Originally posted on Facebook...
Two days after the State of the Union (which I didn't watch this year, thank goodness), the media erupted in joy. President Obama had gone to the House Republican Retreat in Baltimore and apparently, had totally schooled them all. Kicked ass, took names, etc. It was 'awesome.' Supposedly, anyway. Lefties, bloggers, the internet- fans of the Prez were reacting as if this were the coolest thing since sliced bread. People were getting practically aroused by it. The President stood at a podium and sounded confident and actually seemed to know what he was doing! Pass the Miracle Whip and a box of kleenex honey! We're having a party...
I resisted the urge to join in the hordes of people watching what seemed to amount to a piece of political porn. When it comes to political porn, I prefer things like 'The West Wing.' Liberal, sure- preachy sermons? Irritating, but they can be ignored. And then again, there's that saving grace of excellent writing and acting. It helps when politicians are fictional and can't do any real damage to anything.
Then the internet erupted once again: Sarah Palin had gone to the Tea Party Convention in Nashville and delivered the keynote address and she had... written some notes on her palm. This was apparently the end of civilization as we know it... she wrote something on her palm! (The media ignoring the shot of President Obama behind a veritable wall of teleprompters at an elementary school that had surfaced some weeks before.)
At that point, the Pres and the former Gov had forced my hand. I had to watch. I had to fortify myself, balance my chi and somehow harness the power of the internet to watch both Palin's speech and Obama's beatdown and see if they lived up to the hype. Nearly an hour and a half later, I was ready to poke my eyeballs out with a spoon, but the deed had been done. Between the two of them, they had manage to convince me that the two party system- in fact our political system as a whole is completely and utterly broken. And there's very little hope that it can be fixed anytime soon.
What convinced me?
Well, the supposed beatdown delivered by the President was anything but that. He was at his coma-inducing best , delivering sometimes blunt, oftentimes vague answers to Republican questions that amounted to little more than hot air. In a bit of even more depressing news, Republicans showed nothing remotely resembling coherence- instead offering sometimes blunt, sometimes vague questions that amounted to little more than hot air. A great debate? Hardly. An impressive performance? Nope. Just business as usual on the part of both sides. And given the fact that the Republican Party is supposed to save us from Democratic incompetence this November, the astonishingly tone-deaf performance of Republican leaders and members was truly rage inducing. Although both sides talked earnestly of bipartisanship and working together, one was left with the impression that both sides knew full well that it was all talk. No one wants to step up and get things done. No one wants to act like a grown up- and when the Democrats are back in the opposition, I'll imagine that they will be just as obstructionist as Republicans are being now. All this talk of ending the filibuster? Stupidity of the worst kind- the Democrats will only complain bitterly about it when out of power and the obstruction could be avoided entirely if someone in Washington would step up. But there's no chance of that now, I think.
Palin's speech was impressive. I honestly think that she might be the smartest politician in America right now, because unlike the tone deaf fools in Washington, she at least seemed to recognize that people are genuinely pissed off. As with any prominent woman that looks the least bit Presidential, a wall of sexist bullshit quickly sprang up from the media (Hillary Clinton gets it from the right, Palin from the left.) The obsession with her hand obscured a few key points-- she once again, seemed to spit at the idea of 'education' saying that we needed a 'commander in chief and not a professor of law at the lectern'- the anti-intellectual strains of the right once again rearing their irritating heads. (Though to be fair, the snotty elitism of academia makes it far too easy for them to make something close to a point.) But it obscured the larger point: the growing disconnect between Washington D.C. and the American people. It's getting bigger by the day- and although it may be the smart politician that hitches their star to the populist anger sweeping the nation, but if elected, what guarantee, if any do we have of substantive change?
None whatsoever. Which is why I am now firmly convinced nothing is to be done. Both parties have proven themselves untrustworthy, incompetent and tone deaf to the needs of the American people and will continue to obfuscate and fail to do anything of consequence until the system we have now is broken down and swept away. The monopolistic strangehold on the political system that the two parties have has to be broken. Free and fair competition in the political 'marketplace' must be assured. The structures of our system are not designed to lead to a mess of parties bunging up the system and there is a current dearth of viable parties waiting to emerge- but breaking the two party control of the mechanisms of our democracy is crucial to ensuring an environment which would allow for the emergence of a third and maybe fourth party. Until such an event occurs, both parties will continue to trade power freely with no need to compromise or work together- why bother, when your time in opposition consists of waiting for the other party to screw it up. For any of the problems of this country to be solved, the American people need to have a way to say 'a plague on both your houses' and boot both parties from power in the favor of a third.
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