Don't be a Dancing Bear

 

     15 or more years ago, my last family and I would go camping in New Hampshire and during those vacations, we'd go to Clark's Trading Post. Depending on your viewpoint, Clark's was either a delightful tourist trap, the perfect place to take the wife and kiddies or it was some exploitative place that used bears for the idle and witless amusement for those who loved to see them do tricks.

     But politics and animal rights has to take a back seat when one is on vacation with the fam so on two occasions we'd see the stupid little tricks the staff would make the bears do.

     Yet the only way in which they could get these so-called trained bears to do even the simplest stupid little tricks was to constantly shovel soft-serve ice cream in their mouths. Through their portable mics, they'd even admit that if they stopped constantly feeding ice cream, the fat, furry greedy bastards would immediately stop performing and perhaps even turn on them with lethal force.

     The bears could be looked upon by the more cynical of us as the Teabaggers, with the staff the Republican Party that feeds and enables them. Except, instead of soft-serve ice cream, they throw them red meat on a constant basis. The minute the red meat stops slapping on the concrete, the Teabaggers will revolt, stop performing their stupid little astroturf tricks and turn on their GOP handlers.

     Scott Brown learned that the first time he cast a vote in the Senate that agreed with the Democrats. A typical self-serving politician, he cynically used the Teabaggers to defeat Martha Coakley when they ran for the late Ted Kennedy's seat. Then he forgot they even existed once he was sworn in. After all, who cares about the Teabaggers when you can always suck up to the Koch Brothers for a cash infusion?

     And, just as much as when Obama was running for the presidency in 2008 and 2012, we're going to be hearing about blow jobs and Benghazi for the next fucking 18 months, especially if Hillary Clinton, God help us, actually gets the nomination. And you're going to see the red meat fly like a food fight at a junior high cafeteria. Because the GOP seems to think the Teabaggers make up a much larger faction than they really are.

     But the Teabaggers didn't just spontaneously rise up fully-formed as Athena from the skull of Zeus. As anyone who's been paying attention to these mouth-breathing psychopaths knows, they're just regurgitated and reconstituted Klansmen, militia types, anarchists and libertarian holdovers. They are the dregs of human society who all have a few things in common: Not wanting to pay their taxes, not being regulated even when it's absolutely essential and basically being allowed to flout, ignore or outright break the law when it impinges on their "sovereign rights."

     And now I'm going to say something that'll briefly get me in hot water with some Democratic deadenders who still insist that voting for a so-called Democrat like Hillary Clinton is still better than voting for the slightly less extreme and lobbyist-infested Republican: I'm not voting for Hillary. I've made my views on this known.

     When I voted for Dennis Kucinich in the '08 Massachusetts Democratic presidential primary, my ex girlfriend told me my vote was wasted and I told her that a vote of conscience was never a wasted vote. Yeah, I voted for Obama later that year but did it holding my nose because I bought into the bullshit that a third party candidate had no validity and no chance of winning.

     Sure. Tell that to Joe Lieberman and Bernie Sanders.

     And those of us who fancy ourselves on the "right" side of the tracks also need our red meat. Only, instead of "nigger", "Muslim" and "Benghazi", we respond to "universal single payer health care", "campaign finance reform" and "investing in peace." But red meat by another name is still red meat and you'd be surprised how fast it disappears in your stomach once you gobble it down.

     Hillary Clinton had more lobbyists attached to her campaign in 2008 than K Street and the Federal Bureau of Prisons combined, more than even John McCain's campaign. She was a corporate attorney that was on Walmart's Board of Directors and she opportunistically got herself reelected to her Senate seat out of New York even though it was the most open secret of the day that she wouldn't even last the year before wildly throwing her hat in the big ring like Mary fucking Tyler Moore and look what happened.

     And I will believe to my dying day that Hillary Clinton inspired Meryl Streep when she played that hard-as-nails, ball-cutting Senator in the remake of The Manchurian Candidate.

     One more thing I will keep repeating to my dying breath is the illusion that we live in a nation with a Two Party system, something vehemently opposed by both George Washington and John Adams. Such a fallacious story is the biggest bag over the head con job that's ever been pulled over the head of the American voter since the amusement park entrance fee, commercials on cable and extended warranties.

     Because when you get right down to it, both parties are alike. They will undercut underperformers when it comes time to count campaign contributions even if it means the Other Guy grabbing the seat when they withhold support for Their Guy. They all tiptoe through the back door of the Bilderberg group's meetings and they all work for the same Wall Street banks and the same corporations. Their pretense at shadow boxing each other and the fact that one side's rhetoric is slightly less extreme than the other has successfully fooled Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives alike into thinking there really is separation between the parties.

     Freelance journalist Michael Collins calls both The Money Party. And he's right.

     So don't put on the little tutu, don't dance on the yoga ball or ride the little tricycle and don't let them stuff your face with endless soft serve ice cream or red meat. Make an informed choice. Don't be a stupid dancing bear.