American democratic radio host Howard Stern and Hillary Clinton had a bit of a giggle this week, hadn’t they? In a long-form chat session on Stern’s show, uploaded to Youtube on the 6th of December, they, among other nuggets, made fun of progressive Bernie Sanders.
“Chocolate milk for everyone!”, they laugh as the liken Sander’s drive for free college to the disingenuous chanting of an elementary school council nominee.
Pretty tone-deaf and out-of-touch with the reality of most Americans – fuck, most people world-wide – if you ask me. There they lounged, a multi-million dollar multimedia celebrity with a political juggernaut the likes of which hasn’t really been seen since the Kennedy’s, reminiscing that when their children went to college, the costs never really made a dent in their vast fortunes. Millionaires that chuckled that it’s easy to promise everything for nothing.
Wow.
To give a short explanation, since neither a radio-host or a political legend seem to understand political theory: A government provides basic human services through taxation. Okay Hillary? Alright Howard?
It’s such a fucking shame, isn’t it. That the American people only have two choices in leadership. One; neo-liberal, neo-decadent, hogs that wallow in their uncounted wealth, completely disassociated from the economical plight of their subjects, stuffing their faces with grapes like what the ancient senators of Rome were still doing while the city burned around them. And on the other hand, racists and molesters that cling onto power by any means necessary, draping themselves in family values and Christianity to hide their naked villainy, not dissimilar to something out of a Shakespearian fever nightmare.
And that’s not taking into account all the sins these two seemingly disparate camps of political forces share, like warmongering, neo-colonialism, and prospects of dominion over an ecologically failing world.
Between these two rotting thrones, it’s not easy for an American with even a sliver of decency to elect a four-year-reign-king or queen. You might almost think that the Republicans and Democrats have syndicated being greedy pricks, joining forces to discredit and disbar anyone from either respective camps with an honourable point of view. Even more so since it seems to be in both parties self-interest to stoke the fires of partisanship, to polarize the population against one another, to make every issue a “for us or against us”-argument.
But it’s easy to complain about politics. Not to mention politicians… But what can a poor voter do? It’s not like you can shame these shameless cretins off their podiums by deciding not to vote. That’s how you get the likes of the Orange Hydra oozing on the throne.
Maybe, an American voter should take a step back. Try to dislodge themselves from the identity politics that the two parties have gorged themselves on for so long. Try to separate what one thinks is important in life, and what one thinks that a government should and should not do. Why we should have a government at all. Is the point of a government to provide a framework for clever entrepreneurs to fatten themselves on those with less initiative? Is it to provide legal assistance and support for basic services to gouge the citizens? Is it to project force out across the globe to shape and mold the many culture’s on this planet according to its own benefit?
Or is a government’s job to supply the citizens with conditions and services that the people want and need to carry on living with a little bit of dignity? Like clean water, electricity, medical assistance in times of need, education, or protection and security without destabilizing the rest of the world or demonizing and hunting certain domestic demographics in the process of providing it? Because the American government, under the flipping administrations of the two-party system isn’t doing most of that stuff any more…
Maybe, in this coming king-election, the American voter shouldn’t decide between one of these two complicit and fetid husks. Maybe the American voter shouldn’t be dazzled and blinded by all the identity politics and showmanship on display, but rather ask themselves what exactly they want out of their government. Whether or not they want a government that features their own personal preference in corruption, or if they want a government that does what a government should do. One that supplies the citizens with basic services and freedoms.
I get it. It’s scary to chose something new. I mean, look at the mess you’re in right now, with the Orange Hydra mucking absolutely everything up. Truth be told though, Trump was never something new. He just said he was, and a little less than half of America bought into the charade. It can be scary to make another venture outside of the true-and-tested filthery that is the American political pageantry.
But try to, even though it’s scary. Try to ask yourself if you really want to empower disconnected rich pricks in ivory towers to laugh at your crippling economical hardships? Do you really want to elect supremacist pigs that strive to outlaw basic human rights?
Or, do you want your children to breathe clean air? Do you want your medical treatments not to send you into debt? Do you want knowledge, wisdom, and learning not just to be a privilege for the rich? Do you want to be able to hold possession of your own body, and not be lynched from a lamp-post just because you didn’t want subject yourself to religious extremists, or maybe just a unwanted pregnancy?
If you like any of those things that I mentioned, maybe don’t vote for people that say that those things are impossible. Maybe don’t vote for people that say that those things will make you less “American”, whatever that is.
But maybe you like the US status quo? Maybe you like the prospect of bleeding out on the side-walk, not being able to afford an ambulance ride, shot with a Wal-Mart bullet, from a discount-bin firearm, by an angry child that’s been deemed ineligible for basic education, because its family is broke and/or dead; a father dead to leukaemia from drinking well-water tainted by an upstream pesticide factory, a mother knocked flat from pain-relief addiction, and a sister having been beaten to death outside an LGBT-club by unprosecuted religious extremists. Maybe you think all that is the American Way. What do I know…
/Sebastian Lindberg 9/12-2019
WastedWords 