The Big Show

"In an April 26 forum at The McCain Institute for International Leadership, Vice President Joe Bidenexpressed his admiration for Sen. Lindsey Graham(R-SC) in his own irreverent fashion. In a conversation with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), Biden said that he would do whatever he could to help Graham win his reelection bid next year. The vice president said he would be happy to campaign for him or against him, promising Graham that he would “rip your skin off” if that would cement his reputation as an enemy of the Obama administration among South Carolina’s Republican primary voters."

Can the members of the ruling class spell it out any plainer than that for us peasants?  They intend for the whole Red-Blue thing to be a shtick.    It is all meant to be for show, an act as phony as pro-wrestling.  It is an act designed to keep the rubes back in the heartland entertained while their friends finish looting the country and collapsing the former middle class into abject poverty.  

Only a few "rouge" politicians are threatening to ruin the Big Show.   In the U.S. Senate there are three such men, Ted Cruz from Texas, Tom Lee from Utah, and Rand Paul from Kentucky.  They are actually attempting statesmanship, not performance art, and are therefore making a nuisance of themselves according to the cast members of The Big Show.   Here is a video where Cruz candidly tells us that some of the actors, er, Senators, were yelling at the three at the top of their lungs for filibustering gun control legislation that the establishment was trying to rush through.  The trio's stalling tactics embarrassed the actors who have been playing the role of "Pro-Second Amendment" Senators to actually vote that way, against their will.  

It is no wonder that the insiders of both parties get along with each other better than they do with the outsiders in their own parties.  The outsiders are the troublemakers who are trying to end the scams endemic to big government, the insiders are putting on a stage production to fool the people into thinking they are trying to end the scam.  The show's real purpose is to keep the thing going as long as possible.  It is designed to make the folks back home think that "something is being done" about our nation's dire situation while in fact the fraud rolls on.

While this problem may be worse at the national level, we have seen it here in Arkansas as well.  Recall last year that Democratic Senator Larry Teague had a general election fundraiser that was co-sponsored by every Republican member of the state senate at that time (Sen. Jason Rappert is an exception, saying his name was put on the invitations without his consent), including a former state GOP Chairman.   And of course, after all the election season noise from the Republican state legislators about how they would resist the implementation of Obamacare, they jumped right in and implemented it once they were sure their friends got enough of the taxpayer money.

Friends, the two-party system as it currently exists is a sham.  It is a fraud and a show.   That is a fact.   The outsiders deserve our support, but each honest citizen should ask themselves whether they want to spend 100% of their political time, energy, and effort playing a very minor bit role in the Big Show or whether they might want to prudently diversify their political investments.  That is, spend some of that time, energy, and effort doing the hard but necessary job of building a real political alternative to the grotesque charade Red-Blue politics has become.    

We may not be able to build a national alternative to the Big Show, but we can right here at home.  Then we just have to hope that our fellow citizens in other states do the same.  We can show them the way, but we can't do it for them.  In the days and weeks to come I and others will be visiting with various activist groups to see what we can do to provide a real alternative, at least on races that don't take millions of dollars to win.