Pundits like to say that Washington politicians live in a bubble.
They use the bubble theory to explain why elected officials profess to care about the average person yet continue to vote in favor of policies that seem to maintain the status quo -- where wealthy and powerful people and corporations get the mother-lode and the rest of us get the crumbs.
The bubble theory is a myth.
Elected officials are not walking around, unaware of what is going on around them.
They are shrewd, calculating and ambitious people who got where they are because they know how to play the GAME.
And the game is what politics is now and has always been about; a power match where back-room deals are made and minds are made up -- long before we see the public spectacle of hearings and long-winded speeches on CSPAN.
Some say that a democracy is messy and that compromises must be made in Washington in order to get anything done.
Democracy = Compromise is another myth.
The myth that compromises must be made in a democracy is perpetrated to excuse our representatives in government when they side with the opposition or vote for something that goes against their constituency.
Actually, politics is more like the mob. Government is a seedy business. Elected officials, like mobsters have now and always will do what needs to be done to keep themselves in power.
It is not about you and me. Never was.
The only way to get politicians to do the bidding of the people who "elect" them (something they are supposed to be doing anyway) is to truly threaten them with losing that seat of power.
That is why both political parties spend so much time working to rig elections so that only a few ethically minded people get voted into the club. The local party bosses act as street thugs bullying people to fall in line or risk losing support.
It is a sickening reality folks. Best we all wake up to it.
Speaking of waking up, last night I dreamed that I was living in a country that was spiraling downward toward fascism.
In my dream, the government and its agencies condoned and committed torture. They imprisoned innocent men, women and, yes, children, with no probable cause and no habeas corpus.
People were kidnapped from their home countries and taken to distant lands where they were subjected to horrifying "enhanced interrogation."
Every person in my country had their phones and computers secretly monitored. Detention-like camps were being constructed and private military armies were being paid and trained to deal with "homeland" emergencies.
In my dream my country was in the throes of an economic disaster. People were losing their jobs, wages were low, homes were lost. The wealthy got richer and the rest of us poorer.
It was a gray and frightening world.
Like those dreams where I am naked in a crowd, it seemed that no one else noticed what was happening. They walked like zombies around me -- either numb or unconcerned.
I remember a Twilight Zone episode where the Earth was hurtling toward the sun. The main character, Norma, was dealing frantically with a chaotic world that grew hotter and hotter. Finally overcome from the heat and the trauma, Norma screams and passes out.
Then comes the "Twilight Zone" twist: Norma wakes up to find that it's snowing outside. She'd been having a nightmare. The Earth isn't falling into the sun, after all; it's actually spinning away from the sun. The world isn't going to end in searing heat, but in a dark and deathly deep-freeze. Fade to credits.
And then it hit me like a sickening punch in the gut.
It is NOT a dream.
It is a NIGHTMARE.
My country IS hurtling toward fascism.
And I feel helpless to stop it.
