Okay, people are dumb sometimes, and we do a lot of stupid things. It’s only fair to admit that. Even the smartest among us are capable of pulling off a real boneheaded stunt at any time. It’s part of the deal with being human. We get to sit on the top of the food chain and dominate the planet, but every so often we shoot ourselves in the foot. This usually happens when we get angry or frustrated and that’s when we’re all capable of doing and saying some really terrible things. There’s not a person alive who has not regretted something done or said in anger. As they say, it goes with the territory.
Not that all that many of us are truly stupid, real dumb-as-a-rock stupid. While there are those unfortunates among us, they are actually few and far between. Most people are pretty sharp and have a lot on the ball, with impressive skills, unique talents, good work habits and minds that can figure a lot of things out quite well. We didn’t get to be the Alpha dogs on Planet Earth by accident. Hell, we even put a guy on the Moon forty years ago. As long as we avoid anger and frustration we can do wonders. When we surrender to those things is when we get in trouble.
With that knowledge in hand, some of us like to take advantage of our fellow man. They know the right buttons to push to get us angry, the exact words to say to get our blood boiling. When hard times arrive, as they do from time to time, they play upon our frustrations. Some of them are quite skilled at manipulating people. Take America for example, where, by the standards of most of the world, people have it very good. No one starves, there are no wars on our soil, everyone can read and write and we hold no political prisoners. There has never been anything but an orderly transfer of power in America, every four or eight years, according to the wishes of our citizens who vote on who gets to run the show.
These are things we take for granted, as well we should. We worked hard to create this reality and work hard to maintain it. Liberal Democracy was the end result of 5,000 years of recorded history during which humanity suffered horribly under a string of brutal kings and emperors and was the answer to the eternal statement “There’s gotta be a better way!” Well, there was a better way, and we found it, and for 234 years we’ve been trying to live up to the bold statement “All men are created equal.”
The only trouble is, that some of us think we have it too good and should surrender some of our rights and liberties. We even elected a bunch of these assholes back in 2000 and again in 2004. Turns out they were cowardly thieves, traitors and criminals, and now we’re paying for our stupidity. These pricks looted our treasury, got us involved in two endless wars, stole trillions of dollars from the working classes and handed it over to people who were already very wealthy. They threw New Orleans a cinderblock when it was drowning, spied on American citizens and attempted to repeal the Bill of Rights.
On top of all that they nearly ruined the most powerful economy in history when the nation’s wealthiest citizens decided that they weren’t wealthy enough so they decided to steal and cheat their way into gaining more billions of dollars of everyone else’s money. It was a time when there were no rules for the wealthy and they took full advantage, enriching themselves fabulously while ruining millions of less powerful and influential lives. DId it not because they needed it, but just because they could, and fuck everyone else! The long dead and unmourned kings and emperors would be proud of America’s New Corporate Princes.
And so we voted their criminal asses out of office across the board, The White House and both Houses of Congress. In the true Liberal Democracy way, we didn’t put them in jail where many thought they belonged, only took away their car keys and put responsible adults behind the wheel. While we didn’t expect such arrogant assholes to slink away in shame and repentance, we figured that at least they would have realized that they crossed a lot of lines they ought not to have crossed.
So much for assumptions. These jerkoffs think we’re all stupid all the time. They’re trying to make a political comeback before the new administration has a chance to pass any laws putting limits on how the financial industries can operate. It’s called regulation, like the regulations that are placed on everything in society from driving a car to prohibiting murder. Basic common sense stuff, like keeping an eye on those who handle everybody’s money. If human society didn’t need such regulation, there would be no such thing as bank vaults.
But we haven’t come that far down the evolutionary trail yet and money is still a huge temptation. Most people figure that it should be just as illegal to rob a bank from the inside as from the outside. So the button-pushers have got a whole lot of really dopey people all worked up about the new sheriff in town, and have them believing he’s the second coming of Chairman Mao because he wanted every American to have something as basic and necessary as health insurance. By their overwrought rhetoric you’d think our president just passed a law saying that every America must apply for a travel visa to go to Disneyland.
They are of course using America’s anger and frustration at the hard times we are experiencing, and fooling enough of them to make some noise. What these fools who drink their Kool Aid never stop to consider is that America is in this mess precisely because we elected these people in the first place. How fucking stupid do you have to be to listen to the guy who just robbed your house telling you he knows why you have no television? Apparently really fucking stupid, and really in need of company. Like misery, idiocy loves company and now they’re forming packs like blind rats and proclaiming that our new president isn’t a “real” America (read that: “Nigger,” opening up a whole other ugly can of American worms).
Even the people chosen to sell those crazy right wing ideas are really stupid and almost clinically insane. Who wouldn’t choose to stand for the whole subway ride if the only available seat was next to Glen Beck? How long before the average guy punches out Rush Limbaugh’s lights when he starts with the blowhard lies and racist rants? How long would we put up with Bull O’Really insulting our intelligence before pimp-slapping his smug mug for him? Sarah Palin? Cracker, please! There’s a reason why these people are presented from the safety of a broadcast studio. They are about as real and true as a cartoon, only without the intellectual heft of Looney Tunes.
The fact is that their side damaged this country so grievously, their side attempted to strip our civil rights and their side stole all the money. And now they want us to listen to them as the voice of reason? A reason for what? How fucking stupid do they think we are?