( – promoted by buhdydharma )
When politics gets to a point where there is no reality and we the people are only offered a story written by and for the villain with one face, politics becomes poetic faith. Our choice is between two sides of the same face. We emotionally invest in the choice believing that the pols we’re offered are going to win the day for we the people. We expect the reality of oppressive governance to end, everything will be groovy, and hopey changiness
will once again rule the land of the free and the home of the brave. Yes we can!
As a story goes, the one we currently find ourselves embroiled in, is a real potboiler. After years of a truly villainous dark regime replete with tales of torture, endless war, a scorched earth, destruction of the laws that kept tyranny at bay, and humanity reduced to global slavery for useless profit, the other side of the face offered us hope and change. We voted for hope and placed our power as a people in the hands of a man who said what we wanted to hear, he sang our song. They proclaimed it a bloodless transition of power. They told us we were the change we had been waiting for. We are.
A new face is put on the same tyranny and the same plot just continues. We await the next installment hoping that this time the hero will prevail and the ending will be different. This version is prettier and the chosen hero wins and slays the fiery dragons that threaten to fall on us. We are convinced that the political narrative is reality based and to use our power for anything that alters the outcome is not pragmatic because the fictitious storyline that got us here is the reality we have accepted, it’s inevitable. Our own history and sacred documents are twisted to an end that validates our powerlessness. We are not.
Here we are in the fierce urgency of now arguing about the heroes and villains, the fine print in our contract with our hero, the degrees of our slavery and the threat of the scary monsters waiting in the wings if we don’t except the deal the fiction offers. The storyline and reality are ceded to the writers of this political fiction. We’re locked into the plot they have written for us. ‘Willing suspension of disbelief’ requires a quid pro quo, and there is none. We need a rewrite and new writers, perhaps a collaboration with some good editors. We can keep the song, the lyrics were catchy.
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ponies for politic based on based on an internal consistency of reality.
Love this, in particular — and, how true!
overplayed their hand. We know for certainty now what the system has evolved to, as you so ably described. Their will always be those who live by faith alone, but the numbers appear to be dwindling as the plot becomes more obvious.
complaisance. The task is daunting. William Blake, from whom I borrowed the above phrase, recognized this same problem in England during the American Revolution and beyond. He talked about the waste of war (the loss of life and cost in trying to retain American Colonies), and how the English elites in Parliament (and of course the King)needed to look inward. He lamented the poverty and poor health of the laboring poor. He longed for a spiritual awakening.
But believe it or not, to the best of my knowledge based upon chronicled events, there were many large demonstrations opposing the oppresive colonial policies of the government. I am confident saying that a majority of the English were actually against the war! And most of all, they didn’t want to see their sons needlessly die.
How did the English finally do it and pass national health care one hundred fifty years later?? Well, it took a complete collapse of their colonial empire and near annhilation by the Germans. But it took the Bombing of London and the Miracle of Dunkirk to finally make the old Conservative Churchill realize that England really belonged to the people.
Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address was certainly a call for a rebirth of America. The Civil War was our armageddon. We passed the Civil Rights Amendments, and it looked good on paper, but our big chance went down the drain, hijacked by the same type of people in power today. The 14th Amendment, free to be construed by a free people into a great reminder of our sacrifice, instead was hijacked and twisted into a pit of poison, from which we have NEVER recovered and soon to sink even deeper as money and speech continue to fornicate.
It is despairing to observe the loss of our precious attempt at democracy. In the time of King George, parliarment was controlled by “the king in parliament”, those powerful representatives loyal to the crown. Today it is the “corporation & military industrial complex in congress”. Personally, I see no way out. The King (so to speak) is entrenched. And his spokes people control all the major media.
If the people here can’t even find ways to demonstrate and march, there really is no hope. Our two greatest leaders were gunned down; Lincoln and MLK. And the optimism of the New Frontier was blown away too. Now that I look back on the whole thing, I think that JFK’s assassination marked the end of our Democracy and also killed the New Deal momentum. It wasn’t Reagan. He just tightened the noose.
And Obama? It’s pretty obvious now.
The choices with which we are presented are crummy. I feel like the only reason I hang with (D) is that the GOP will really fuck things up in major ways. The Dems will, every now and then, find an actual acorn, but mostly fuck things up in minor ways.
Clinton’s regime changed my mind about that. It seemed to me (as discussed quite clearly in “What’s the matter with Kansas?”) that with Clinton, the democratic party went for the money and the corporate connections.
The fact of the matter is “money talks; all else walks.” If you want to get a seat at the table, you gotta slip the maitre d’ some green.
And by “these people” I mean Wall Street and corporate America, and their minions in “both” “parties.” At least the old Roman emperors were canny enough to throw bread and circuses at the mob. Twenty-first century Americans don’t even get that. Oh, the Republicans throw a few circuses at us from time to time–“War on Terra!” “Saddam’s Nukes!” “Axis of Evil!”, plus all the sex scandals–but dispense with the bread. From the Obamacrats, we get neither bread nor circuses, nor progressive legislation, nor reform, nor hope, nor change, nor anything else. Nothing. Zip. Nada. And for this–nothing–they expect us to love them, love them, LOVE THEM!!! and to follow them anywhere.
The Obamacrats delude themselves because they think they’re giving us something. They think they’re giving us not-Bush. “Not-Bush! Not-Bush! Not-Bush!” the Obamatrons over at the Big Orange keep screaming, and that’s supposed to answer all objections. That’s what we, the people, are supposed to be whimperingly grateful and eternally loyal for. Maybe they actually don’t get that, aside from being nothing, “not-Bush” is also not true.
…must,from time to time,be watered with the urine of patriots.”
I think Thomas Jefferson said that.
superb sha’zade!
you really should write more…..
thank you for this
♥~