It can be said with some degree of certainty that I am on the downside of the mountain when it comes to the average life expectancy for Homo sapiens. However, with age comes a resignation to the fact that all of life’s lessons were not learned in the classroom. I have come to realize that a sizeable portion of that education came from the native wisdom garnered from the people who walked in and out of my life over the years.
I was extremely fortunate to have had the privilege of being born and raised in the State of Wyoming. It was (and still is) a sparsely populated state occupied by people who were not afraid to be genuine. Generally speaking, they were people who took pride in being rugged individualists, but rarely ruthless. They could see wisdom in the most basic and simple forms of life, and the resultant behaviors that emanated from their unique makeup. I leaned a lot from the weathered faces of ranchers and ranch hands who grew up on and where they worked at being “real” cowboys, a labor of love throughout most of their lives. I learned a lot from the people who inhabited those small towns, looked out for each other and genuinely cared about their common lot. I grew up in a poor family, but when I left to go out into the bigger world, I took with me a wealth of life’s gems and the lessons I was taught that would sustain me for the rest of my life. Little did I realize at that stage of my life just how precious it was to become in the years ahead.
When I entered university little did I imagine that I would encounter the personification of that wisdom and the colorful patterns of speech I had taken with me as part of my youthful legacy. She was a Professor of English, but her name escapes me. At that time, I would estimate she was in her fifties. She was a bit on the full-figured side, with a head of hair dyed to a flaming red. She had blue eyes and an infectious laugh that kept things on a lighter note, but laced with profundities gained from her life’s experiences. She did her doctoral dissertation on the swearing habits of Alaskan Sourdoughs. She would often remark that there was no better music to her ears than someone who could swear with conviction. She regarded swearing as a colorful enhancement to what might have been an otherwise boring form of speech. She pitied those who were offended by mere “words,” and those who could not see beyond the form to the substance of what was being said. She, also, admonished us to cultivate the friendship of those who would enrich our lives, comparing them to the cracked pepper on the “salad of life.” An integral part of their makeup would be the ability to use colorful language to make a point and to spice up what could easily have been a dull and uninteresting verbal discourse.
With this rather protracted introduction, let me warn you that I intend to use a few bits of “salty” language in this piece of writing which some may find offensive. Should that be the case, so be it. I make no apologies for my choice of words.
I continue to be more than mildly disappointed at where we are, as a nation, given our politics and the institutions of government that flow from them. I see the whole lot as being so corrupt that the stench of what they are and all they represent would make a host of celestial beings vomit. They are all cut from the same cloth and have not one modicum of shame at pandering to those who own their very souls in exchange for the favors they are pledged to return to their benefactors. There isn’t one branch of government that is immune to this pernicious corruption and the evil use of power it has spawned. But, it seems as if none is willing or has the courage to call them out on it. Rather, they seem more inclined to focus on what they want to believe and ignore what they find disparaging of their beliefs. None does this better than the cadre of television personalities who just cannot bring themselves to be honest about what is really going on around us, with the attendant consequence of literally destroying our system of government.
Barack Obama, is aided and abetted by prominent figures from the Clinton Administration, Bill Clinton himself, and the myriad members of the Democratic Party who have no compunction about compromising their characters for the sake of a buck. They are, at the end of the day, nothing more than the “kissing cousins,” of their Republican counterparts. The mainstream news media have no trouble in serving as the willing accomplices to the mass deception being perpetrated against the American people. As an old cowboy once said, “They are like an old bull with one horn and one testicle. They can’t fuck nor fight; all he can do is bellow and shit.”
Several of the commentators on MSNBC, who I regard as real champions of the working class and poor of this country, just cannot bring themselves to fairly criticize the President for his consistent betrayal of the American people. All it would take to throw that entire issue into sharp relief would be to engage a couple of broadcast interns, have them prepare a grid, then identify all of the promises Barack Obama made in his quest for the White House in 2008, versus the actual outcome of those campaign promises in their final form. I have no doubt that it would boggle the mind to clearly see and to realize just how consistent he has been in his wholesale sellout of the Democratic Party and the people of this country, all justified in the name of bipartisanship. Give me a break!
The President isn’t the only one who seems to be infected with “Potomac Fever.” That is a malady which has been endemic in our nation’s capitol for much too long. The symptoms are a genuine belief in the arrogance of privilege. They really believe there is one set of rules that apply to the governed and one set of rules that apply to those who govern. The rule of law is much more absolute and stringent for the former and much more flexible and permissive for the latter. Those who are elected to office vs. the electorate are worlds apart. A two-class society, if you will, and still growing. What is so repugnant is that those in power honestly believe in the overriding sense of entitlement they practice, with little or no empathy for those who must bear the cost of and suffer the consequences for what has been unleashed upon us without our consent. It isn’t just Wall Street; it is all that is subsumed within the Beltway, as well. Make no mistake about it.
We seem to be locked into a persistent state of self-delusion. We just cannot bring ourselves to the point of expressing our outrage at the way we are treated by the “privileged class,” so we just continue to bitch and take it with no real organized effort to rectify the situation. No one can convince me that there aren’t a few very well qualified leaders out there who are both honest and have the courage to embark on a program that would restore a sense of equality and justice that would apply to everyone. As much as I would like to see it happen, I don’t believe that time is on the side of creating a viable third political party that could challenge those ensconced in power within the two-party system. However, by identifying those few who are real leaders and who do have a sense of fairness within the fabric of their being, I have no doubt that a strong alternative could be groomed in sufficient time to effectively challenge Barack Obama for the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party in 2012. He or she just might shake the very foundation of all the self-righteous whores who flaunt their ability to effectively screw the common people of this country. Who, I ask you, in their right mind could honestly trust any of them to be genuine? There just has to be a concerned and interested group of people out there who have the means and the talent to make that happen.
Where are they and why don’t they come out of the shadows?” Why don’t they ferret out the views of a few real ‘Progressives” like David Michael Green at Hofstra University, Bill Moyers, Chris Hedges, David DeGraw, Tom Hartmann, Robert Reich, Alan Grayson, Bernie Sanders and others of like mind?
I am thinking of people like Dylan Ratigan, Cenk Uygur, Keith Olbermann, all of whom have positions of high visibility and prominence, and those known by others with similar concerns. I am thinking of people like Eliot Spitzer, Alan Grayson, Elizabeth Warren, Peter DeFazio and others who make no bones of how seriously they see the lay of the land at the present time. Every one of them has the determination and the tenacity to light a spark that just might evoke the changes that we need to make.
Just step back and take a long, hard look at what we really have within the two-party system. It can be summed up in the words of that Wyoming Cowboy reputed to have once said, “They don’t know if they are afoot or horseback.” If a determined effort is not made to break the franchise of the status quo within the two major political parties, we are going to end up with just more of the same in the wake of the next national election that could cost and further imperil the democracy in which have placed all our dreams for the future. I honestly believe that is within the realm of possibility. The demonstrations of the Occupy Wall Street marches across this nation underscore that concern.
Cowboy Bob
The Sagebrush Philosopher
October 28, 2011
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