Giving the dog a bone

Even the well-publicized obstructionism in Congress is contrived and calculated in my opinion:  it keeps the side show of divisiveness and polarization going. 

It prevents people from studying the issues because of their disgust.

It causes people to look at their differences and fight for those differences instead of policies and practices that might edify us.

It’s like trying to take a bone from a dog and the dog clamps its teeth down harder…this is what obstructionism does.  Obstructionism causes people to have the reaction of biting down harder on the differences they believe they have with others.

In the end it is more an instinct than a desire.  It’s a reaction to manipulated conflict.  The person trying to take the bone has absolutely no use for it.  The obstructionists have no real use for being divisive.  Just following orders I’d imagine.

Giving the dog a bone.

Our system is thoroughly riddled with corruption; on both sides.

The kind of corruption that thrives in divisiveness.

The kind of corruption that is powerful enough to spend hundreds of millions on lobbying and financing political campaigns;

the kind that can play democrats against republicans while financing both as its own selfish agenda moves ever forward: war; deregulation; financial bailout at the expense of taxpayers; tax cuts for the rich; squeezing the poor; wage disparity; trade deals that further bleed us white; wage disparity; economic slavery and despair; bank accounts that earn less than 1/2 of one percent interest.

And as for Mr. Obama--he has proven to be a corporate politician loyal to a corporate agenda:  the corporate agenda is fueled by the will of a few.

He has pushed the corporate agenda legally, with charm, and good speech giving.

He rode a wave of hopefulness in 2008. Yet his corporate stances on TPP, on not continuing to fight for healthcare reform; on regime change and oil war; and ignoring the devastating effects of welfare reform cannot go ignored. With TPP especially he is ignoring the will of the people and Congress by vowing to continue to fight for it. He is a constitutional scholar and smart; not unlike Clinton I...so he is a great tool for the powerful to pass their agendas.

If the next savvy politician is a republican or democrat, or a hybrid republican-neoliberal like Clinton II, he or she will be used to advance the global corporate agenda.

Certainly, not to help the many in this country prosper.

Certainly, to help people feel empowered by encouraging them to express their intolerance of one another.

If it's not a sideshow in Congress, it is a sideshow of global and domestic terror.

If not global or domestic terror, it is a sideshow of hate crimes, mass killings, or same sex rights and rights to life.

Anything to make people trust that the established hierarchy will make things right and protect them if they only trust the system.

Anything to make people feel powerful in their hatred and intolerance while they ignore the issues that affect them economically, and socially as social services are cut to fuel the endless wars.

Therefore, the establishment order is placed above the law domestically and internationally; and above the interests of the many.

And this establishment is unsustainable for the many.

We need elected representatives who advocate for and interpret our laws with a bias toward the many, not a bias toward the few.

We're not getting any of that this round.

Nor did we that in the last four years of Obama, sad to say; or maybe not in any of his years since the wars got worse during the tenure of this Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

Divisiveness in the US is not so much fueled by political ideology as it is fueled by corporate think tanks:  the Heritage Foundation researches many issues such as leadership and immigration; and uses inflammatory language and negative stereotypical bias in its reports.  Project for a new American Century advocates events that will manipulate people into supporting global war.  Council on Foreign Relations researches foreign policy and international issues. And members of these and other conservative think tanks have familiar names like Rumsfeld, Negroponte, Rice, Clinton, and Bush.

They write our laws.  They advise elected officials in the Senate and Congress, and Presidents of both parties.

Somebody’s gotta do it I suppose.

In the end, it is elites doing elite things for elites while giving the masses a sideshow of divisive political dealings and oppressive domestic policies that keep people looking at people and their representatives and not the powers that drive politicians and their policies. 

And people seem to love chewing the bones of contention to their detriment.

It will be refreshing when this organized corporate dominance from big money and powerful lobbies and influential think tanks ends.

These influences will end when we break the stranglehold of the two-party system and elect more independents on the local, state, and national level who dare to be informed by more than corporate sources.  It will always be a challenge to diffuse the influence of the powerful.  But everything starts with a beginning.  And all things are sustained with vigilance.