Had It Up To Here

I’ve had it up to here.  In case you can’t see, I’m making a choppy motion a few inches above my bald head, which is about seventy-three inches above the floor right now while I’m wearing my combat shitkickers.  I found this photo on The Atlantic, a site I visit because they have cool photojournals of Afghanistan, and occasionally some interesting articles that are moderately vanilla enough to not spin me off into realms of pissed-off unvisited by mere mortals.

I think it sums up the train wreck of politics we Americans are forced to endure now.  It sums up for me personally my complete and utter loss of faith and confidence in anyone elected to office of any party.  For a while in Afghanistan, I toyed with the idea of switching to the Libertarian party, because at least small government is what they’re about.  Then I realized something magical and wrong happens once you’ve got your seat in The House/The Senate/The White House.  You lose your rabbit-ass mind.

So here we are, tooling along and racking up double-digit trillions of debut as a nation.  We have a war to conclude or at least transition successfully somewhere else, North Korea with aspirations of relevance and nukes to prove it and a stagnant economy constipated by over-regulation.  The mainstream/lamestream media who so slavishly wants to be a branch of government they’ll perform all sorts of unnatural acts for money are loath to point out these butt-zits on our elected officials – at least until the DoJ decides the Constitution doesn’t really matter so much and starts getting grabby with records.  Suddenly ‘Yes We Can’ sounds a lot like ‘The Hell You Will,’ doesn’t it?

And what exactly are these definitely-elected but questionably-official people doing?  Scandal-mongering.  This is about as useful these days as dragging Roger Clemens in front of a Congressional panel to testify on performance-enhancing drugs.  Where in my Constitution does it say that Congress monitors that? (Hint: nowhere).  I would compare the House and Senate to two fat chicks in Spandex having a slap fight in the Wal-Mart parking lot, but that would be an insult to fat, chicks, Spandex, Wal-Mart, parking lots and slap-fights.

There’s some meat to the Big Three scandals, sure. But what about putting reins on the debt?  What about owning up to either raising taxes or genuinely cutting something that will actually help relieve the problem?  Or maybe both.  Point here is, do something substantial.  Stop trying to distract us from the fact that you suck and can’t act to do the right thing.  Stop playing middle-school popularity games.  Stop selling our future generations into financial servitude.

Circling back, I don’t know what the right answer is.  I’m not entirely qualified to say – I defend democracy, I don’t necessarily practice it.  I used to think a third major party would help, but I’m beginning to question that idea too.  The only thing I’m sure of is my level of disgust.