I can see a bare glimpse of the strange mindset that willingly straps itself into a passenger plane and flies into a building or stands patiently in line to accept a paper cup of sweet juice laced with arsenic. Embracing the unthinkable because they’ve decided to believe in the utter nonsense espoused by their self-serving, maniacal leaders.
Small shards of that particular insanity are evident in the fierce drum beats issued by my fellow citizens. Convinced that their political side of the aisle is the great oracular fount of all wisdom, the other side an obvious bastion of great evil which is seriously intent on destroying the country, we have factions of intensely involved men, all of devout good will, who stubbornly refuse to recognize that both parties are simply two sides of the same tarnished coin. Their fanaticism for a delusional cause precludes even a glimpse of rationalism.
We tolerate a governing class that holds a separate, closeted agenda, one that legislates aggressively for their generous corporate clientele and future K Street employers. We support a body of men who harbor very little concern for the lowly water boys who sing their praises, pass along their pandering lies or fire up voters with squared bites of partisan rhetoric. Americans count for nothing to the men in Washington, still we bow.
The politically faithful are fodder for a cause that was never intended to be of any benefit to their personal well-being or prosperity. Leaders who attract such die-hard, unquestioning believers hide satisfied smiles of derision as they leave a local meet and greet. The pawns placated, they can get back to the real business at hand, which is looking after the financial interests of their influential donors.
People who fail to look outside of their warm comfort zones for fragments of the truth, who refuse to search for the larger picture that rises above the dark clouds spewed by men with a sharp axes to grind and silk pockets to line, frustrate me to no end. Depending solely on news from biased sources is nothing more than a lazy circle jerk of simplistic reverb. It’s cultish myopia at its most basic level, a rejection of intellectual curiosity, basing what you read according to your ideological creed.
Reliance on ideological echo chambers doesn’t confirm any sort of stringent truth, it just embeds a fundamental ignorance, one that our political operators rely on to cloak their rapacious hides. They point sharp fingers at the other side and we reflexively swallow their foul bilge like good little acolytes, primed on the media propaganda gristmill that emanates from ruling class on the hill.
We need to remove our emotional blinders and come to an honest understanding that any principled man of integrity, an un-bought pol, is a rare commodity in the Capitol. Unfortunately, that precious voice of purity can exist on the other side of the aisle sometimes. Dismissing their unwelcome and obnoxious statements on policy, bills or procedure because their fundamental point of view galls you to the stones, does not further your depth of understanding.
Listen carefully to specific complaints and check your side’s actions against those accusations, it can be an uncomfortably enlightening experience on occasion, if you’re open to rejecting the structural indoctrination by a political class that would willingly pour you another glass of financially poisonous kool-aid or gladly wrap your child in a deadly vest of Kevlar to further their client’s interests.
Our government has been intent on killing the American middle class, literally and financially, for the past ten years. Both sides own the blame, but are we ready to open our eyes and embrace a modicum of responsibility for the destruction we’ve so actively supported in our reverent state of blindness?
Lotsa cynicism here, and lotsa truth too.
I’m glad I’m old. That said, I fear for for my kids and their kids… the latter especially.
Oooh, Buck, I know what you mean. I’ve been thinking about a post describing how I’m kind of glad I won’t be around circa 2050. In just one way, I’d be very sad about the death of liberal democratic Europe, which seems inevitable by then.
That said, human beings are amazingly adaptive, and innovative. Circumstances could reach a point which activates that instinct, and things could be turned around in surprising ways.
Politicians won’t be the leaders of such change.
And I’m not sure Europe is even capable of change. They live with the memory of many horrible wars, and their spirit is tired. They want to retire comfortably, not struggle for freedom. They’ll keep their heads down, and accept each incremental change, as long as the pension is dangled before them. And by the time they realize that no one is left to pay the taxes to support their dotage, it will be too late.
I would be glad to be old, too, Buck, but for the fact that my children are young, and they will be remembering how it all fell apart. Their children will never know what was.
Republicrats/ Demopublicans…………..two wings of the same bird of prey and We the People are the prey.
Molon Labe!!!
III We Are Everwhere!!!
Eyes Wide Shut.
How appropriately chosen.
This post is 100% WIN
Another old timer’s vision: Kill the bastards!
We have forgotten or never learned what the Founders understood, that a limited government could be controlled, even if badly and between factions in their turn; a large government would control us. Vanderleun linked to this prescient paragraph from David Warren:
Nor have we anywhere in view the sort of politicians who could ride the tiger; who have any notion how to radically downsize a government peacefully. Yet we are getting beyond the sort of thing we can vote on.
Perhaps Christie is a start, or it will take things to get out of control before they get better.
A compliment, Ms. Daphne.
Just who’s this Ms. Daphne, Lance?!
Uh, a person I know, My Queen.
What person?
Person.
Don’t try that echolalic stuff with me, Lance. You don’t have autism.
Have autism.
I give up. You’re impossible.
Impossible.
Thank you, Lance.
James, I find it troubling that most people in daily life aren’t paying very much attention to our government’s doings, they don’t discuss it or give a shrug and profess uninterested ignorance on any given topic.
Take the wars we’re fighting, I’ve haven’t heard anybody bring it up, even casually, in a face to face discussion in nearly two years. Not the deaths, cost or whether they support it or not. It’s amazing.
People who hang out on the internet seemed to be much more aware of politics than your average John Doe, but they’re aren’t enough of us to make any real difference.
If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it still make a sound?
Things may be desperate, but I don’t think it is yet hopeless.
It has been pointed out (http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/)
that only 3% of the colonists were actually actively fighting in the first American Revolution. There may well be more than that percentage reading blogs like yours and Wretchard’s and Vanderleun’s who are not only well informed but willing to act. Judy and I went to a gun show in Del Mar last year and it was packed. The quantities of ammunition being sold was astounding. This is one of Southern California’s wealthy areas and it looks like they like their guns.
Just for grins, here’s another lady blogger with a Daphne-like spine-http://www.itakeliberty.com/
“People who hang out on the internet seemed to be much more aware of politics than your average John Doe, but they’re aren’t enough of us to make any real difference.”
Only a very few number of people determine the twist and turns of civilization, for better and for worse. What those who have learned the uncomfortable lessons may contribute is the most essential element of useful change–a clear landscape, which is the source for new vision formed in understanding human experience.
When our popular opinions finally run men into ruin, those people who have watched and suffered events patiently are discovered to be not pariahs but prophets. But before that–
Nothing is more hateful to man than to give up even a particle of his unconsciousness–Jung
I think you are (alas) right about our complicity. I recently said in an e-mail that we talk about “the masks slipping,” but I wonder whether we can honestly say there were ever masks at all, or just a fairy tale we taught ourselves as an alternative to facing facts that were there all along.
I wonder whether we can honestly say there were ever masks at all, or just a fairy tale we taught ourselves as an alternative to facing facts that were there all along.
Yes, Ken, I wonder the same.
I think we, collectively speaking, see it more as a Gestalt image, choosing the tale/larger picture which best fits the perception that matches our own inner narrative.