Week of 01/25/2016

Welcome to the 2016 Farce!
– by David Matthews 2

So here we are, the start of 2016, and the beginning of the celebration of two decades of Brutally Honest commentary!

When I began doing these columns two decades ago, we were in the middle of the 1996 Elections; when the GOP operated on the delusion that they could unseat Bill Clinton simply by putting up a career politician who bided his time, paid his dues, and waited his turn.  And today, we have living proof that the political bosses haven’t learned a single goddamned thing from those days.

First, a little explanation is in order.

For those who haven’t been keeping up with my columns, or if you just started reading them, or if they showed up in some Facebook post and you have no idea who I am, I refused to take part in any mention of the presidential wannabes for pretty much most of 2015, even though they dominated the air-fluffed ego-driven news.  Every so often I couldn’t help but to interject a passing comment or two, but I refused to fall into the trap set by the media that says that their daily horserace polls (or should that be ho-race polls?) were somehow their own primary-and-caucus system.  I refused to play their game, because there was still way too much going on to talk about that didn’t involve contenders and pretenders to the Oval Office.

But that was then.  This is now.  Now we are at the time when the candidates really matter, and when the voters actually have the opportunity to have their say as to which of those contenders and pretenders would be on the November ballot.

And I’m going to come out right now and give this election season its name.

Welcome to the 2016 Farce!

Why a farce?

Well take a look at who is running!

Let’s start with the Democrats.  It’s one thing to be immensely popular.  Or even moderately popular.  It’s another thing entirely to have one of the two dominant political parties in the United States so biased towards one candidate over any other that they will go so far as to cheat to give that one candidate a clear advantage.

And yet that is what the hierarchy of the Democratic Party is accused of doing.  They are so in political bed with Hillary Rodham Clinton that they have been manipulating debate schedules so that they get the least amount of attention, which leaves their friends in the air-fluffed ego-driven media free and clear to continue their own personal bias in her favor over any other candidate.

And I understand why they would want to do that.  Hillary is supposed to be the one and only candidate this time around.  This isn’t supposed to be an actual campaign for her... it’s supposed to be a confirmation.  Just like it was supposed to be in 2008.  Only, back then, it wasn’t.  Some junior Senator from Illinois named Barack Obama came in and “stole” all of Hillary’s thunder.

So, yeah, I can understand if Dem Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz doesn’t want her BFF Hillary to be denied her “destiny” for a second time.  Who knows if there would even be a third time for her if she’s not handed the nomination this time?

It’s a pity we don’t know too much about Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, thanks to the pro-Hillary manipulations.  I’m sure he means well, and could even be an effective Command-in-Chief.  But he’s the “nice guy” in this whole game, and, speaking as the ultimate “nice guy”, I know for a fact that “nice guys” finish last.

Ditto with Senator Bernie Sanders, although he’s been following Obama’s playbook so far in the media.  He’s been out there, getting his name out in the media, and giving Hillary a serious run for her money.  I would love to see him as the nominee, if only to stick it to Hillary and Schultz and their political schemes and manipulations.  Unfortunately, he’d have to fight a boatload of Orwellian brainwashing from the conservatives and neo-conservatives that have conditioned the American people to categorically hate anything connected to the world “socialist”, even if one were quantify it by calling themselves “democratic socialist”.

Meanwhile the GOP have a literal clown car of contenders and pretenders and wannabes.  There are so many candidate clowns that the GOP had to have a “kiddie table” debate along with their “main” debates of the ones that the party bosses deemed “credible”. 

Of course at the head of the GOP clown car (because he refuses to be anyplace else) is the biggest of the clowns: Donald Trump.  And no matter what he says, no matter what the GOP hierarchy does to try to neuter him, no matter how much media groups like the Huffington Post try to minimalize him, the dirty little secret is that he is the epitome of the GOP base.  All those Sarah Palin-like people who hate Muslims and think Obama wasn’t born in America and believe that God personally hand-carved the U.S. Constitution and handed to their lord and savior, George W. Bush, who think that the government should bomb first and ask questions never... those “’muricans” are all that are left of the GOP base!  Those are the people that Trump is feeding off of, because he firmly believes that those are the people that will show up at the primaries and caucuses.

Behind Trump is the Canadian-born Ted Cruz, the biggest political hypocrite in American history.  This is the same party and the exact same political faction that threw screaming temper tantrums for years over Barack Obama’s birth certificate, accused him of not being a native-born citizen as required under the Constitution - even though he was born in Hawaii - and yet they have no qualms whatsoever with Cruz being born in Canada and pull out some article in the Harvard Law Review from some Reagan-era attorney to proclaim it’s “okay” because his mother was an American citizen.  Talk about being a pompous self-serving self-righteous prick!  This is the same form of shysterism that came up with the “Twinkies” defense and “Affluenza”, and yet the only people who are speaking up about it are Donald Trump and yours truly, and I was saying something about this long before Trump even bothered to put his coiffed hair in the clown car!

Oh and I haven’t even gotten to the part of his connection to Goldman Sachs, the biggest of the Too Big To Fail groups that helped create the Great Recession!  And yet he wants to pretend he’s the champion of the common man!  Right!  And we’ve always been at war with Eastasia.

The rest of the clowns... seriously, they’re a joke!  Governor Jeb Bush was supposed to be the “smart” one in the family, not the “invisible” one.  Marco Rubio can claim to be a political “outsider” only because he’s been absent in his job as a Congressman.  You know, once upon a time, that would be called incompetence.  Dr. Ben Carson has a problem with facts, not to mention he’s the walking equivalent of Ambien.  Carly Fiorina sees videos that don’t exist and doesn’t understand that you can’t just grab a bunch of kids and use them for an anti-abortion prop without their parents’ permission.  Governor Chris Christy... well, I’ll cross that bridge when he’s relevant again.  Then there’s Rick “Frothy Mix” Santorum and Mike Huckabee, who was once declared “God’s Anointed Candidate”, and the rest of the also-rans and wannabes that you really have to wonder if they’re just in the running so they can win a free toaster.

And the frustrating part is that these are all the people that we, the voters, will have to pick from for the primaries and caucuses.  One of those aforementioned people will be the next President of the United States.

And it’s not that there won’t be better candidates on the November ballot.  There will be.  Former Governor Gary Johnson comes to mind, as does McAfee creator John McAfee.  Both of them are running for the Libertarian Party nomination.  Either one of them would be a far better choice than both clown cars.  But that all depends on you, the great unwashed, actually doing your jobs and considering those other options instead of all of you whoring out your votes to the GOP and DNC party bosses and their Orwellian scripts.

That’s why this 2016 election is a farce!  Because, let’s get brutally honest here... you each have the power to change things, and, each and every year, you categorically refuse to do your jobs!  You whore out your votes to the zero-sum fantasy script that says there are and have always been two and only two political parties since the dawn of humanity and that you have to choose which one of the two incompetent, inept, corrupt, socially destructive parties that you will throw your vote away for.  The GOP Clown Car may be full of delusional, corrupt, and inept candidates, but they pale in comparison to the gross incompetence and ineptitude of you, the voters!  And they know it!  They know it!  Why do you think there are so many clowns in that car in the first place?

But to borrow from the biggest of the clowns (and his most recent supporter), in terms of farces, there is no doubt this will be the greatest, most spectacular of spectacles in the history of farces.  In fact, it can’t help but be the absolute best farce given who is involved.  It will be the envy of the world and will make all other farces pale in comparison.  Even the lame-stream media will be in awe of how great this farce will be.  It will be so monumental that we’ll even be convinced to pay for it!  Guaranteed!  You betcha!