Showing posts with label beast. Show all posts
Showing posts with label beast. Show all posts

Monday, January 4, 2010

The two-headed beast

As much as I enjoy the conversation we have here, it feels increasingly beside the point to me. We scold and ridicule the politicians on the right, and occasionally those on the left, as if they were different kinds of beasts – as if one side wants to do the right thing and the other side doesn’t.

We attribute policies to the left or to the right, but there is really only one party and one policy – the Greenback party whose policy is get mine now.

It takes millions to get elected to the House and tens of millions to the Senate. We allow candidates to take vast sums of money from organized business and labor interests, and they have to be paid back after the elections.

We allow those same powerful and wealthy special interest groups to write legislation that is hand deliver to Congress. We allow the ruling party in each state to draw the Congressional districts in ways designed to minimize competition, like McDonalds’ franchises. We permit the entrenched pols this system produces to rise in a seniority system that gives them disproportionate legislative powers and increased ability to divert tax dollars to support their own purposes. We’ve allowed them to create extra-Constitutional rules that limit debate and distort majority rule.

There isn’t a single problem facing this country that isn’t significantly the fault of both parties. This is the only political issue worth discussing. Marx said religion is the opiate of the masses; I say partisan political debate is pure Mexican brown smack.

There are not two parties struggling for power in America. There is just one formidable, two-headed monster and he is eating our children.