This may help to better understand the Washington
establishment and its courtesan punditry who serve to
reinforce their ceaseless narrative of exceptionalism.
This is why they've disingenuously covered up the
infantilism of George W. Bush for so long: Little
Dubya is the id of the ruling class made manifest —
he's their troubled child, who, by his destructive
actions, cracks the deceptively normal veneer of a
miserable family and reveals the rot within. At a
certain level, it's damn entertaining: his instability
so shakes the foundation of the house that it causes
the skeletons in its closets to dance.
By engaging in a mode of being so careless it amounts
to public immolation, these corrupt elitists are
bringing the empire down. There is nothing new in
this: Such recklessness is the method by which cunning
strivers commit suicide.
Those who take the trouble to look will apprehend the
disastrous results of the ruling elites' pathology:
wars of choice sold to a credulous citizenry by public
relations confidence artists; a predatory economy that
benefits one percent of the population; a demoralized,
deeply ignorant populace who are either unaware of or
indifferent to the difference between the virtues and
vicissitudes of the electoral processes of a
democratic republic, in contrast to the schlock
circus, financed by big money corporatist, being
inflicted upon us, at present.
Moreover, the elitist's barriers of isolation and
exclusion play out among the classes below as an
idiot's mimicry of soulless gated "communities" and
the pernicious craving for a vast border wall — all
an imitation of the ruling classes' paranoia-driven
compulsion for isolation and their narcissistic
obsession with exclusivity.
Perhaps, we should cover the country in an enormous
sheet of cellophane and place a zip-lock seal at its
southern border, or, better yet — in the interest of
being more metaphorically accurate — let's simply zip
the entire land mass of the U.S. into a body bag and
be done with it.
What will be at the root of the empire's demise? It
seems the elite of the nation will succumb to "Small
World Syndrome" — that malady borne of incurable
careerism, a form of self-induced cretinism that
reduces the vast and intricate world to only those
things that advance the goals of its egoist sufferers.
It is an degenerative disease that winnows down the
consciousness of those afflicted to a banal nub of
awareness, engendering the shallowness of character on
display in the corporate media and the arrogance and
cluelessness of the empire's business and political
classes. It possesses a love of little but mammon; it
is the myth of Midas, manifested in the hoarding of
hedge funds; it is the tale of an idiot gibbering over
his collection of used string.
What can be done? In these dangerous times,
credulousness to party dogma is as dangerous as a
fundamentalist Christian's literal interpretation of
The Bible: There is no need to squander the hours
searching for an "intelligent design" within the
architecture of denial and duplicity built into this
claptrap system — a system that we have collaborated
in constructing by our loyalty to political parties
that are, in return, neither loyal to us nor any idea,
policy nor principle that doesn't maintain the
corporate status quo.
Accordingly, we must make the elites of the Democratic
Party accountable for their betrayal — or we
ourselves will become complicit. The faith of
Democratic partisans in their degraded party is
analogous to Bush and his loyalist still believing
they can achieve victory in Iraq and the
delusion-based wing of the Republican Party who, a few
years ago, clung to the belief, regardless of facts,
that Terri Schiavo’s brain was not irreparably damaged
and she would someday rise from her hospital bed and
bless the heavens for them and their unwavering
devotion to her cause.
Faith-based Democrats are equally as delusional. Only
their fantasies don't flow from the belief in a
mythical father figure, existing somewhere in the
boundless sky, who scripture proclaims has a deep
concern for the fate of all things, from fallen
sparrows to medically manipulated stem cells; rather,
their beliefs are based on the bughouse crazy notion
that the elites of the Democratic Party could give a
fallen sparrow's ass about the circumstances of their
lives.
In the same manner, I could never reconcile myself
with the Judea/Christian/Islamic conception of god —
some strange, invisible,
"who's-your-daddy-in-the-sky," sadist — who wants me
on my knees (as if I'm a performer in some kind of
cosmic porno movie) to show my belief in and devotion
to him — I can't delude myself into feeling any sense
of devotion to the present day Democratic Party.
Long ago, reason and common sense caused me to
renounce the toxic tenets of organized religion. At
present, I feel compelled to apply the same principles
to the Democratic Party, leading me to conclude, as
did Voltaire regarding the unchecked power of The
Church in his day, that we must, "crush the infamous
thing."
Freedom begins when we free ourselves from as many
illusions as possible — including dogma, clichés,
cant, magical thinking, as well as blind devotion to a
corrupt political class.
I wrote the following, before the 2006 mid-term
election: "[...] I believe, at this late hour, the
second best thing that could come to pass in our
crumbling republic is for the total destruction of the
Democratic Party — and then from its ashes to rise a
party of true progressives.
"[...] I believe the best thing that could happen for
our country would be for the leaders of The Republican
Party — out of a deep sense of shame (as if they even
possessed the capacity for such a thing) regarding the
manner they have disgrace their country and themselves
— to commit seppuku (the act of ritual suicide
practiced by disgraced leaders in feudalist Japan) on
national television.
"Because there's no chance of that event coming to
pass, I believe the dismantling of the Democratic
Party, as we know it, is in order. It is our moribund
republic’s last, best hope — if any is still
possible."
I received quite a bit of flack from party loyalist
and netroots activists that my pronouncement was
premature and we should wait and see.
We've waited and we've seen. Consequently, since the
Republican leadership have not taken ceremonial swords
in hand and disemboweled themselves on nationwide TV,
it's time we pulled the plug on the Democratic Party,
an entity that has only been kept alive by a
corporately inserted food-tube. In my opinion, this
remains the last, best hope for the living ideals of
progressive governance to become part of the body
politic.
Phil Rockstroh, a self-described, auto-didactic,
gasbag monologist, is a poet, lyricist and philosopher
bard living in New York City. He may be contacted at:
philangie2000@yahoo.com
Writings 
Betrayal is often a consequence of wishful thinking.
It's the world's way of delivering the life lesson
that it's time to shed the vanity of one's innocence
and grow-the-hell-up. Apropos, here's lesson number
one for political innocents: Power serves the
perpetuation of power. In an era of runaway corporate
capitalism, the political elite exist to serve the
corporate elite. It's that simple.
Why do the elites lie so brazenly? Ironically, because
they believe they're entitled to, by virtue of their
superior sense of morality. How did they come to this
arrogant conclusion? Because they think they're better
than us. If they believe in anything at all, it is
this: They view us as a reeking collection of
wretched, baseborn rabble, who are, on an individual
level, a few billion neurons short of being governable
by honest means.
Yes, you read that correctly: They believe they're
better than you. When they lie and flout the rules and
assert that the rule of law doesn't apply to them or
refuse to impeach fellow members of their political
and social class who break the law — it is because
they have convinced themselves it is best for society
as a whole.
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