Duopoly Politics Have Changed the Game

In a duopoly we no longer have a choice about who sets the debate. It used to be that the Republicans had an advantage over the Democrats in their ability to keep twisting the content of the debates to the subjects they could use to their advantage. Now, both parties want to avoid any talk on foreign policy, for instance. They are mostly in agreement on the subject. Both sides want to keep going on the track that we are on because it is greatly to the advantage of the corporations.  From all accounts, the American people are fed up with our wasteful wars. Therefore we go back to yelling about guns and abortions.

On the subject of guns and abortions we are headed for the dark ages. So be it. If we had universal free birth control readily available, maybe we would have less need for abortions. If no one had a gun, maybe there would be fewer shootings. I don't know. If we stopped occupying countries or at the least stopped terrorizing them, maybe we would have fewer enemies. If we had some kind of bottom line of survival below which we didn't allow our citizens to fall, maybe we would have less poverty. Oh my God! I sound like a socialist.

It must be time for a new McCarthy era. No one dares to speak of logical human things because then they will be called socialist. In the days of The House Committee on UnAmerican Activities or whatever it was called, they were witch hunting Communists. Now a politico can't even talk about feeding hungry children without being labeled a socialist. I wonder what that dread term means to most people.I expect it has come to mean that Chairman Mao will have us all in pajamas laboring in fields for 20 hours a day. It must be something awful, because it has obviated any calls for human dignity in this country. Un poulet por chaque pot, as was the cry of the peasants inciting the French Revolution in the 1700s. A chicken for every pot. The peasants were hungry and had to watch the obscene display of wealth by the aristocracy. They finally got royally pissed off.

Funny, that so far we think the obscenely wealthy deserve to have it all and the poor must deserve their miserable lives. The problem is that the system is rigged and it is unsustainable. Did you ever see Mother Courage by Bertolt Brecht? There is a scene where a mother goes into a department store where the racks are overflowing with overcoats and her child is freezing to death. She kind of looses it. I would too.It just isn't right.

And in the  karmic picture, it is all wrong. If we are smart enough to consider just how unbelievably blessed we are in the world picture and we like it, the only way to keep the good karma coming in this life and the next is to be generous. This means in our thinking and speech as well as our pocketbooks. When the end comes we will be judged on who we are not what we have.