How can one effectively describe Washington?  The simile the word evokes in my mind is that of a malfunctioning engine, a motor whose gears are jarringly rotating in opposition, preventing it from accomplishing its raison d’être – direction and motion.  It is certainly popular to adopt this perception, and with good reason, but perhaps assigning the totality of guilt to Washington is an assessment that does not take into account an important part of the pathology of the current legislative disease: its origin, we the people.  That city is a reflection of the country at large.  It is invested -or infested – with the personalities we elect and therefore its inability to function is not a cause but a symptom of a discord inherent in the country itself.

Now I am loathe to identify myself with a political party – based on the principle that such identification induces one to adopt opinions based not on factual, rational assessment but rather because some arbitrary person or group of people who happen to identify themselves with the same party possess them.  It seems to me that if you were a republican in the early 90s, you probably shouldn’t be a republican now – that is, if you identified yourself with that party because of the positions they maintained and not merely because they were republican positions.  In the end, I do not believe notions of categorical right or wrong can be applied to the two primary political philosophies that animate our American experiment.  They are embodiments of priority and value derived from differing moral predilections that do not allow for a logical assessment of supremacy; but, given that our constitution was designed by our forefathers in order to secure us representational government, and, given that neither of the two competing philosophies is maintained exclusively by the current population, they must find a way to coexist.

The inability to compromise is the seed of totalitarianism.  Underlying sustained, political intransigence is a belief in unilateral authority.  The current immutability of will of the republican house regarding revenue increases is antithetical to the spirit of majority rule: they are holding the vast majority of the population, who believe in a balanced approach to deficit reduction, hostage to the radical views maintained by a small minority of citizens.  The rhetoric is particularly aggravating.  There is a difference between deficit reduction and spending cuts – one functions as a noun and the other a verb.  Spending cuts is one of two means that can work either in isolation or in combination to serve the purpose of deficit reduction.  The current republican strategy seems to be to use the bugaboo of deficit reduction as a ruse in order to justify the promotion of an ideologically driven agenda: it is the transformation of deficit reduction from an end to a means.

This all leads me to the conclusion that we really shouldn’t call ourselves the United States of America anymore, but, rather, the divided states of republican and democrat.  The ridiculous drama currently being played out in Washington is just a microcosm of the disorder that affects the macrocosm of the whole country.

If the spirit of compromise is absent in a multilateral society, and that absence manifests itself at the legislative level, then that society ceases to function as a democracy.  I am not sure how we have become so severely and resolutely divided as a nation – though I would hypothesize it is a reflection of a media system that promotes warped political interests at the expense of truth – but it is this internal opposition that is driving our dysfunction.

The synthesis of conflicting views in the policies of a democratic nation is the method by which that nation’s actions are most in consonance with the will – or wills – of its people: compromise is the precondition to democratic government.  If we continue to forget this truth, then we won’t have to worry about the rise of china or terrorism or any other external threat: our greatest enemy will simply be ourselves.

Wisdom is wasted on the old.

A recent documentary caused to me to reflect, rather irefully, on the Supreme Court decision regarding Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.  I cannot fathom how people as intellectually capable as the members of the Supreme Court could reach a decision in which money is equated with speech.  This tenet seems so absurdly unjustifiable that it does not warrant a declamation, but, unfortunately, since its application in the American legal system will necessarily engender vastly undemocratic ramifications, I feel one is necessary – even if it is just a voice crying out in the wilderness.

The substantive difference between the referents of the words ‘money’ and ‘speech’ is firstly and easily recognizable because they are two different words; though the English language is replete with a vast series of subtly differentiated synonyms, such a designation does not apply in this context: money is a form of currency which can be exchanged for goods, and speech is the logical organization of symbols to communicate ideas.  It seems to me that if the courts want to equate speech with money, I should be able to pay my bills with long and verbose letters; perhaps some system of correlation could even be invented, with value applied based on number of syllables and words with a Latin derivation possessing more buying capacity than those with a Germanic one.

Speech is the vessel of ideas.  Money enables the magnified distribution of those ideas.  When the court makes a decision to retract any limit on spending to propagate an idea because they believe such a limit contravenes the right to free speech, they are making a critical error and conflating a loud speaker with the brain and mouth that speaks into it.  This is highly important in the political theater because, while most citizens have brains and the ability to form ideas and communicate them verbally or through other means, not every citizen possesses the same amount of treasure as a corporation does.  Equating money with speech in this context seems to indicate that the right to free speech is not equal: some people – how a corporation can be considered a person is another blasphemous violation of common sense – simply have a right to more speech.

The irony of this predicament is that a constitutional tenet is being employed in a manner that will necessarily have an adverse effect on the democratic process it was designed to sustain.  Money – based on the wisdom engendered by an exponentially compounded history of experience – tends to have a corrosive effect whose severity  is directly proportional to the amount involved.  In American society, money is distributed disproportionately across the social spectrum:  the interests of a few often have more purchasing power then the interests of a great many.  Thus, unlatching the bars on corporate spending necessarily undemocratizes the population to the extent that it ensures the interests of money will be more greatly represented than the interests of those – most – Americans who lack equal means: it increases the citizenship power of a select few at the expense of all others.

In order to rectify this problem, I would personally propose the implementation of laws that seek to equalize the amount of money that can be spent in service of a candidacy.  This, I believe, would enable actual speech to influence the results of an election to a much greater degree than a misnomer of such; but, given that such measures are highly unlikely, all I can do is advocate a sort of civic responsibility.  The method by which money undermines the democratic process and the civic power of the actual individual is through the repetition of discreditable information.  Therefore, when this next election season dawns – and I predict it will be a winter of frigid, intellectual barrenness- whenever a political advertisement rears its ugly head on the radio or the TV, simply turn it off, for these fabrications bear the same relation to truth as a Wendy’s baconator does to six-pack abs.

Every imprisoned human is a tragedy.

How was the cosmos firstly civilized?

From alpha Night and Chaos, studs of light

Like thoughts within a human brain realized,

In mystic fire, ordered forms – the bright

Revolving, intervolving groups of stars

Deriving from the depths of mystery

And organizing based on plans that are

Invisibly the source of history .

What force could sculpt the element of flame

To make the suns and aggregate the worlds

And then, from there produce with all the same

Material, the humans who unfurl,

In thought that moves by law like constellations,

The Will of Darkness to its own negation.

A gaunt and haggard fisherman reclines

Upon the splintered dock that faces east,

And in the frigid night spelunks his skein

Beneath the water’s skin – but finds no feast.

He peers toward the womb from which the light

Of day emerges, wishing he could will

The sun from sleep to break the back of night

But his vain dreams cannot evince the kill.

How long has he been sitting there intent

To make a stubborn star evolve its mind-

A weathered statue fixed: all senses rent,

In ignorance, from flames that burn behind:

A wall a fire crawls toward his beach

And there is not a single boat in reach.

To be hated by a fool is to truly be loved.

Can I refrain from laughter when I see

Those minions who profess to love the name

Of that religion, Christianity,

But hail the God of Money just the same?

They seem like members in some cult of dawn

Whose actions fail to pass their will’s own test,

For as they kneel, they fail to note the wrong

Direction which they face – toward the west!

If that same Son who is but one of three

Were here to judge how finely they have made

Themselves like Him, He’d say their mimicry

Was like a Night’s attempt at mocking Day.

They live within a cloud of false contentment,

Oblivious to their own God’s resentment.

I’ve looked into the soul of flame

And seen the heart of suns and stars,

The burning scream, the ancient name,

The howled word on which life came

Like blood expressed through Nature’s scar –

I’ve looked into the soul of flame

And seen that none could hope to tame

The wild light, the beast embarred:

The burning scream, the ancient name,

The destiny beneath the frames

Of all the living, blooded cars –

I’ve looked into the soul of flame

And in that eminence became

Transfigured by the blast from far -

The burning scream, the ancient name.

The universe now seems the same,

One animal that has one heart;

I’ve looked into the soul of flame,

The burning scream, the ancient name.

I’ll sing a song that, like a medicine

That wants to exorcize a toxic guest

From blood in which the weight of strength is thin,

Will show, through doors of words, the mental pest.

The creature which the tune wants to express

Is like a small, encephalitic sprite,

That, if it feasts upon the living flesh

Of bear or lion, will undo their might.

It’s doubt! Which can be like eclipse to light

Or else medusa in whose gaze a fleece

Of stone encompasses a form in blight

And forces a default on life’s own lease.

It’s like a comet cast from Dark’s own hold

That shocks a world and makes its warm blood cold