And next thing you know, there’s the speaker on television, following his script and talking – yet again – about the fiscally reckless ways of Washington and how he knows – as a former small business owner or manager or whatever it was that he was – that this sort of irresponsibility would never play in the world of roll-up-your-sleeves businesses out there in the “real America,” where a dollar is worth exactly a dollar and the vast and rolling plains are populated by decent, hard-working folks who don’t rely on fancy accounting gimmicks. Then, the speaker declared with all the authenticity of a talking statue, that funny money business? That spending of cash we don’t have? In Washington, he said, those days are over.
And I thought, and I think I may have even said out loud to nobody but my television: Bullshit. The fact that John Boehner – and Barack Obama, for that matter – are on national television is all the proof I need that “those days” are anything but over. They’re part of the system, and part of the problem, and if they weren’t they wouldn’t be in office and would not, therefore, be on the television telling what’s over and when and how one “new day” or another officially begins.
My question is this. For whom are those kinds of statements intended? It reminds me of every presidential candidate I’ve ever followed declaring, with a sentimental little quiver in his voice, “America’s best days are ahead of her.” Who, who exactly, believes this? Who hears those words and thinks, that’s our man! He’s going to fix some shit! He gets it!
I find my answers – and then some – on Facebook. I think Facebook is more than a bit evil, but man, what a view it offers – which is critical, since the news is useless in that arena.
And just in case you have neither the time nor the interest in delving into the nation’s prevailing mindset by simply typing a password, I’m here to tell you, the messaging works. We balance our checkbooks at home, cried the chorus, why can’t they? Thanks to the people who control the news, this is what the entire “crisis” came down to. I pay my mortgage every month without bouncing a check, one of my “friends” wrote, and then added that she “expects the same of Washington.”
I don’t. Out here in “the real America” we elect year after year after year the same squeaky clean, sentimental candidates who will lie directly into the camera about the virtues of fiscal responsibility. They call it “speaking to our values.” And at the same time they accept donations from those individuals – and corporations – with enough money to influence how these candidates vote once they’re elected. Who do we suppose pays for those slick, hallucinogenic commercials upon which we base our voting decisions and the “strategic counsel” provided by the PR team – the kind of “consulting” without which nobody in Washington could prevail? It’s easier, I suppose, to sit back and, as long as all our needs are met, bitch and complain on Facebook about “Washington” and a term I’m pretty sure nobody, myself included, is capable of defining accurately: “A balanced budget.” Anyone who defined it correctly and actually talked about it wouldn’t make it past the most preliminary stages of a campaign. Besides being the kind of thing elitists talk about, it’s too boring to captivate our attention the same way as a congresswoman whose head was nearly blown off appearing on the floor for the first time “since Tucson” to cast her vote in support of ensuring the people with lots of money will continue to pay taxes at a lower rate than everyone I know. Now that, like all effective PR campaigns (in spite of my criticisms, they do know what they’re doing) made quite an impact.
