In these strange times where big money buys truth and trumps the common good, I drift back to the days of my childhood. Way back then, I had utmost respect for my country, my president, my mother and father, and the Supreme Court. Back then truth was not debated so much. It just was. These days the US Supreme Court has recently ruled that an unlimited amount of money can be given to any candidate running for office. The donor may be an individual, a corporation, a PAC, or any other imaginable entity. Some of these rich and powerful entities have the ability to buy truth, slant reality, and rewrite the historical record. And word is, with enough money anything is not only possible, but probable. Power speaks. And money is the petrol that fuels the engine of power. You can make your own reality for you and the rest of the world. Given enough money they will believe and follow. Amazing how simple this concept is. Wish I had understood it back when I was 10 years old and formulating my system of beliefs about planet earth, my country the USA, and the whole world.
In September, 2012 we are less than 2 months away from the General Election. Television political ads try to get you to listen to the avowed virtues of each candidate. Candidates and political parties flood you with Oscar-winning spots for candidates, and who is right and who is wrong is quite confusing to every voter in every polling place in the nation. So which candidate is telling the truth? Which ones lie? Many notable rich persons sponsor candidates for office and the dirtiest possible muck about their opponents in order to sway voters to vote for their candidates, their issues.
The Koch brothers of Wichita, Kansas are the heirs to a fortune built upon generations of wealth created by their fathers and grandfathers in oil, construction, and even in rebuilding Russia’s ancient cities for Joseph Stalin back in the 1920s. The modern Tea Party’s biggest sponsor is the Koch brothers. It is a creation that proposes to cut taxes in order to spend less money within the government. But the Tea Party is built upon one of the biggest ruses money can buy. On the surface it appears that the citizens are from grass roots America and are interested in getting rid of big government spending that goes to welfare programs and illegal aliens from Mexico which they label as programs of the Liberal Left. Paul Ryan, GOP running mate of Mitt Romney is a Tea Party hero who is dedicated to cutting Social Security benefits, programs that benefit seniors such as Medicare and Medicaid. Why? Because he believes these programs have to go. There is no more money, he explains. So there is no choice. But the thing that sticks in my craw is that Ryan did not complain about the money borrowed and spent to finance the Iraq War attack and occupation, and those were big bucks. $4 trillion in only 8 years!!!! Why would Paul Ryan and his brothers of the conservative brotherhood not flinch when they are bitching to high heaven on expenditures of less dollar amounts for poor people here in America? Is it just me or does anybody else smell a rat?
A couple of years ago the Koch Bros. sponsored a massive demonstration in Washington, D.C. where thousands gathered to demonstrate against government spending. Glen Beck said there were over a million Tea Partiers out to protest big government spending. The Koch’s paid for all the bus fares and hotel rooms and food in D.C. for the protestors, many of which came from Pennsylvania. They tried to portray themselves as simple American citizens from average American homes with average jobs. But they weren’t. They were Americans not well-versed in government and how it works. Some of them carried dumb signs like, “Don’t kill grandma. No Youth in Asia.” This was in reference to the rumor floating about then and agitated by Glenn Beck that Democrats wanted to euthanize old people to get them as a drag off the tax rolls so that younger people would not have to pay for their care. Lord Almighty, so many Americans eat up with the dumbass and showing it off proudly on camera. Have we no shame? France and England must have got a chuckle out of watching dumb Americans on television who were refined products of the money paid out to dumb us down to how democracy worked, the US Constitution, not to mention the plain old truth.
Of course the roving microphone reporters made hay out of every low IQ they met on the pavement in DC, and the Neocons, Tea Baggers, and conservatives as a whole deplored the drubbing they got on camera. The bubbas just couldn’t answer any intelligent questions. Conservatives everywhere denounced the roving reporters, labeling them left-wing rabble-rousers. Why they knew all too well that these dudes in the street, thanks to the Koch’s were merely there to present the image of sheer numbers, and they did not appreciate reporters asking the crowd of Tea Baggers intelligent questions to which the baggers mostly replied with an eloquent “Duh?” But wait. Then it became the Tea Baggers turn. At the Democratic Convention Peter Finch thought it funny to get some revenge by searching out dumbass Democrats who he goaded into saying that corporations should not be allowed to make profits! It did not appear that those he interviewed understood his vague lead-ins to his questions. Some answered, I thought at the time, just to get Finch to go the F away. Yet he was leading the witnesses so to speak every time to where they finally would give up and tell him what he was seeking as the only right answer: “No, corporations should not be allowed to make a profit!” Cutting and pasting, Finch got a good har-har on from the Neocon side, but that is not the point.
The point is that those same conservatives who denounced the roving “liberal” (their word, not mine) reporters at the DC Tea Bagger demonstrations who found the Tea Baggers to be a Cheddar slice short on their cheese and crackers when it came to what they knew about government, well I got to tell you they were okay with the Peter Finch videos that made dumbasses out of the Democrats. Hmmmm. Makes you wonder how one set of exposed dumbasses can be loved and respected for speaking out on their garbage understanding of the workings of government, yet another set of dumbasses (Democrats at the Democratic convention in Charlotte) can be excoriated for saying corporations should not be allowed to make a profit. Point is the respondents to the questions asked by roving reporters in DC and Peter Finch in Charlotte were both dumbasses.
But guess who found the Tea Baggers to have high intellect as “great Americans?” Yes, that’s right, Sean Hannity and all the college-educated self-proclaimed Neocons, Tea Baggers, and plain old Republicans. And how do you think the Democrats at the national convention fared for their answers to Peter Finch’s question, “Should corporations be allowed to make a profit or not?” You guessed it, on blogs everywhere, emails; friends (both left and right) supported their party line on the answers. So even those who see how dumbed down things can become still cling to the party who answers questions with dumb answers. Democrats answered that the convention delegates were goaded into answering Peter Finch’s question with a “No” when asked the ridiculous question “Should corporations be allowed to make a profit?”
This party line mind set warp is troubling. How can anyone ever hope to deal with the logic of the question being asked on its own merit without being crushed by the talking points and political correctness of either side? How can people really ever stick to the issues and give rational attention to making good decisions at the ballot box when nothing seems to matter other than the spin placed on a candidate or an issue by a political party? And how can John Q make an intelligent decision when big money on both sides is spending billions of dollars on television ads to convince voters on such obscurities as voting for someone like George W. Bush because he is someone Billy Bob might ont to have a beer with? Gawd hep us. Speaking of George W. Bush and his infamous 92 IQ which he came by naturally, an even more troubling event of the new century was when millions of American voters gave credence to Sarah Palin as a candidate for high office. Collectively we fell and hit our head. And many voters still think Palin is cool and competent as a candidate for high office. Jesus.