane statements about women and women's rights, they vote down any bill that would raise the minimum wage to anything above the poverty line, and if anyone has the audacity to consider healthcare a basic human right, they label them a 'communist' or a 'socialist' and foam at the mouth. If Jesus came to this earth today, He would be labeled a 'socialist' by this party who pretends to be the most **Christian**.
The 'conservative' talking heads who pollute the airways (and you know who you are, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, the rest of you idiots) have lately begun referring to social programs like social security and Medicare as 'senior entitlement' programs.....portraying them as government funded programs and portraying senior citizens as 'welfare recipients' who are 'sucking the government's teat'.
Well, excuse me.....but every single paycheck I have ever worked for has had money docked from it for over 40 years now to go into these funds. This is MY money, and the money of every other working American citizen. Every American citizen pays money weekly into these funds, with the understanding that when we reach our senior years and are no longer able to work as we did when we were young (and also when we become a totally UNwanted commodity in the workforce arena period because of the age discrimination that is still alive and well in this country), that these funds will be available to us to help us survive in an economy that has been decimated by our own political system and our own politicians.
But the politicians cannot stand the fact that these funds are there.....they sit up nights trying to come up with ways to plunder them for their own pet projects. And they are, for the most part, highly successful at doing this. They used billions from social security to pay for the bail-out of Wall Street. In short, they basically stole the money that we have all paid in for decades, as a cushion for us in our senior years, and they used it for what they wanted to use it for. And nobody says a word. The politicians and the talking heads appear to see nothing at all wrong with this. To my way of thinking, it is just plain theft and politically sanctioned extortion.
I do notice, however, that our politicians are quite adept at voting themselves hefty pay raises. They work a couple of days a week....or maybe I should say they SHOW UP a couple of days a week, because in fact, VERY little genuine 'work' ever gets done.....and they make six figure incomes. When they leave their offices at the ends of their terms, they take with them a lifetime pension, lifetime healthcare benefits, and hefty cost of living raises for eternity, while the rest of us watch the money that is taken from our own paychecks for social security being plundered left and right. And don't even get me started on our retirement accounts.....I have watched my own do nothing but sink and whittle away because of the unrest in the stock market as a result of the economic catastrophe our country has become. And this economic catastrophe has been manufactured by our own political system and the politicians who are a part of it.
Senior entitlement? Senior welfare? It appears to me that the only ones who are genuinely 'sucking the government teat' (AND ours) are our own politicians. Correct me if I'm wrong on this. Or try to....it actually can't be done. But go ahead....give it your best shot. I'd love to hear someone try to justify or explain this in a way that makes it appear to be 'alright'. Go ahead...I double dog dare you.
I'm waiting.......
And now, it is the (****drum roll****) 'fiscal cliff'. I'd like to know who coined that interesting little term. Everyone has been in a lather about this 'cliff' for some time now, and of course, as usual, our politicians sat on their thumbs fighting instead of addressing the problem in any legitimate way.
Well, the interesting part about all of this is the fact that our own politicians actually created this 'fiscal cliff' that they are acting so distressed about. Yes, that's right....it was actually voted on and passed by our own politicians. They knew it was coming long before we did, and long before they acted like they were wringing their hands about it. And do you know why they did this? It was a concerted effort to keep themselves on track, and to ensure that they would do their jobs when this **dire event** came upon them. In short, they were willing to sell out every American citizen to force themselves to do the jobs they were elected to office to do. Does anyone else see anything wrong with this? Is this some back-ass-ward political **incentive program**???
In the private sector, if a person making a six digit income does not do their job, they normally get fired. Not in politics, buddy. Not doing your job seems to be the name of the game in politics. Oh, yeh, and let's thumb our noses at our constituents and pass this legislation that will ** force ** us to do something, just in case we're inclined to play too many rounds of golf instead of showing up to work our one or two days a week....
The American political system, and the people who are a part of it, are massively broken. And it seems to me that it is beyond fixing. I am relatively certain that our founding fathers did not intend for it to ever become what it has become. Our politicians are bought and paid for by rich corporations with million dollar lobbyists, and it seems that the main intent behind every legislation that is passed in our Congress is to benefit those corporations and the rich people who own them. And all of them prey upon the rest of us daily. Our entire political system has been corrupted by money and greed and a lust for power, and it works against the vast majority of American citizens. And this is intentional.
We have been sold out by our own political system. We have been sold out by our own politicians. Every time a natural disaster comes our way, this rabid pseudo-Christian sector of both our politicians and their talking heads (and the people who are foolish enough to give them any credence whatsoever) start screaming that it is **God's judgment** against this country. And why, you say? Well, their story is that because some of our states have legalized gay marriage, or have abortion clinics, or taken prayer out of the schools, that we have massively displeased God and this is His way of exacting retribution. It's just another way to finger point and condemn and downgrade, which is something they seem to like doing more and more as time goes on, especially toward gays, women, and now senior citizens.
In reality...... I have no doubt that God is not happy with this country, but I somehow don't think it has anything at all to do with gays, or abortion doctors, or the school system. I somehow have to think that it is mostly because we have become a nation who is ruled by money changers of the highest order. And we all know what Jesus did to the money changers in the temple when He walked this earth. I somehow think that He is most displeased by the fact that we have a political party using His name to justify doing everything in their power to squash and degrade women and gay people, and who fights against doing anything constructive or helpful at all to anyone who was not born with a silver spoon in their mouths.
The Christian bible states that there is one 'unforgivable sin'....and that is blaspheming the holy spirit. It also states in their commandments, that they claim were written by God Himself in stone and handed to Moses on Mt. Sinai, that we are not to take the Lord's name in vain.
Well........to me, it seems like both blasphemy of the highest order, and also taking God's name in vain, when people use God's name to condemn and vilify His own children, while taking millions of dollars from greedy corporations who are essentially buying votes in Congress by paying off the politicians who do the voting. It is blasphemy to deny health coverage to people who do not have millions of dollars to pay for their medications or their treatments, or a golden parachute provided by a political seat in the hallowed halls. It is blasphemy to use God's name to do so much harm to average citizens. And that is exactly what our politicians, and our political system, do. If these are 'family values' or 'Christian principles', then I want no part of it, because I don't know what kind of god they are serving but it cannot possibly be the God that I know myself.
Just a thought......for all of you fine religious folk who so love to use the bible, and who turn around and vote for the money changers who spout the most 'Christian' remarks whenever election time rolls around, I want you to chew on this for a bit.
In the old testament, there is a passage. It is in the book of Ezekiel, and it says this:
"Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fullness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, and neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy" (Ezekiel 16:49)
No, Sodom was not destroyed because of homosexuality, as the religious right so loves to spew forth so they can justify their hatred of gay people. They were destroyed, and deemed abominable by God, because they were full of pride, had plenty of abundance, they were lazy, and they did not do one flippin' thing to help the poorest among them.
Tell me....what nation does THAT sound like, hmmmmmm?
I think this hateful and hate-mongering rhetoric-filled election period should be a wake up call to us all. I think this nonsense that goes on in Congress every single day beneath our noses should be a wake up call. Something has got to change in this country, and what has to change is the heart of humanity, especially on the part of those we elect to public office. We can no longer be satisfied to let them do whatever they want to do, both to us and with our funds and our moneys. We can no longer allow the rich corporations and the highly paid lobbyists to buy our politicians so they have free reign to victimize us and our wallets. We need constructive change in this country. We need to begin holding our politicians accountable and responsible to the people of this country, and not their own pet special interests. We need to work on a grassroots level to get the money factor out of our politics so we can get people into office who have a genuine desire to help this country and its people, instead of burying us all as they are trying so hard to do.
In short, we need to become informed and knowledgeable, and stop taking those 3 second sound bite political ads as 'fact', since all of them are so filled with lies and spin on both sides of the fence. We are a nation of lazy slobs who don't take the time to find out the real truth of anything we are told by the powers that be, to our own detriment. We HAVE to stop this. We need to keep track of all this legislation and all of these pork projects that these corporations use their money to threaten our politicians with to sway them to pass. If you check out where our politicians get their campaign funds, it is enlightening.......our political system is being bought and run by the oil companies, the big pharma companies, the insurance industry, the agriculture companies (aka Monsanto), a legion of rich corporations who use their billion dollar profits each quarter to pay lobbyists and make campaign donations in hopes of getting their own way with all of the legislation that is bandied about in Congress. And you know what? They've gotten it off. And we have let them do this with our own apathy and gullibility.
We need to fight to turn our political system around. We need to fight to remove the power and influence that money has over our politics and our politicians. We have people in our own Congress who sit up nights trying to figure out ways to remove our power from us, because their biggest fear is that we will somehow regain the power that we were always supposed to have.
Just an aside.....a couple of years ago, two Republican senators tried to introduce legislation that would make it illegal for us to grow, share, or sell OUR OWN FOOD.
REALLY???? I mean.....people die in this country EVERY DAY because we do not have universal healthcare, and people lose their homes every year because they have to go thru bankruptcy due to being burdened with huge hospital and medical expenses because they are unfortunate enough to become sick in a nation that refuses to care for its sick people unless they have millions of dollars to shell out for treatments, and THESE are the things that some of our politicians devote their time to???
What does this tell you? And what are you going to do about it?
It's time to lay this political divide aside. It's time to stop fighting over petty party politics and join together to hold ALL of our politicians accountable, and to ensure that OUR interests are being served instead of the interests of the corporations and entities who consider us nothing more than commodities and walking dollar bills. Most of all, it's time to stop hating......stop hating each other because we are Democrat or Republican of Libertarian or gay or any other ridiculous label. We need to realize that we are humanity, and we are all in this together. I know it's quite popular right now to demonize the president that we currently have, which is ridiculous. And nobody will ever convince me that it is anything other than thinly veiled prejudice, no matter how rabidly the talking heads deny this. It's time to put all this foolishness aside and start working to become a nation of informed and responsible citizens.
And it's time that we demand our politicians do the same. The election is over. Pull up your big person panties and deal with it, and start doing your damned jobs and start working for the people who elected you.
