The silly season is upon us -- the airwaves are thick with political ads for folks who, all by their lonesome, are going to fix what ails us, yessiree, Bob, sure as shootin'!
I'm always amazed that this sells. Some smallville maroon who says, I'll make Washington come to heel, bygawd! I will stop taxes, create new jobs, cure your warts! Vote for me!
As if such a thing were any more possible than leaping into the air and flying down to Rio by flapping your arms, to light on the outstretched arm of the big statue of Jesus.
Four hundred and thirty-odd congressfolk; a hundred senators. SCOTUS, POTUS, a bureaucracy more deeply entrenched than the lines in WWI France, and Leroy over there, from Bug-Guts-on-the-Windshield, Idaho, is going to roll up his sleeves and whip all their asses and change it? Leroy is gonna make Washington sit up and pay attention?
Spare me, Sweet Lord.
I dropped some of that funny chem when I was a hippie. Least, I think I did ... I know all about those looney-tunes visions, thank you. I will pass
I have no desire to run for any office. But if I did? Here's my platform:
Hey. Listen, I don't want this job, I really don't. Politics is like sausage-making, you don't want to know, and I don't, either. It's a thankless task at best. At least Sisyphus gets his rock part way up the hill before it rolls back down.
If I got this job that I don't want, I can't promise I'd be able to do squat to make the country any better when I leave than when I get there. One man can't do much, and anybody who claims otherwise? Hang onto your wallet. Because he is l-y-i-n-g. Maybe to himself. Certainly to you.
Shoot, look at Obama -- he was elected, had a majority party, a mandate, and all the good will he needed, and he couldn't get it done. Of course, he never had a prayer -- after George drove the bus off a cliff, Barack got blamed because he couldn't make it fly. Best pilot who ever lived couldn't pull that one off.
Barack is as smart as anybody we've had in the office since Thomas Jefferson. What chance you figure somebody not-as-smart has? You saw what George did with it. We'll be fifty years climbing out of that hole.
For the record, I think war is the height of human stupidity, and should be avoided unless there is no other way.
Let me tell you about myself. I'm an old hippie. Sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll, all that stuff. I was an okay kid, got into my share of trouble, and it was by God's grace I never was arrested or killed doing some of the stupid stuff I did. I inhaled -- high, wide, and repeatedly. I also drank and drove, had unprotected sex, and watched James Beret (not his real name) steal the hub caps off a po-lice car at Circle Bowl in 1965. If you are looking for an angel, don't look in my direction.
I'm not a lawyer. I don't know jack about how to cook up a good back room political deal. Vote for me, all you'll get is my best effort to try and maybe make some tiny change that might benefit folks.
I don't like the Republican solutions, such that they are. And I don't much like a lot of the Democratic solutions, either, when you get down to it. If I'm gonna lean too far one way? Better to the left than the right, I figure. Just so you know.
What I'd shoot for? Equality for all. Nobody going hungry. Health care if you get sick or injured. A chance to go to school, get a job, enjoy your life. All that liberal stuff the tea party idiots are against. Do the crime, then do the time, I'm for that. Death penalty, too, if there is no doubt whatsoever the guy is guilty. No, it's not about preventing future murders, it's about justice and revenge, so sue me. I can be pro Second Amendment and anti unregulated multinational corporations, thank you very much. If you want total consistency, buy white bread and homogenized milk.
What do I think my odds are of getting any of those lofty aims? Snowball's-chance-in-a-supernova. But I'll try, that's all I can promise. What you see is what you get -- and I won't try to bullshit you into thinking I'm something I'm not, or that I can deliver something nobody can.
Thank you. Somebody hit the light switch on the way out, hey?
Eeehh...I'd vote for you. You couldn't make it any worse, that's for sure. But you have to promise me an education, as well as get me a job.
ReplyDeleteOh wait...You did that.
Godammit...
I become sadly depressed whenever the "Height" of the political campaigns approaches. If there is a better sign of mass insanity, I have yet to experience it.
ReplyDeleteWe have forgotten that the folks in political office (at any level) are "public servants" who "solemnly vow" to serve the needs of the nation. At least, it seems like those "servants" forget. Maybe they have started putting their hand on an "Etch-o-Sketch" instead of on any symbol of authority.? When did party affiliation supplant the promise to serve the nation?
Oh, well. I can easily get on a rant about this...and there are just too many of those, already flying around!
I'll vote for you.
ReplyDeleteUnder what circumstances, if forced, should a country go to war?
ReplyDeleteIf somebody attacks Pear Harbor and sinks our ships, that's a good enough reason to go to war.
ReplyDeleteIf somebody crashes jets into a buildings and kills a lot of our citizens, that's enough to -- if we know who did it -- go and collect or kill him. (Since, in that that case, the terrorists who flew those planes were nearly all Saudis, the prevailing logic at the time should have put us at war with Saudi Arabia, but since Afghanistan was where where the guy running things was, I supported a surgical strike there. Not a war that is twice as long as WWII and still rolling.)
If attacked, you are allowed to defend yourself. If you attack first without just cause? Based on lies?
No. so Iraq II was wrong. Period.
Obama really showed me something: politics is a train. It's going to stay on the same rails no matter who the conductor is.
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