Not A Short One On Politics

"There is only one difference between dictatorship and democracy. In democracy, you vote and then take orders; in dictatorship you don't waste time voting." - Charles Bukowski

Reannan asked me write something about politics. It is a subject in which I have much interest. There is an irony here - I'm not even registered to vote. For a long time I wasn't because of the enforced apolitical stance of my upbringing. More recently its been out of a inability to find someone to trust. But I like to know what's going on. I stay informed. If I'm going to get fucked, I'd like to at least know who's holding the dick.

The first thing you need to know about American Politics is that the same people have ALWAYS been in charge. It's a well reported fact that every last U.S. President has been a direct descendant of the Royal families who have ruled Europe for centuries. Not only that, but pretty much all of our presidents have been related to each other too. What does this tell us?

Some people infer a giant Illuminati style conspiracy from these facts. I believe the truth is simpler but at the same time even more foreboding; power has stayed in the hands of a few families for pretty much all of our recorded history. To look at it another way, if you want to be president it really matters more who your family is and how much money you have than whether or not you are really the best man for the job. It means that Orwell was right; power never really changes hands. Despite his best efforts to remind of how different he is from "those guys on the dollar bills", even Obama is from the same blue blood stock.

Now to be fair, it certainly isn't your fault if you are a direct descendant of Charlemagne or the 15th cousin of The Queen of England. After all, all you did was get born. But the rest of us, the ones who take the orders, should ask ourselves "who is REALLY in charge if all of our choices keep the same people in power for centuries?"


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Change. As long as I can remember politicians have promised the voters that they could deliver change. I can never remember the word being this worn out and cheap though. Its been drained of all its meaning. As often happens with things like this, its really come to mean the opposite of its dictionary meaning. 'No change' instead of 'change'.

Let's look at one of the central issues of our time to demonstrate. Israel. The country that shouldn't exist. The West's reminder to the Arab world that we can do whatever we like. So if we want to carve a country out of land where some other people were already living, we can do that. Then we can spend 60 years propping them up and arming them, allowing them to have the fucking bomb, and otherwise really just giving the finger to existing Arab governments, and then act surprised when they don't like us.

We fill their countries with troops and bases. We invade or bomb whenever we feel like it. We exploit their oil and resources to feed our "oil addiction". We treat anyone who doesn't like having Israel's insane existence rammed down their throat like an anti-semite and a hostile threat. Then we act shocked when people are so desperate for change in their world that they are willing to blow themselves up to get it.

How about you Obama supporters? How many of you want to ride the bus to work tomorrow with a bomb strapped to your chest? Now that's change. It might not really solve the problem, but its probably cheaper than a TV ad.

If you Obama acolytes want my support, you could start by changing our involvement sovereign nations affairs across the world. You could stop sucking Israel's circumcised cock long enough to take an honest look at what's really going on in the middle east. You could stop trying to look 'tough on terror' by talking about going after bin Laden. Its embarrassingly transparent.

You could also offer me some kind of explanation for why your supposedly progressive party has thrown the gay and lesbian community under the bus on gay marriage. I'm sure that it has nothing to do with the fact that your demographic research tells you that you can count on these votes regardless of how you treat these people. Why bother catering to a group of people who will probably vote for you any way? Why bother caring about social justice, equality, or simple human decency? There is certainly no reason to pause for even a moment and consider the glaring hypocracy of a man who has personally benefited so very much from our nation's growing racial tolerance, standing in the way of equal rights for every American.

If you McCainites would like me on board, you could start by answering one very important question for me. If you are for small, unobtrusive government, why do you care if gay people get married? Why is this such a big deal to you? If you believe that marriage is a religious sacrament, then what gives government the right to be involved in it at all? If its a civil institution, then how can government not offer equal access to it? Perhaps most importantly, what possible interest does a small, non-intrusive government have in who I fuck? To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson's famous statement (on religion), "It makes no difference to me if my neighbor fucks one woman or 40 men. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."

Any party that calls itself 'conservative' needs to get straight on what that really means. It means "Stop spending so much goddamn money". Stop mortgaging our country to the Chinese to fund this stupid war. How is it even possible that we have spent nearly a trillion dollars on this war and we don't have the money to take care of these poor fuckers when they get home? Where did that money go? Who has it right now? What did they spend it on? Hookers? Lots of pizza? Can I get an itemized receipt for my war please? I'd like to know exactly how many one-armed Iraqi children I got for my trouble.

Both parties can tell me what they are going to do to control the sky rocketing price of heath care. Everyone seems to agree that we should do more to give more Americans access to heath care, (I personally believe that we should ensure it and enshrine it in law) but we are allowing the Doctors and the Drug Companies to continue pushing things higher and higher. They are basically working against our goal of affordable health care by inflating the market value. Why price people out of the system? Who wins when people cannot afford heath care?

Someone is winning. Someone MUST be winning because America still spends more per person for health care than any other advanced country. We spend about $5000 a year per person and look at what we have to show for it. Infant mortality that is comparable to a third-world country, and life expectancy that puts us around 45th in the world (somewhere between Bosnia and Kuwait in case you are wondering). What we don't get is universal health care for every single fucking person from sea to shining sea.

Canada has that. You know how much they pay for it? About two grand. That's right. They pay way less, and they get way more. Oh, and they are number 14 on that same list. Chew on that for a while if you want to get so angry that you might just need a drink. These people live this close to us on the map ---> || <---, they sit around all day drinking beer and eating sausage and maple syrup, and they live almost three years longer than we do. What the motherfuck?


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So yeah, politics is thoroughly fucked. Nader wants a "Jeffersonian Revolution". I'm afraid that its going to take a Thomas Paine to straighten things out though.

Not all the treasures of the world, so far as I believe, could have induced me to support an offensive war, for I think it murder; but if a thief breaks into my house, burns and destroys my property, and kills or threatens to kill me, or those that are in it, and to "bind me in all cases whatsoever" to his absolute will, am I to suffer it? What signifies it to me, whether he who does it is a king or a common man; my countryman or not my countryman; whether it be done by an individual villain, or an army of them? If we reason to the root of things we shall find no difference; neither can any just cause be assigned why we should punish in the one case and pardon in the other. Let them call me rebel and welcome, I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul by swearing allegiance to one whose character is that of a sottish, stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish man. - Thomas Paine