Psychotic Nation

Call it America's Hitler, call it The American Taliban. It really doesn't matter much. We're all trapped on the same Titanic. America is just stupid enough, America is just mean enough, and America is just selfish and greedy enough to put this abomination in the White House in 2016... and I think that is exactly what they will do.

I used the third person pronoun above because I am certainly not going to help this horror happen! President Chickennuts may clearly be no better than the lesser of two evils, but pushing the voting button for All Democrats is the only viable alternative we have left to us at this point. There is no hope for any third party until hell freezes over, and global warming will see that that never happens.

The problem with the Democratic Party is that it refuses to give up the identity politics it adopted so fully back in the Sixties. The Southern Strategy from the other side was nothing more than a backlash against the identity politics so totally embraced by the Left. You know something is happening here, but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones? What is happening is that all the right wing media is lying to you because of The Southern Strategy and all of the left wing media is lying to you because of identity politics. Neither side has any intention of telling the truth because the greater truth is that all of them are paid too damn much! The psychotic culture we live in cares about only three things: money, sex, and celebrity, in that order. The Democrats are lying because it pays too well to throw the game! All the issues of identity politics are just noise and nothing more. What Mr. Jones cannot seem to figure out is that we as a nation have desperately needed class warfare, and not identity politics, for forty years now!

There are two ways to (possibly) fix the economy and banish the national madness from our psyches. The Republicans would not be able to win a national election for some time to come if either tactic was utilized. The first is to simply make voting mandatory. Since no one seems to like that idea, that leaves only one other alternative. The Democratic power brokers and their media sycophants must quietly phase out their relentless support and usage of identity politics. They must slowly but firmly convince the more sane members of the voting bloc on the right that we are no longer the party of minorities. We are the Party of the People, the party of the 99%, the party of all average and low-income Americans. The Left does not have to change any of its policies, but we MUST stop engaging in the endless slap-fight that continually pushes members of a huge voting bloc to the political dark side. We must leave some of our fantasies of idealism outside the political realm and begin to vote and act in a more tactical, successful manner. The peak of liberalism in America occurred way back in 1969. We have been sliding ever so slowly into a right-wing oblivion of selfishness and greed ever since. It is way past time for the Left to realize that it has become the Mr. Jones. It was a far different nation and world back when Bob Dylan wrote the refrain to "Ballad of a Thin Man" back in 1965!

I am going to switch gears for just a moment. You will see that at the top of the left column, I have added a link to my fourth book, Timeline of America: Sound Bytes from the Consumer Culture. Recent thoughts about this book inspired this article. Timeline has always been my weakest selling book, even though it should be the one with far the most widespread appeal! Of course I realize the high price of the print version is one of the problems, but I had no control over that issue. The Kindle and Nook versions are well under $5, so what are you waiting for? I have often considered releasing an updated print version, now that I have control of the cover price, but there has always been a great big monster that has stifled that idea whenever it pops up for consideration. The timelines of wonderful, nostalgic memories of American culture stop at 2006 because that is where they stopped in real life! Timeline was an enormous project to create. The parade of delightful memories identified and elevated in the book were clearly running out of steam by the middle of the last decade. Even as I approached that final year six years ago, positive creations and events in America were quickly losing momentum. To be honest, it was something of a struggle to take the book even as far as I did.

Then came Paradigm Shift, which for decades was referred to as The Hyde Papers, as in the Jekyll and Hyde of American culture. Timeline was the Jekyll and Paradigm was the Hyde. I have seen or experienced nothing since to give me hope that this is not the whole, final, complete truth. America is clearly on a suicide mission. Obviously, far too few Americans are able to see the Mr. Jones reflecting back at them in the mirrors of their insanity.