The Nagging Swing of Dissatisfaction

"An army of the people is invincible!" ~ Mao Zedong (Quotations From Chairman Mao Tse-Tung)

In almost every national election for the past two decades, we have seen a change in control of either one or both houses of Congress or the White House. This has happened in 1992, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2002, 2006, 2008, and now again in 2010. The pattern is very clear. And it is not because Americans “prefer divided government,”-- it’s because they can’t get anyone in the system to listen to them!

Why is that? Becauseneither of these factions is ever going to change the system one iota if they can help it; they are the system, they are its servants, its enablers, its enactors.

There's talk today warning the TEA party people that the hard part starts today - to keep their candidates on point and not to fall into the pattern that seems to be the norm in Washington - absolute power.

"The usual pattern is that after the election the voters and the activists go back to their normal lives, but the organized interests redouble their efforts to influence policymakers....Tea Partiers must change that pattern. They must keep up the pressure on Congress and state legislators. They must demand actual performance, not just promises. And they must also seek to change the attitudes of the American people. It’s not enough to favor small government in principle; more voters have to agree to give up their own subsidies and benefits," writes David Boaz

That's all well and good - and yes, his suggestions should be taken to heart. They won't.

That's why the Pelosi-Reed gang did nothing to peel back anything the Bush Administration did from 2001-2006. Even when they had the majority - what, exactly, did they do differently? They stopped the wars. They repealed the Patriot Act. They put Rove and Cheney on trial and closed Gitmo. Oh, they didn't? That's right, because they voted or approved ALL of that on their watch with hardly a blink of an eye.

The Progressives elected Obama, sat down and went back to Tweeting. There was a real failure on their part to assume that Mr. Obama "Got It" and was willing to do whatever it took to get it done. On the left, there's a lot of blame and failure to shake at - but four fingers point back to the real problem... a fall back to apathy and complacency.

On the bright side, we're starting to - maybe barely - wake up from the United States of Amnesia. We know we've been lied to, bullsh*tted, and without cheap oil or Simon on American Idol - the end is near. Yes, this is the beginning of the end - who's end? That's up to us. It's all our doom if we don't wake up soon. It's theirs if we don't hit the snooze button - and they know that.

Meantime, here are two well crafted articles from two extreme ends of the political spectrum.
Paul Craig Roberts: The Impotence of Elections
Scott Tucker: Apocalypse Again: The Boom-and-Bush Cycle of Bipartisan Politics