Ordinary People

I can't read and I don't care
and education's awful
Raisin' heck and writing checks
it ought to be unlawful
--Cornbread and Butter Beans, traditional

Waving to the girls
Peeling out of sight
Spending all my money
On a Saturday night
--Pink Cadillac, Aretha Franklin

I know a place
Ain't nobody cryin'
Ain't nobody worried
Ain't no smilin' faces
Lyin' to the races
--I'll take you there,
The Staples Singers

Often, I am told, they dance a fiery dance
And whirl 'till they're completely uncontrolled
Soon the mind is blank and oh, they're in a trance
A violent trance astounding to behold
--What Do Simple Folk Do?,
Camelot

If you can talk with crowds
and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings---
nor lose the common touch
--IF, Rudyard Kipling
________________

Our friend Chief at Graphic Firing Table eloquently eviscerates the Republican Party, 2012. His is effective all the moreso because he grieves for what it once was -- a viable second party for our Republic -- but no longer is.

Ranger will see him, and raise him $100.

Since John F. Kennedy's Camelot we have conspicuously consumptive winners inhabiting the White House, from Martha's Vineyard, to Kennebunkport, back to the Vineyard (with the Obamas). Ranger, like most Americans, was not to the manor born. He attended a state university with a degree in American Studies, and strives to understand his nation's trajectory.

John Kerry was a bespandexed-wearing 2004 Democratic contender against the oil mogul George W. Bush. Now Mitt Romney, he of non-Socialistically-gained largesse, shamelessly flaunts his wealth in a way he thinks the masses will grasp, with mention of his multiple Cadillacs. No one bothers to choke on Clinton's words, because they do not "feel our pain". We the people are as martians to these high-fliers.

Sure, men like Franklin Delano Roosevelt were to the manor born, but they tempered their Hyde Parks with their Warm Springs (FDR's humble Southern retreat). FDR moved amongst the people, in order to get a sense of their trials and travails. Politicians today have lost the common touch.

Yet, the plebs are not rankled at the gulf between they and these fortunate he's because their betters appear to condescend to them; they do this so slickly that the groundlings don't even notice. They do this in the most common form -- by making the plebs feel as though they have some "ownership", that this is "their" society and that together "we" will protect our borders from fearsome interlopers, for instance. What this will do for the proles in uncertain, beyond presumably keeping the pool of minimum wage jobs open for them to compete amongst themselves, while toeing the party line fed to them, which is to rue the day the Other party rose to power and somehow sold them down the river.

Hope is the thing the demogogues peddle. If you hope for change, in four short years I will bring you back to the prosperity that is rightly yours. But not before me and mine get ours, by shorting you and yours in some way beyond the boundary of your horizon. If you are obedient, you may be able to afford daily greens fees and possibly rub shoulders with your betters.

You -- whoever you are -- will like and affiliate with us because we are you, or what you might be, if you pull yourselves up by your bootstraps. Maybe you've lost so much hope that you just hope you can tread water wherever that line is for you. Whatever your goal, we will help get you there. We, under the Hart-Schaffner-Marx suits, are simple folk, just like you.

Make no mistake: Ranger is neither Democratic nor Republican. We are loyal United States citizens who feel like strangers in a strange land when confronting the excess of our leaders. The Dennis Kucinich's of civic life are rare, and painted as space aliens for their modesty. (You have to be nuts not to feed at the trough, right?) So, why do we buy into the shtick?

We work and struggle to do our best for family and country, and the best we get are these spoiled, entitled pretty boys. How does the U.S. really differ from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar or any other country run by potentates?

Does an election = democracy? We laugh at the Soviet regimes for having elections with one candidate on the ticket. We may have two, but does it matter?

Winning an election does not entail the same skill set required to govern a nation. That may be part of the problem: We get money-raisers, but not nation-makers.

--by Jim and Lisa