Friday, September 18, 2009

Neocon... Liberal.... What's the difference?

Democans... Republicrats... And lo, there is no difference, and we are thus left with a bickering, sneering, jeering one-party system and a mass of ignorant, apathetic and dare I say, brainwashed people who actually think there's a legitimate difference between the two.

And that's why sometimes it's good to review the tape. We all need to remind ourselves what the candidates were all actually saying on policy issues without all the emotional investment in particular people and especially without the insane attachment to completely indistinguishable parties.

I tried my best at the time to keep the actual policies at the forefront of people's minds within my circle of influence back in 2007 & 2008, but what can you do? Outside of Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel (occasionally), there's not a principled argument to be found here:




OI. VEY.

It's continually baffling, sickening and exceptionally frustrating to watch ordinary people pick meaningless "sides" and fight each other tooth and nail over candidates and politicians who's differences are superficial at best, and even then... More often than not the superficial differences don't really exist. Listen to the people in that video. Hillary sounds like Obama who sounds like Bush who sounds like McCain who sounds like Romney and on and on. They all parse words, they all "waffle", they all equivocate and they all desperately avoid making any statements that could be construed as something specific. Hell, Obama's health care speech the other day was the best example of all time - constantly referring to "my plan" while leaving the details up to Pelosi & members of the Senate...

Isn't that great? Obama can appear to take full responsibility while having complete deniability for all the results. This is obviously especially awesome when you're making a series of economically (logically... mathematically... realistically... historically...?) impossible promises. When things don't come out right, when the outcomes aren't what he said they would be in his speech, it's not the President's fault. Pelosi, of course, will blame the Republican opposition & "tea-baggers", who will in turn point out that they weren't in control of Congress, which will ignite yet another cycle of shifting the proverbial buck. The great bulk of the American people can't possibly keep track of it all and will fall into the familiar patterns of supporting Team Red or Team Blue, mindless of the history or facts.

But much worse than sounding the same, adopting the same weaseling cop-outs for gross negligence & irresponsibility - which, if you listen closely, they inevitably do - they all do the same things! Wire tapping, endless wars, cronyism, picking winners, funneling money towards special interests like unions, investment banks, military suppliers... The only thing that matters is more power. More control. More ability to transfer the wealth of ordinary folks straight into the pockets of themselves & their friends.

It's a race to the bottom for these guys and there's really nothing we can do.

And that I'm becoming more and more serious about each day. Pessimism is starting to set in. Especially after Karl Denninger's recent plea to deal with the mounting debts of this nation.

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