Used to be that when a strong American leader pushed through necessary reforms they did so even against the tide of public opinion, as Lincoln did when he abolished slavery and Eisenhower did when he desegregated our military.
However, once political corruption and hereditary rule become the norm the gap between policymakers and public opinion takes on a far more evil tinge. Leadership by example gives way to leadership by privilege.
Case in point, the huge gap between popular support for a ban on assault rifles and the desire to maintain the status quo among our new royals in Washington, D.C. This gap doesn’t exist because our elected leaders are courageous champions of the greater good, but because they no longer represent us. It is an indication we have become their hostages, rather than their constituents.
The painful truth is that our billionaire president and millionaire Senators rule America’s poor and faltering middle class like dogs. This new generation of hereditary royals doesn’t have to worry about gun violence because they send their kids to private schools and frolic behind the walls of gated communities and exclusive country clubs.
The members of our crooked Congress enjoy a 90 percent reelection rate, despite a 16 percent approval rating.
So what percentage of Americans wants to see stricter gun control legislation?
.
Go watch some more Fox. Go read The New York Times, where every job killing innovation is presented as a laudable thing and workers are invisible. These rich sonsabitches tell us that the unemployment rate is wonderful and we’re living in a time of plenty.
Never mind the boarded up stores on Main Street, the Meth and Opium zombies searching through our garbage cans, and the homeless veterans living in the woods all around us in Flyover Country. America is balling, according to the mainstream news media controlled by Wall Street. Especially in the New York, Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C., privilege bubbles.
Never mind the 40 percent of likely American workers with no full-time jobs. Many of the rest don’t make enough to cover their basic medical and dental needs. Let alone decent food and housing.
Never mind that we’re a nation of renters and homeless now. Rather than homeowners.
Never mind that corporate human resources departments are engaged in systemic age discrimination against veteran workers in the pursuit of lower health insurance premiums. Or that the for-profit colleges locking our kids into a lifetime of debt slavery are entitled to bankruptcy protection but their victims are not.
So what percentage of Americans wants to see stricter gun control legislation?
.
Why?
Because I’m a cranky, sanctimonious bastid on a good day, and this is not a good day. I just can’t stop thinking about how we’ve squandered the priceless democracy bequeathed to us by our parents and grandparents.
If you still want to know, just ask yourselves what percentage of parents want to be buried by their kids, instead of burying their kids?
Cause it’s about the same.
Ask yourselves what percentage of Americans is so goddamn dumb they still approve of Donald “Cadet Bone Spurs” Trump after watching this five-time draft evader ruin America for the past 13 months. Because it’s about the same.
Trump’s approval rating is 39 percent right now.
Now ask yourselves what percentage of Americans is so dumb that they think we can fight Republican corruption by embracing Democratic corruption. Or vice versa. Because it’s about the same, too.
Bottom line, I ain’t telling you all a goddamn thing.
Why?
Because you deserve the comforting lies of the Mainstream News Media. They’re so intoxicating. Drink ’em up, drunks. Drink ’em up, drink ’em up, drink ’em up up, drink ’em. Then stagger home like the losers you are, shouting the supremacist gibberish of identity politics as you stumble to the polls again.
Last thing you need are the painful truths of an anti-corruption publication like The Cynical Times to harsh your buzz.
You don’t want to know that our entire system is broken and Trump was elected president with the support of just 27 percent of America’s 231 million eligible voters. The draft-evading trust-fund baby finished behind both Hillary, who got just 29 percent, and “did not participate in rigged election.”
The painful truth is that 40 percent of America’s registered voters did not cast a ballot in 2016, because they wanted to vote against Wall Street greed and that is the one option which is never on the ballot.
Gee, I wonder why…
“Did Not Participate in Rigged Election” is looking good again for the 2018 mid-term contests.
These pathetic turnout numbers are an indictment of our crooked political system. They’re also an indictment of the worthless generations of Americans who have succeeded those who made American Great from 1941 to 1979.
We had some recessions during that 38 year time span, but nothing like the Housing Crisis that began in 2007, cost more than 9 million Americans their homes, and reduced collective U.S. home values by $4.2 trillion; or the credit crisis that began in 2008 and required the global banking system to be recapitalized by the masses; or the Great Recession that cost 12 million Americans their jobs and reduced consumer wealth by $8.2 trillion; or the that began in 1986 and cost $160 billion (more than $300 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars) to clean up.
This money is not monopoly money. It’s real money which belongs to the masses – as in “you and me” – and is being pilfered from the U.S. economy by Wall Street financial interests. Albeit with the assistance of their fellow Country Club Commandos in elected office.
To put it another way, the masses are being robbed blind by the Trumps, Bushes and Clintons of the world and you’re helping them do it. By fighting eachother.
The Greatest Generation had its ups and downs in their prime, but they would have never tolerated elitist garbage like the Citizens United ruling that established corporations as people in 2010 and allowed them to legally bribe our corrupt politicians. Much less the 2012 Anti-Occupy Law which made it a felony for the masses to peacefully protest anyone protected by the Secret Service – AKA our corrupt politicians.
The Greatest Generation is gone now. So, where does that leave the rest of us?
Well, right now we ain’t worth sheeit and we know it. That’s why we have to drown our sorrows in the comforting lies of The Right Wing and Left Wing Noise Machines. They tell us “it’s not your fault, it’s those other Americans over there.”
The painful truth is it is our fault.
This country isn’t going down the drain just because of the under-educated Wingnuts or the over-educated Hillbots. It’s not going down just because Evangelicals want a crooked candidate who will vilify minorities, or because fearful minorities want a crooked candidate who loathes Evangelicals. Or because Jews like me are afraid to call a fellow Jew like Treasury Secretary Steven Munchin a worthless, greedy, slumlord piece of human waste who isn’t talented enough to make an honest dollar.
Fortunately, I don’t have strong feelings about this piece of garbage, who got rich grabbing decent people’s homes during the Housing Crisis and then bought his way into The Trump White House.
The Republic is going down the tubes because we all buy into the comforting lies of identity politics, which is the “divide and conquer” chapter of the Class Warfare 101 textbook. Because we don’t understand that the masses sink or swim together.
Trump won office because Republicans have been gerrymandering districts to maximize the impact of their evaporating popular support for decades now. The Party of Lincoln, which freed the slaves, isn’t worth two poops any more. Neither are their Democratic doppelgangers.
The two crooked political machines possess all the dignity of a crack whore offering to suck anyone off for $5. They have no shame any more. Just need.
They are the internal rot which has turned our elections into contests between dueling advertising agencies and corporate paymasters, instead of principled leaders with competing visions for a democratic America where our kids don’t have to wear bullet proof vests to kindergarten.
Still want to know how many Americans support stricter gun control legislation?
The highest level in 24 years.
Nothing. It means nothing because you won’t do anything about it.
Because America is no longer our country. It’s no longer a democracy run by the people, and for the people. Anymore than Chief Osceola, the Florida State University mascot, is a Seminole Indian.
It’s all a show. Bread and circuses. And you’re lapping it up.
Higher ammunition prices.
Why?
How else is the firearms lobby going to keep paying off the Paul Ryans and Cory Bookers of the world. Meaning the political hookers who view every public crisis as an opportunity to monetize the suffering of the masses.
Dead schoolkids?
How to Be a Political Hooker 101: “We’re going to need some additional political contributions from Wall Street to damp public calls for a ban on assault rifles. Here’s the account number for my personal charity.”
More hurricanes?
How to Be a Political Hooker 101: “We’re going to need a foreign junket bankrolled by big construction firms like Fluor, Halliburton and Keiwit if we’re going to let them keep taking such a big cut of federal disaster spending.”
More complaints against the payday lenders and for-profit colleges that lock the masses into a lifetime of debt slavery?
How to Be a Political Hooker 101: “With the right political donations from hedge funds and private equity funds we can delay reform and keep the gravy train running.”
That’s how it works folks. And it couldn’t happen without your cowardice, ignorance and apathy.
The political hookers in DC are going to shake down the firearms industry for a few million more each time there’s a big shooting and it’s OK with Wall Street, because each new massacre serves as an unpaid ad for more firearms sales. They get a laugh out of the grieving parents, especially those sporting Trump 2020 T-shirts in support of the political hooker who benefits most from dead kids.
The Mitch McConnells and Nancy Pelosis of the world will bank their new political donations and then pretend to do something by banning bump stocks and silencers, which were almost impossible to buy 20 years ago. However, the kind of real change that erodes firearms industry profit growth and saves lives simply cannot happen on their watch.
Asking these crippled rich fools to do the right thing is akin to giving a crackhead or a heroin addict $50 and sending them down to the corner bodega for milk, bread and eggs. Even with the best will in the world, our crooked politicians are just not capable of exerting that kind of impulse control any more.
You folks are going to choke these painful truths down with your Cheerios like the cattle you are.
Bon appetite mother fuggers.
Congratulations on being completely unworthy of the democracy into which you were born. Thanks to you and yours there just may not be any democray left in America in 20 years.
That’s something you don’t hear everyday, huh?
Remember The Greatest Generation?
Meaning the guys and gals with the huge commitment to the greater good. They embraced organized labor and mixed capitalism with democratic socialism (Sweden not Russia) to produce Social Security, Unemployment, the most powerful citizen military in human history, public schools, Welfare, the greatest democracy in human history, a fair wage for a fair day’s work, Medicaid, Medicare, free school lunches, Worker’s Compensation, and equal rights for all.
Yeah, well your generation is like the exact opposite. And I include myself in the worthless mush that now passes for the masses. Because I have absolutely zero interest in shooting anyone, and we all know that’s what it’s going to take.
Jimmy Carter was right, American has no functioning democracy right now. Just a bunch of losers trading comforting lies.
What do I want from you?
Nothing. Just keep doing nothing. That’s what you’re good at. Me too.
Now, where’s my goddamn remote?
I need to change the channel to something pleasant and diverting
Ooh look, it’s a show about tits and ass.
No wait, here’s one with an old white guy firing young people
Holdup, here’s one where glamorous women are worshiped by rich guys.
So many choices for self medication.
