Eschew Obfuscation –
By Michael Douglass –

I just ate macaroni and cheese out of a pull top can with a big ass spoon.

Forty years ago Sarah Palin would never have been chosen as a presidential running mate. Not because she’s a woman but because she’s dumb as a goddamn stick. Forty years ago, you would not have seen the lineup we’ve seen for the last two presidential elections from the GOP. And yet again, the whack jobs cometh.

For what it’s worth, Democrats aren’t much better. Their excellence is viscous populism while ignoring the eight hundred pound gorilla as it shits on the main course. No different than Republicans. One party distracts with fear while the other accomplishes it with hope. Black and white hats. It’s exactly that stupid.

Politics in America is nothing more than reality television. Lowest brow common denominator entertainment. It’s a pageant where we all vote for the equivalent of Miss Congeniality as long as she’s able to sucker punch and back stab that commie liberal or fascist conservative and keep up appearances. It’s a joke that not all of us are in on.

The electorate plays the straight man, each side blaming the other side for everything while the burlesque of consequence dances on all our heads.

Consider as an example that we are all living on the same planet experiencing dramatic and destructive climate change. The current pissing contest is over whether it’s caused by human industry or the cyclical nature of mother earth. Nobody bothers to admit that it doesn’t fucking matter. Our only chance is to exert control over the impact of our footprint and the shuffling of our feet.

Or water will become as important a commodity as oil in a mere few decades. Once that happens, plutocrats and oligarchs will be at play in the fields of the lord.

All the while, wealth concentration continues apace globally. In America we’ve gone from a middle class that was robust and could afford a house, cars, health insurance and college educations on a single income, to one that can’t afford any of these things on two incomes.

The ideal of an educated populace is openly mocked.

Prisons are for profit.

Our infrastructure crumbles. Bridges, roads and tunnels decay. Electrical grids deteriorate. The very things we used to fund as devices to bolster the middle class, things we understood would pay dividends for decades, are things that are now maligned as socialism or utopian.

We never wanted to suffer the poor and disadvantaged falling through the cracks. We took pride in equality and opportunity. We were flawed but worked to erase it. We owned that most people if given the chance, would rather work hard toward self sufficiency and prosperity than wallow in pity and dependence. These were once popular ideas.

Now we trip over the sick and homeless in our urban areas with disgust and we accept abject poverty in our rural areas while media shows us how to loath and despise people not like us for being weak and undeserving. Racism and classism flourish. It’s stupid that we waste a single worry over immigration. It’s goddamn ridiculous that we actually debate marriage equality. It’s been an amazingly methodical implementation of economic policy symbiotic with social engineering and cultural warfare. Concerted. Awesome.

We are losing ground.

We have arrived at cheering the divide between the undeserving takers and the virtuous makers instead of the purpose of closing the gap between the haves and the have nots.
America has lost its goddamn mind.

Multinational conglomerates rape and pillage, stealing and hoarding resources and wealth without the threat of law. There’s nothing new about this except the most powerful advent of technology as a catalyst ever. Lunatic greed in broadband HD with surround sound after a bump in the bathroom.

We can access validation for any belief no matter how crazy.

If you fuck with our government it sends drones.

We are told that we can no longer afford to simply help people. Bullshit. We spend a trillion dollars a year on making war, planning more war, inventing new ways to make and fight new wars and new enemies. As we speak at least half our political representatives are chomping at the bit to mingle us in yet another war in the middle east.

This our cancer. This is our disease. This is the addiction that will kill us all.
Humans are losing.

America used to be an example. Other countries agreed. Now we’re barely able to stand our own smell. America is the preeminent historical example of absolute power and how absolute power corrupts absolutely.

The rest of the world reasonably expects that America will be its demise.

What’s it going to take?

How bad does it have to get?

America is a frog in a pot on a stove. I hear you can literally boil a frog if you just start the poor thing out at room temperature. He’s a cold blooded amphibian and it seems he can’t really sense the heating as long as it’s gradual. He won’t jump out or anything. He’ll die in that pot before it boils and he won’t see it coming.

Drinks for my friends.