I’ve been trying, unsuccessfully, to disengage from the election circus.  All of the hopefulness that accompanied the Obama victory of 2008 has been systematically dismantled and replaced by a pervasive agenda, scripted and presented by the dumbest among us.  Au contraire, you may reply.  There are some big-brained, well-funded political and corporate leaders pulling the strings of the manic minions and cacophonous candidates garnering so much media attention, you might add.  I know.  That’s who I’m talking about.

The ebb and flow of policy and public opinion has always been amorphous, but since the 2008 election and simultaneous financial meltdown there has been an obvious, (to me anyway), disconnect between reality and the emotional response to it, and a positive morph seems virtually impossible.  Our bought-and-paid-for Supreme Court has opened the flood gates of corporate financing for political whack jobs and turned the process of due process into a non-stop deluge of preposterously fallacious sounds bites aimed at destabilizing anything that might undermine the profits of those same shadowy financiers.  The unbridled spending on this midterm election could be the tipping point where we finally lose our equilibrium as the influential weight of greed topples our humanity; the greed that has demonized every socially responsible issue by disguising it, (appropriately in time for Halloween), as a threat to personal freedom, when the only real threat is to the bottom line of the greediest.  The fanatical, head-stomping, factually challenged envoys of these overlords would, in less desperate times, never be taken seriously.  They misquote the Constitution which they brandish as their ‘other bible’, (falling short of blaspheming its import in relation to the non-fiction, literal version of the holy book) and avoid the press with their pesky requests for verification or substantiation of any of their outrageous statements.  They emphatically embrace the contradiction between that which makes them the most outraged and the singular platform on which they are all so tenuously balanced, their hatred of government, (except for the Medicare and the unemployment and, oh yeah, roads and electricity and water…).  As we inch closer to Tuesday, they are locked and loaded to wrestle back control of America, (with weapons if necessary), and return it to the capable hands of free enterprise.

Note to the lunatic fringe:  Whose hands do you think it’s in?  You have been bamboozled into believing in a false idol named Palin.  All of your guns are aimed at your own feet and your efforts and energy are suicidally hammering the last nail into the coffin of the middle class.  If you don’t understand any of these words ask an immigrant to explain.  In the meantime, to make sure you’re prepared for the most you can hope for in the future, repeat after me:  “Good morning.  Welcome to Walmart.  May I be of any assistance?”