Folks were afraid 'wars' in Iraq and Afghanistan would become quagmires like the ancient and tragic 'war' in Vietnam; and they did. In Iraq, after years of the horror we perpetrated, perpetuated and pandered, our role is now relegated to protecting oil fields and mega military bases, and leave the battlefield to Iraqis killing each other as we perpetrate, perpetuate and pander the Sunni/Shia regional civil war so desired by the geo-strategic Dr. Strangeloves of the military-industrial-complex who think up these travesties and the vampiric bankers who fund them. Did you ever wonder how Dracula made his money?
In Afghanistan, after more than ten years of war, who the hell knows what's going on there? Hell, after ten years of war in Afghanistan chasing banshees, ghosts and mountain goats, the United States is now Al Qaeda's bestest ally in the whole wide world. Al Qaeda “freed” Libya and is now trying its bestest, with America's help, to “free” Syria.
Up is down. War is Peace. The President assassinates Americans; in vengeance of Oswald and Booth. And the surreal Orwellian world of endless war, omnipotent surveillance, police-state oppression, poverty, disease, famine and the very, very few smirking over the rest of us, caught in a pitched battle against the Lord of the Militia Flies, is all because of the biggest quagmire in the world: The United States of America.
QUAGMIRE: A quagmire is a boggy, quicksandy thing which, once you're stuck in it, is really hard to get out of.
The boggy, quicksandy quagmire of American decline is nothing less than our vaunted system of American electoral politics. To put it bluntly, the foundation of the current political system in the United States is: Corruption. Influence peddling. In a society which is bankrupt and a people living hand-to-mouth, the greatest country in the history of the world - ironically the world's leading society of economic injustice - who amongst the commoner class can afford to give money to a politician they don't trust anyway?
So who does give money?
The obvious answer: rich people, corporations, unions, lobbyists and rich people.
Do you know why neither political party in the United States wants to stop all these tragically cruel wars we're quagmired in?
Because the rich people, corporations and lobbyists who want all these death orgies pay BOTH parties of our legendary two party system to wage them.
This fact is incontrovertible.
Do you know why after the great economic debacle and bailout of 2008 created by industry-wide bank fraud, nothing has been done about it and indeed, all indications are things will get worse – after the election of course?
Because the rich people, corporations and institutional investors who make money from nothing pay BOTH parties to bank the casino and stack the deck.
This is a plain fact.
Yet, facts mean nothing. The American political system has been co-opted by money fetishists and politics is porn. Spectator sport. Bread and circuses.
Half the people in this country don't vote for good reason – the government has lost the legitimacy of representation. And the other half is broken down into two groups for and against a litany of issues. The Two Parties.
But neither Party pays anything but lip service to winding down the military machine which eats up trillions of dollars and spits out so much heartbreak around the globe for no known noble cause except profit-driven resource wars against the Russians and Chinese. And neither Party speaks of serious reform to the International Central Banking System which has enslaved most of the world through usurious (and un-payable) debt.
There are two things which need major reform and re-institution and if they don't happen, all these “side issues” which give the Two Parties their social identification, won't mean squat: The Military-Industrial-State and its private banking cabal – The Federal Reserve.
There is a difference between the two Parties. One is run by crazies. One is run by cowards.
But both are beholden to the root of all evil.
American Politics is caught in the quagmire of Money for Power.
Every so often political parrots talk about Election Reform but nothing ever happens because how can it? The only people with the legal power to fix our political system are the very people who are enriched by it: Today when humble Mr. Smith goes to Washington, he comes home a jaded millionaire.
If he isn't one already. They call the United States Senate – The Millionaire's Club for crimes' sake.
Without MAJOR reform to America's elective political system, nothing will change for the better for most Americans. Because, the nature of our current system requires politicians do the bidding of the money power. The elite. The 1%. Corporations. Big Oil. Big Energy. Big War. Big Money. The Base of Billionaires whose interests always come first. Because without billionaire robber barons there would be no jobs, they say.
This is a fact.
By the time a President is elected he is selected by about ¼ of eligible voters. 75% of eligible voters do not vote for the elected President. Most voters have turned off, dropped out and given up. The other half is propagandized into tribes of point/counter-point, pandering where needed to cobble together a majority of the Middle. A country of Swingers who can swing any which way as long as the Candidate appears 'authentic.'
This is who decides American elections. People who don't know what to think.
And the mainstream media does nothing to help people understand anything but American political/social orthodoxy and why would they?
Mainstream=Corporate=Profit=Pabulum=America for Dummies.
I heard they were trying to abolish Critical Thinking in Texas because critical thinking challenges parental authority. I.kid.you.not.
Let's talk about the crazies for a minute. And maybe a moment of silence for the lost souls of Republicanism who fought and died at this nation's founding. Today's GOP is an alliance of religious nuts and money gluttons. Remember the lust for money is the root of all evil and you got to choose between god and mammon? Turn the other cheek seven times seven? Love your enemy? Judge not? The GOP crazies have turned all that on its ear, huh? We got religious wars against Islam, gays, “mexicans” and independent wombs. Your womb is god's not yours. Everything is god and god is a HE. What is so hard to understand? The GOP is run by a religious cult which is hard to reconcile with the Christianity of Jesus and Mary. Because Jesus would not be in bed with these vampiric money-changers who wreck humanity through the usurpation of a nation's right to control its own monetary policy. The people of the United States are slaves to the Fed. The Fed is Private Bankers who time and again manipulate money's supply and value to create cycles of boom and bust. Nothing has changed in hundreds of years. Wealth buys security in the name of armed guards and armies. Real revolutions happen rarely and are more rarely successful – we could not have one today because, as a people, we are dazed and confused – as designed by the social engineers of oligarchy.
As for the cowards: A coward is someone who talks about change but delivers more-of-the-same because change requires courage. The strength and resolve to stand up to the status quo: The War Mongers, Big Business, Political Corruption, Bank Fraud.
Instead of speak truth to power, cowards eat, pray and love power and bend and twist any which way but loose to accommodate it. Instead of fight for the common good, cowards capitulate to the powerful few. We don't have a Public Option, we have a government mandate to participate in a private for-profit monopoly. Our economy is a desolation but the markets are strong. Which is like saying, 'look at all those hobos along the Vegas Strip.' Instead of ending all these illegal wars of empire against the poor, powerless and dark skinned, a coward goes along to get along. A coward toots his horn of toughness because he is a battering ram for American Exceptionalism, Entitlement and Hegemony because the American Presidency is nothing but the PR Department of Empire.
In November, the Parties will square off, the rhetoric will fly, someone will win, the wars will go on, the rich will get richer, millions will die the Horsemen of the Apocalypse and nothing will change but the trajectory of decline of the short-lived American Empire. I was born when Eisenhower was President. I saw the assassination of Kennedy, the corruption of Johnson, the crimes of Nixon, the pratfalls of Ford, the malaise of Carter, Reagan's Invasion of the Neocons, GHWBush's wimpiness, Clinton's two-faced triangulation, GWBush's Nero impersonation, and Obama's juke. A lot has happened. But not much has changed. The poor are still poor. The war machine churns on. Women and LGBT still fight for their rights. And power resides in the flux capacitor of money and politics. Back to the Future.
We (the West) are in a systemic death spiral. Its chief cause is illegal wars of aggression which cost trillions of dollars which must be borrowed from private banks. People do not choose these wars. We are constantly lied into war. The first casualty of war is truth. We're led to believe our institutions and principles are noble and righteous and under attack from extremist, radical terrorists, but this is not true. The United States is the aggressor. More than 40 years ago Martin Luther King lamented his country was the greatest purveyor of violence on the planet. Nothing.has.changed.
It's all kabuki in Plato's Cave.
Somehow, and I don't know how, a shift in the political power balance toward the demotic must take place if we're to survive our folly of empire. Citizens' commissions. Secession. Something. Something we can't quite imagine yet but must because unless we find our way back to a government of, for and by regular folks, we'll find ourselves come awake in the body of Wily Coyote as he plunges off the cliff.
The world is on fire as we're stuck in a quagmire of our own making. Jefferson said the price we pay for liberty is eternal vigilance. We didn't have it. Instead, we did the unforgivable. We abrogated our responsibility to a political class devoid of virtue and debauched by the trappings of power and the wealth won by subservience to it.
Getting out of a quagmire is hard. But it can be done.
I doubt we will. It's hard to unite a people in most circumstances, how can Americans unite when half don't give a damn or have surrendered to cynicism and the other half have drunk the Kool Aid or just don't get it?
It won't happen this election cycle obviously. But it will. But then the question will be: Is it too late?
Probably.