Same World, Different Election

Four years have gone by since the last presidential election and little has changed. Save that two of the craziest bastards in the country are leading the Republican ticket. A failure to turn up to the polls this time could be the end for our democracy, shuttering under the arrogance and greed of legalized corruption.

The Senate can be taken back. Damage can be done in the House. The unemployment office can be the next government office frequented by the monsters in state houses across this land who chipped away at the rights of our brothers and sisters in the LGBT community and at a woman's right to choose; not to mention the damage they have done to voting rights and the social safety net.

Whoever you support for president - everybody who can read or reads my blog knows where I stand - be clear that the president is not a monarch, a magician or a miracle worker. One of the reasons that Obama has been so harassed, crippled and confounded is that this ungrateful nation checked out on him in '10. The attitude was, the president has got it. Well, he didn't have it - no one person can have it, not in our system of government.

I am not a cheerleader for the Obama Administration. I don't subscribe to the claptrap that he speaks infallibly, walks on water, can't be questioned. I don't work for him; he works for me. Accordingly, President Obama is way too far to the center for my liking - but let that go.

The sitting president of these United States has been shit upon, stabbed in the back, kicked in the head, rolled in the mud, abandoned and scapegoated. Not just by the opposition or the cowardly Blue Dogs in his own party, but by a feckless and negligent electorate - his own hero worshiping constituents have ignored the necessity of supporting him down ballot.

In other words, the horrors of which I wrote two years ago in the essay that follows are, in no small part, down to us. Let us resolve now to get off our sorry asses and VOTE come November.

Written February 2010

"I keep hearing Republican Right wingers cracking wise about the deficit, spending and the critical need to save the government’s money. For what? For whom? Certainly not for the children of the poor that they insist be brought into the world, rape and incest notwithstanding. After birth they hold these children in such low esteem that they are willing to roll back their healthcare, kick the crap out their educational system and worse yet limit their food supply all in the name of fiscal responsibility the new mantra of morally crippled, ethically deranged anencephalics like Ted Cruz and Paul Ryan.

How you might ask can they put a price tag on the life of a hungry child, deciding that there can even be such a thing as too much money spent to help take care of them? Is it possible they actually believe that an economy staggering under the weight of years of greed and excess will inevitably slip into final ruin for the cost of a little child’s school lunch or the few dollars in food stamps that a struggling mother will collect to help her provide all the other meals that a child must have? Accordingly, is it possible that they truly believe that poverty is like liposuction – elective?

In light of the stingy, mean spirit, I am-the-center-of-the-living-universe mentality that pollutes our public discourse in America today, this feels punitive as if we are punishing children for the gross negligence of the vampires who brought on the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression or for the poverty, even short comings of their parents. Isn’t it bad enough that so many of us walk down the street a little faster past the homeless and hungry pretending we don’t see them? Isn’t it bad enough that some speed up behind the wheel, looking through the despair of the poor as if it didn’t exist? Must we assess penalties as well, and to the children of all people? Yet in this best country in Christendom that is exactly what the good Christian men and women in Congress, our pious leaders, are doing when they put the school lunch and food stamp programs at the top of their deficit busting, spending reduction and government savings hit list.

I am not a Christian. I am not charged with, suffering the little children to come unto Jesus. I am not instructed to care for the poor, the sick, the homeless and the hungry. No such commandments are necessary in my faith. To see need and walk away, to look into the eyes of a starving child and turn away is unthinkable in my creed. In the parlance of the three “great” religions it is sinful, forbidden – unless of course you are a masochist who wishes to incur the Karma that comes of offending the Great Crone. Thus, I am confounded at how easily these posturing, pandering, pontificating bible thumpers in the House and Senate can raise their second finger at the central doctrines of their avowed belief system.

It is unlikely that there is anyone who doesn’t know that I am an unashamed, outspoken, sometimes in-your-face Pagan. I honor my Goddess, am devout in my faith, proud of my heritage and my Witch’s path and craft. Therefore I have a right to ask; who in the hell are these people? Are they Christians or moneylenders? Are they the church and body of the crucified Christ, or are they the crucifers? Under whose authority and in whose name do they dishonor their own God and disregard one of the Holiest of Holies in all faiths – the life of a child – anybody’s child?

The gravest question of all is how much longer will we tolerate this duplicity, hypocrisy and conceit? The American Middle Class is no longer the richest in the world. We lag behind Canada, and it is only a matter of time until we slip behind other industrialized nations. We are the engine of the United States’ economy, the source of American Exceptionalism. Not because we build bigger and better weapons, run around the world shouting about a Democracy we are destroying at home, but because we have built and funded the programs that have raised thousands of our brothers and sisters out of poverty while helping to feed and educate their children. We are at a crossroads now. One path leads to the end of this country as we know it; the other leads to the polls and a vote in November to pull all of the sad, sorry marionettes of the 1% out of office. Take your pick."