Yes, the politicians require a good slap, but they're really just power-mongers with bad haircuts. It's the dam press, owned by the rest of the Oligarchy who pretty much owns them and pulls all the strings. Money money money money money while the American people's dearest ideals are used to sell us all down the river. We're not a bad lot, we Yanks. We genuinely mostly believe in the ideas which founded this country- actual freedoms in life, democracy in government, equality of humankind- but therein lies the problem. When the war between the states errupted, our Civil War, 99 % of the Southern soldiers left hearth and home, some quite literally barefooted, for an ideal-their 'rights'. The war, no matter how it's been drawn by revisionists, was about slavery-owning other human beings, because the great plantations and the way of life of the southern aristocracy could not exist without this free toil. Less than 100 years after winning our genuine rights from England, the 'new' aristocracy knew how to speak to these good, solid, believing citizens- the southern soldiers who fought and died by the thousands owned no slaves, most not even land and had no financial stake in winning anything in the war beyond this 'ideal'. It was hollow, sincere on the part of the citizenry, but greed at the core for those who drove the intent. I see the same thing in 2011. The politicians keep up the flag-waving- we have to go to war for whatever reason, we don't need a national health care system, the 'real enemy' is some army of poor, quite literally shoeless immigrants- pick the agenda and somewhere behind it is a mega-corp ( Haliburton to name one- Dick Cheney's baby which provides such abysmal 'support' to our troops at nauseating costs plus were responsible for the cement in the failed cap on the oil well in the Gulf. Ahem- British Petroleum. ). This is getting long, so please excuse but the point being that we as Americans really are not reflective of our politicians. They are the disconnect, aided mightily by the press- who are owned by the Oligarchy, basically. This country is in such troubled times because we as a people really do believe we're living in, and voting for a democracy. The politicians ( mostly ) and those who have them in their pockets know this to be a lie.
Sorry so long- the conservatives are trying to block health care again on the vague grounds that it's against some American ideal so I'm a little wound up on this whole subject.
