Donkey's and Pachyderms and Bears, Oh My
An intelligent and respectful dissertation regarding the current political landscape and how to navigate it responsibly.
Some of you clicked on this article based on the political nature of the title.
*Door locks behind you
I’m so glad you could join me. Have a seat, don't mind the barred windows and rats, we have things to discuss.
First being:
You're getting played. And I don't mean, “dear sir or madam, I regret to be the one to inform you that you have been misled in regards to your particular understanding of current events”. I'm talking about, “Ayo,” lmao, “young blood done ate the candy bar on his pillow.” Wheezing, “He ‘bout to get them guts stirred up fo’ real”.
Buckle up, I'm probably going to offend many of you personally today.
A few years back they came out with a movie called “The Hunt” where cliche Liberals hunted cliche Conservatives for sport and I thought it was the best roast on both sides I'd ever seen. I'm actually surprised everyone didn't just quit and take their ball home after that. Easily a top 10 film for me.
This was solidified by the fact that the writers had the good sense to make the heroine, Betty Gilpin’s Crystal, an accidental outsider caught in between these two sides. Now that's an empowered, independent, don't need no man, action chic I can support. She was so weird and bad ass it was awesome.
And you know what? Both sides lost and her character ate Hillary Swanks grilled cheese sandwich. That's kinda where I'm going with this. You're all going to lose because you're fighting for sides who are not only not on your side, but aren't even “sides” to begin with. You've been bamboozled!
“tHaTS nOt tRUe! MY gUY iS diFfeReNT! yOur wROnG!!!!”
*Opossum screeching
Calm down, take a sip from your juice box, daddy's gonna go back to the beginning and explain how he came to this conclusion.
Growing up I never paid much attention to politics. And by “much” I really mean no attention whatsoever. I was just a “Democrat” like everyone else was because back then Republicans were seen as the “big business” party which made them the bad guys in my neighborhood. Boiler plate stuff.
Then came the time in my life where I started paying attention. This time “paying attention” meant I was listening to entirely one side of the argument exclusively. Now I was a red meat Republican with my very own echo chamber and everything. How dare Obama (insert literally anything he did ever) do that to us!
Don't you love how drastically pendulums swing?
Then came the 2016 election (dramatic music) and Trump. (Vincent Price laughing)
Of course Donald Trump would be the first time I voted in my entire life. Are you kidding me? Forget politics, this dude was completely out of his rabbit-ass mind and setting things on fire wherever he went all while talking smack like he was on a celebrity roast. Plus, who didn't dislike Hillary? Forget political party nonsense, you gotta admit that chic is what a snear would look like if you made it into a whole person.
It was like Tony Soprano running against Nurse Ratchet. I don't care who's side you were on back then, you gotta admit it's a creepily accurate comparison.
That's about the time it dawned on me. There's no possible way things are this ridiculous unless something isn't as it seems. Exaggeration is a bedfellow with bullshit. Given my makeup, my natural instinct at that point was to look for where a game is being played.
And wouldn't ya know it, I found one. I spotted the game to end all games: Politics. A game where y'all are the players AND the ones being played.
Here's where my suspicions began. There are seemingly infinite ways to make up who a person is as an individual. The best you can find are people who are similar in beliefs and ideals but none of us are actually the same. Hell, we argue over pizza toppings and somehow we all fit into one of two parties? Parties that exist in stark defiance of each other with functionally no overlap? Are you sure this isn't a HBO original series? Maybe we're in the Matrix already and the machines are too ignorant to script nuance while we're too dumb to notice.
“The Hunt” movie worked because it's more of a mirror than satire.
So now I'm looking at the parties themselves and the system they represent. Free of my childhood programing and the later echo chamber nonsense, I really looked at them. Imagine my surprise when I noticed there was no “them”. Instead I saw IT.
I saw the same monster that grows from every society, kingdom, government, social system as well as every other “ocracy” that has ever existed since we first began forming tribes.
Power.
The closer I looked the more I wondered why, if there's two distinct sides, does nothing ever change when they have their turn in control. You may be able to point to little individual things but those are nothing more than distractions to placate one side or the other. If they were really so different in their core beliefs, the things they yell about to get you vote, then each time one party assumed control they'd act and it would be undeniable.
Yet the only thing that actually changes each time one or the other gains control is that the system grows and shields itself from us further. Power feeding more power. They're all in on it. Yes, including your favorite one.
This is where a bunch of you start tic-tacing your comments before even finishing the article. I don't care, go nuts, just know that I see you.
Here's the thing, I'm not even saying that all of these politicians go into it like Bond villains with a plan to trick their voter base. That's would be a different kind of corny. I think they go in and get eaten. Just as power has always done, it devours those who get too close.
No man ever controls power, he becomes nourishment for it. That's why it continues after he's gone. The power, the system, the dragon, always wins. They may go in feeling like the hero knight only to discover how massive and indestructible the beast actually is and lose the grip on their sword.
But how did it get to be this way? Well, there are only two ways power can grow and protect itself: by inducing fear through unbridled force leveled upon the population or through keeping that population divided and fighting amongst themselves.
Guess which one we are? I'll wait if you need to phone a friend or pray on it or ask your dog what he thinks or whatever process you use.
As natural as nature taking back an abandoned house, power caused these parties to grow into their current charactures. Manipulating things so that the only way in is through increasingly extreme behavior and positions which, not accidentally, primes them beforehand to fall victim once they arrive.
These behaviors and rhetoric then infects those who placed them into power which then makes any potential successor obligated to go further which them raises that sides bar higher in and endless cycle. Making us all the victims while being guilty of our own victimization at the same time. It would be beautiful in its efficiency if we weren't being slowly digested.
Power corrupts. No one is immune. Power can only grow until it's too great even to sustain itself and then it dies. Creating a vacuum for it's next incarnation to be born and start the process all over again.
Ironically, it always begins pure and beneficial to those around it. It always has good roots. However growth is unavoidable and that's where the problem lies. If power doesn't grow and expand, it dies prematurely and a different power takes it's place. It really is nature in its most primal form. So it grows because it must, which inevitably leads to it's decay, which infects any who touch it, who then assist in it's further growth and decay. Once again, there's that perfect cycle.
Which brings us back to your “sides”. They're both part of the same behemoth. It's just so massive that you can't stand in one spot and see both it's left and right claws at the same time. You think they're separate from each other while each takes turns scooping us up to be eaten.
“The libs are doing this!”
“This is all the conservatives fault!”
Chomp! Om-nom-nom-nom
You're so busy fighting each other that there's no one left to deal with the real problem.
The irony is that it doesn't take violence to defeat power this massive. You simply have to starve it out. When it's this large, it doesn't actually take much. Just quit playing the sides game. Argue about individual issues that matter to you while neglecting the affiliation baggage that comes with them. You can argue against abortion without strapping yourself to Republicans. You can fight for gay rights without getting a Democrat party tattoo. Do it the way it was meant to be done. Locally, in your community. Stand up for neighbors, not nations. I know this because I believe in both of those things and neither God nor Government agents have struck me down yet.
You're voting on who to make powerful, not for someone who cares about what matters to you. They're not going to change anything beyond superficial nonsense to appease you. To trick you. Believe you me, they don't think their one party or the other the moment they enter that power. They're only purpose at that point is to feed and maintain the beast.
That's why Republicans and Democrats are just part of the game being played. There is only the powerful and the powerless. That's the truth behind every system of governance that has ever existed. The moment it's large enough to be noticed, to be given a name or definition, it's already so large it's self corrupting. It can do nothing but follow the cycle of growth and inevitable death. It can't be limited or controlled or rehabilitated into something else. It can only start over.
Just like in that movie “The Hunt”, all you can do is kill each other until the only one left is the person who wasn't a part of it to begin with. You can't win because you're not even in the real fight.
Quit letting them play you like puppets on strings. Quit letting them divide you for the singular purpose of sustaining themselves. Quit feeding power by allowing yourself to be it's food.
Can't you see it?
It's not supposed to be you vs me. It's supposed to be us vs them.
Here, because I'm not the bad guy and neither are you, I'll split my grilled cheese sandwich with ya.
See? This ain't so bad.
"It was like Tony Soprano running against Nurse Ratchet."
And just like that you win the internet on leap day.
Love this sentence Coleman: "As natural as nature taking back an abandoned house."