Bitter Americans

Frustration is something that seems temporary to me - for example when the computer freezes up or when there’re unexpected traffic snarls keeping you from being on time for that important appointment. Bitterness feels more like an emotion that has deepened inside of your physical and mental realms. Its presence may even define the facial aging lines a bit more severely and make us more prone to a reactionary response. Bitterness sets in when the situation provoking it is out of the control of the people affected to do anything to resolve it. Bitterness is the ultimate emotional response resulting from “being victimized” by something you felt was trustworthy but found to be otherwise.

I am frustrated with Washington politics because only those with big money to give and big money to spend are catered to and listened to by the politicians. It is the epitome of self-interest magnified many times over.

President Bush acknowledged this focus on self interest when addressing his base of the “haves” and the “have mores.” Bush didn’t even mince words - he said it in a way that was thoroughly condescending to the “have nots”. Nobody that’s a “have not” can count on Washington to even acknowledge the everyday reality of the “have not” people - the common people - ordinary people - average people. Nobody in Washington cares about us because we are not “special interest”. There’s no lobby for the “have not” base. We don’t have any influence because we “have not” the money to buy it.

The words “…of the people, by the people, and for the people” are meaningless in the light of political reality. The only thing that’s “of, by, and for the people” is an excessively out of kilter tax bite. What these words have come to mean is “of, by, and for the corporations” whose CEOs are so grossly overpaid and remain here in this country while shipping ordinary jobs overseas for purposes of paying lesser wages to ordinary workers and earn more profit.

Case in point about being out of touch is when Bush looked like a deer in caught in the headlights when a couple of months ago he was asked about gas prices approaching $4.00 a gallon. Guess what, now it’s just April and premium gas in Santa Rosa, CA was $4.08 a gallon a few days ago - probably more now. Diesel gas has been over $4.00 for months and is pricing food costs to extremely high levels. I think Bush’s ignorance of even the price of gasoline shows he and his kind have no inkling, no clue, of what millions of average, ordinary, “have not” Americans are facing. What makes me the most bitter is not that they don’t have a clue - but that they don’t even &#$%ing care!

The press is also out of touch and in somebody’s “have more” political clutches. Instead of drumming about Obama’s use of ill-chosen words, why don’t they go back and frame President Bush about his ignorance on something as simple as the price of gas. Or how about McCain who is so out of touch that he doesn’t know the historical backdrop of Iraq enough to equate the relevance and distinction of the Sunni and Shi’ite factions, yet he wants to stay the course, based on what knowledge?

Do we want the ignorant and the “have more” politically connected (like Wall Street) making trillion dollar decisions funded by tax dollars of the “have nots” and soon to “have even less”? The trillion dollar bail out of Bear Stearns has “socialized” the supposedly “free market” by allowing government intervention to sustain non-banking institutions where only the “have mores” can participate. Bear Stearns was gambling on future interest rates of the subprime market and LOST! Well what about the homeowners who gambled and lost on low future interest rates to be able to maintain reasonable monthly mortgage payments? Where’s their bailout?

Regarding those candidates touting their “experience” for the qualifications to be President, I would add that it’s that same experience that got us where we are now. Recent indicators show that fully 80% of the American people do not like where we are headed as a nation. The self anointed “experienced” have driven America in the wrong direction - so why even think of voting for candidates whose experience got us here? Let’s tell ‘em to get in the back seat and let somebody else drive!

Do we want more of the same route heading this country to the cliffs of certain doom? No! We want REAL Change - not just talk about change, not wasted energy on ill-chosen words. We have real live ticking time bomb issues - the environment, the economy, the wars of terror on terror - and yet the candidates sound like 6 year olds bickering about “he said this” or “his preacher said that” and I’m gonna run to the “press” and tell on you. This is frustrating.

Let’s get some maturity and decency in all levels of politics and stop pandering to the people who still use sound bites and skin color to make political choices. A lot of us are far more capable than the perceived “idiocracy” that America is being called in European based news articles. It is my hope that politics along with the press start catching up - sooner rather than later - or we will all go bitterly over the cliff.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 at 7:50 pm and is filed under Another bitter rant. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.