If you stop and critically think about this for a minute,
it's not hard to see Rush Limbaugh and other angry sounding mouthpieces from
the right dominated the airwaves. They
had plenty of fodder with President Clinton in terms of his policies as well as
his personal mistakes. During this time,
however, the republicans were extremely quiet - as if the right wing talk show
fronts had given them the smokescreen thick enough to work behind. Very few neo-conservative documents seem to
been exposed until well after 9/11/01, but by then I wonder if their agendas
hadn't already come to pass. By seeing
these documents so long after their creation, we were essentially "Monday
morning armchair quarterbacking" after the game had been played.
Of course many republicans will say, "yeah, what's wrong
with that? We captured the
trifecta!" The problem lies with a few
old sayings: "absolute power corrupts absolutely" and "power is the ultimate
aphrodisiac". It's not a game, it's not
a spreadsheet...there are real people involved who are going to be hurt in the
process. It's not about numbers; it's
about responsibility and service to those who elect you. It's become about a cushy retirement fund and
lifetime medical benefits. Isn't this
welfare, but under a different name?
There comes a time when you have to look at what you know
and compare it with what you thought you knew, and then size it up against what
you expected. Something is very wrong in
this country. Republicans have gone off
skipping with Jim Jones and drinking Kool-Aid, and the Democrats can't find
their butts with both hands, a road map, a mirror and a cheering and cheating
section. It's like watching "Dumb and
Dumber" (with subliminal messages of "vote republican in November or the
terrorists will get you!"), only when you go to the concession stand, the
popcorn and coke cost you the national budget.
If a republican is just a democrat who has been mugged, what
is a republican who has been corporately mugged by the ultra neo-conservative
think tanks, war profiteers and special interest political action
committees? A sucker if he votes them
back in.
This country needs to wake up and start endorsing viable
third party candidates and stop fearing the split vote in a simple majority
system that should be reflected in the way the Electoral College votes in each
state.
And while we're at it, let's go back to simple paper ballots
with markers and no chads. The election
fraud has been rampant and downright embarrassing; it's hard to say we're
founded on democratic principles when elections
are stolen by electronic voting machines and the re-emergence
of Jim Crow voting laws. I wondered
why President Bush said recently he needed to "brush up" on the renewal of the
voting rights act and then it unfortunately all made sense: what do you bet
it's going to get a "Karl Rove extreme makeover" to keep traditional black
democrats away from the polls?
