Here's an issue that illustrates why I sometimes wonder about not just my own sense of reality, but what I try to perceive and accept as the truth.

I wonder if anything in the "here and now" of daily life and our society-wide discussions have anything to do with what is really going on. If it's not just all part of a bigger more sinister rouge that the most powerful behind the scenes are orchestrating. And we really are all just a bunch of ignorant slobs, puppets who can't feel the tug of our own strings...

I mean is it really George Orwell's world of "1984"?


Here is a petition (please sign it) concerning the Social Security bullshit debate that the Republicans are pulling our collective tea-bagged (I wonder if any of them baggers are starting to feel their butts pucker yet?) strings on us and the White House with the same lame deficit-driven arguments which only further distract us from the actual flaws in their logic.

I mean it's that old paradox, like the Russian matryoshka doll box; a puzzle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, etc.

OK, here's why I will find myself in this quandary. And it's so irritating because it is a quandary. I'll see the contradictions, then forget because I seem to be the only one who does...

Anyway, all this right-wing discussion about cutting spending, lowering the deficit (never mind that repealing the health care bill will actually add 130+ billion to the deficit) implementing austerity measures, and on and on. Never ever expecting anything from the big corporations or the wealthiest of our citizens. No, it's always on the backs of the poor and middle class.

And then over here-there is another 'routine' discussion going on about the general economy and creating jobs, investing, etc. Yet the two discussions never the twain seem to meet. When they seem to me to be both part of the same discussion. The same problem, the same challenge.

I mean isn't there a contradiction here? If you raise the retirement age, for instance, that means more people will have to work more years? But unemployment is already way out of hand. So if we raise retirement age, won't that just result in even more unemployment? And won't that just exacerbate the recession? Hurt the economy even more? Put more pressure on the entitlement system? All the things that the Republicans claim to be fixing with their proposed measures?

Isn't it "in reality" counterproductive to the extreme?

Here's another one that gets a little attention from time to time, but almost never on the bigger mainstream media stage: The Health Care repeal that the house just passed? Those GDMFing hypocrites! I think I heard of one rep who has declined to sign onto the congressional health care plan. A plan that rivals anything in the private sector and is much more affordable. Almost like a "universal-medicare-for-all" type plan. But they don't bother to mention this program or it's exemption from the repeal they seek...

By the way, I finally got to see John Boehner cry the other day. Aside from it actually causing me embarrassment, it was so obviously an on-demand act, that I can't believe how anyone can take this man seriously. He's gonna end up like Tom Delay. Wait and see.

So here's what they do, both sides of the political trough. Um I mean aisle. They use time-tested oratory and debating skills to weave a web of innuendo, false claims and most important, distraction from the total 360 degrees of the issue. So we only see the side and bits and pieces they want us to see. That way they can argue nonsense in a sensible fashion. And they get you too hot under the collar with their clever ratcheted-up rhetoric to say "Hey, wait a minute... that's not right is it?"

All this effort works best where they most want it too. With the media. So when we hear it on the news it's only an echo, and nothing more. Sadly, even the most progressive observers will be caught up in the trance and can only counter in the context so skillfully given them. I find myself screaming at their words, their take on the story,

BUT YOU'RE MISSING THE POINT THAT DESTROYS THEIR WHOLE ARGUMENT! HOW CAN YOU NOT SEE THAT?

AARRGGHH!!!