Just when you think everything’s okay…
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Just when you think everything will be all right, the Republicans strike back. Ronald Reagan co-opted the Star Wars movies in the 1980s, but the truth is the Republicans are more like Darth Vadar and the Evil Empire than the Democrats ever were.
I keep wanting to have faith in the American system, but every time I think it works, something goes wrong.
The loss of the Democratic super majority in the U.S. Senate and that blatant arrogance of conservative Democrats make it clear to me that poor people will never get a break in America where Sainthood is based on being rich.
This should not be such a shock to me. The American gene pool is made up of people who came to this country to escape not social injustice so much as the restraints of society. We don’t want to be bosses around by anybody unless we’re the ones doing the bossing around.
Confused Democrats continue to labor under the misconception that America – the land of opportunity – is also a land of social justice, when it is not.
Occasionally, we rise above our base instincts, but it is often as such a bloody cost we are sorry we tried, and the reaction that results if often so terrible that some may look back at the previous state of inequality with affection. Jim Crow followed the civil war. So did a new kind of wage slavery. When working people grew too powerful, and unions too corrupt, jobs moved over seas.
For each positive action, there is a more powerful negative reaction. Ronald Reagan began his political career in California, if not like Hitler, then with many of the same objectives – playing against social movements that strive for equality.
Obama – hardly my favorite president – came to power with such hope, but squandered his potential by fighting a fight he couldn’t win, because Democrats don’t understand real Americans, and while the Republicans do.
Maybe I’m simply not real enough an American. Maybe I just can’t stomach the basic greed required to become a citizen of the Evil Empire. Maybe I just get weary fighting a good fight that we can never win. Perhaps it is the stupidity of the masses of Americans who tend to believe lies rather than accept truth, whose sole interest is in their own interests, refusing to see a larger picture in which their interests might be served in a better social setting.
Part of the problem is contained in the old joke: No, I don’t belong to an organized party, I’m a Democrat.
Life is easier being a Republican, just like it is being a born again Christian or a super patriot. You don’t have to think. You just follow the script.
Democrats think too much and are so busy thinking they don’t know when to act or how to act or how to counter the myth-making (lying) Republican conduct.
Our lives, of course, are consumed by misinformation – beliefs that have no bearing on reality, but by which we act, belief that we can do things as individuals when it really takes society to make the so called self-made man, belief that belief in the Bible will save us while at the same time we ignore the desperation of fellow humans.
We live in a confusing time when truth is not a fixed thing, but many people cling to false truths as if this is the only way to save themselves, like people clinging to life preservers even as sharks get ready to attack.
Me? I’m mostly angry because there is no justice in the world, and the good fight is an endless fight that leaves people weary, broken and disappointed as the next wave of evil sweeps away all they have worked to achieve.