Democracy is Dead

I’m very disappointed, so disappointed that I am taking a break from politics. I’m almost to the point where I am about to give up. Nothing makes sense anymore and I see the fruitless efforts of people out there – including myself - who campaign, sign petitions, call Congress, go to protests and still nothing changes.

It really doesn’t matter how right your cause is, how many people support it and how beneficial it will be for the country. Whatever it is, it’s useless unless the fat bureaucrats in Congress and their masters – Wall Street, the Koch Brothers, Big oil, etc. – happen to agree with whatever you are fighting for. The chances that your causes are in synchronicity with theirs are basically non-existent.

Government is corrupt and they are not serving the people of this country. It seems that they are diligently working at crushing the middle class, oppressing the working class and if they could, if it was possible, they would eliminate the poor once and for all who they see as nothing but maggots, parasites that do not deserve to be alive to begin with.

I am fed up with what’s transpiring against women in every state of this nation. This unreasonable obsession with vaginas and controlling women’s right to decide for herself what’s best for her own life. I’m sickened about a handful of retrogrades, covering their actions under false religiosity, taken over the politics of this nation; they have crept into our lives, disrupting and destroying everything that we have fought so hard for such a long time.

I am repulse at the fact that if a woman or a man gets caught stealing a pack of meat to feed their children, they will be apprehended and possibly do time, even if it is a couple of days and, of course, will have a criminal record and pay a fine. However, those in Wall Street, the ones that crushed our economy and screwed everyone in the process not only are not going to jail, the government gave them money. No criminal record, no jail time and no fine to pay! They’re still going about their business and we have to hear them complaining about too much regulation! If the government is to be fair they either have to forgive those stealing money or food to survive, hand them some money so they can get back to their feet and let them be or, everyone gets the same treatment… everyone, especially those son of bitches that had all they could ever dream of having and still stole from those that were trying to survive… but no, no one touches big money.

I can’t believe that the airports got de-sequestered, that shouldn’t be and the President shouldn’t have allowed it. The whole country, those that need it the most are suffering the consequences of the sequester… but they have to endure it because a bunch of narcissists, filthy rich, son of bitches in Congress do not want to put an end to the sequester, only to the part of the sequester that affects them personally, the rest of us can go to hell.

The President, in order to end the sequester, placed the seniors and the poor under the bus when he agreed to make cuts to “entitlements” such as social security, which by the way, it is not part of the budget or the economy or an entitlement. The government has placed not one single penny in the social security fund; all of us have paid into it and many presidents – Democrats and Republicans alike – have taken money out of it to balance the books but none of them ever paid back the money they used. We keep increasing the defense budget to numbers many countries wish they had as their GDP, an obscene amount but they are claiming that social security is going broke and cannot be sustained, perhaps if they stop increasing the damn defense budget and return the money with interest back to the social security fund it would not be in the mess it is now.

So, let’s applaud the rich. Let’s continue giving them incentives to create jobs that never get created, at least not in these shores. They want to drill and contaminate our environment? Let them! Let’s give them a hand when they find themselves in deep shit because of their abuses and recklessness. Let’s throw anyone and everyone that doesn’t have an income above $100,000 under the bus, after all… we are not the ones filling their pockets with money, the rich is and Congress has sold their soul to them a long time ago and nothing we can say or do will ever change it.

War Games

Facebook. That wonderful social network we are so accustomed to and with which we have a marvelous love-hate relationship with. We dislike the fact that it is constantly changing and forcing us to change with it. We are frequently saying that we will go somewhere else but we never do because we are addicted to it. Through Facebook we have reached out beyond what was possible only ten years ago. I have friends from all corners of the world that, if it weren’t for Facebook, I would have never have had the pleasure of knowing since our paths would have never crossed. We share ideas, ideals, our pain and suffering; we mobilize and organize thousands of people with the stroke of a key: “Share.” If the world before Facebook was a handkerchief, now is a cotton swab!

It was through Facebook that I came across a picture of a sign carried in one of the many anti-war protests that took place throughout our country. The sign read “Why is there always money for war but not for education.” Everyone was commenting on it, as it is typical in this forum and I was no different. But, as I was replying I had an epiphany, sort of. For the first time in my life the answer to that question was crystal clear to me and the answer to that question is so translucent, so obvious that I am amazed no one had mentioned it before, at least not that I know. It is true that if you want to hide something, hide it in plain view…

This is a ballistic nation; I think we all know that. This is a country infatuated with guns and weaponry and obsessed with war. We call everything a war: War on Poverty; War on Drugs; War on Terror; War on Illiteracy and as of late, War on Women. It could have had a more positive effect if we would have said, for example, “Eradicate Poverty Now” but we prefer “war,” we use it tirelessly and it has become an everyday noun that we associate with a worthy cause.

Since the beginning of this country, we have always been ready to lend a helping hand to other nations and engage in their wars or we engage in our own and request their help. It is also known that we have fought these wars not necessarily because of altruistic reasons – but because the country where these wars were taking place had something we wanted. That occurs even to this day whether the wars we are fighting are our own or those of our allies.

Hopefully, we are in agreement so far. You may question what does that lengthy explanation have to do with education? A lot actually, in my opinion, everything. A ballistic nation needs soldiers to fight those wars, a peon willing to risk his or her life.

For a ballistic country, such as ours, wars are far more important than lives and education. A country that is always at war doesn’t need their populace to have access to free higher education; the more educated a person is, the less likely he will engage in wars and that certainly would work against a ballistic government. However, it serves the government well if the youth is sufficiently educated to crave to learn more, to wish for a better future, a future that it’s beyond reach. That is precisely what the government needs and that is why this country doesn’t invest in education as much as they do in wars. How do you think they incite young, ambitious and idealistic individuals to enlist? What is the only thing they offer the youth if they enlist? An education. That is why the government invests more in wars and not education. Education is the only bait they have for others to fight their war games.