What's on Katie's Mind? Katie: The artist, teacher and social commentator.

Do they represent us to the best of their ability?

I’m sitting here on this cold February President’s Day thinking about the past decade and of course politics.  I have come to the conclusion that I, like all Americans, have been manipulated by politicians, the government, media monsters and of course the corporations that control them.

It wasn’t that long ago I was a “Yellow Dog Democrat”.  You know that democrat that would vote for a yellow dog before she would vote for a Republican.  Even saying the word republican could cause me to go into convulsions of disgust.  Well, that hasn’t really changed but I find myself having the same feelings when I say Democrat.  I wonder deeply what has happened to my beloved party, the Democratic, big “D”, party.  How did we get from FDR to Kennedy to the current cast of characters including Obama?  I was a child of the sixties.  I remember sitting in my third grade classroom when we were told the president had been shot.  I remember the grief and sadness.  It’s one of those memories that will never leave me.  Everyone that was old enough to remember will remember what they were doing when they found out about Kennedy.  It was a life changing moment for our country.  We probably haven’t ever truly recovered from that loss.  We have wallowed in the consumption of conspiracy theories about his death only to have fuel added to the fire because everything is sealed.  It’s all too awful for us little people to comprehend.  Only those in power have the ability to understand what truly happened.  LBJ was probably a great warrior but the Vietnam War was the legacy most will remember.  While he signed the legislation for the “Great Society” and marshaled us through the civil rights movement, he will best be remembered for the horrors of the Vietnam War and its escalation and his inability to conclude it with positive results.  I don’t know if this was the end of the Democratic era or what but something happened over the course of the past many years that has ultimately destroyed the Democratic Party and my trust of it.

When I was in high school in the early seventies I was a political junkie fueled by my huge family’s constant discussion of all things political.  My parents were strong democrats and of course Nixon, or “Tricky Dick”, was in office.   Just the name “Tricky Dick”, tells how much he was respected at our house.  Nixon led the way for the first truly non Democrat, Democrat president to be elected.  Of course I speak of President Carter.  I spent many years defending Carter but now I find him pretty indefensible.  Would anyone out there believe that it was Carter that started taxing unemployment benefits?  Of course it became fully taxed in 1987 but who would think this would start under a Democratic president?  Well, it did.  That kind of sounds like a republican plan, doesn’t it?  Carter was a “moral” president, a seemingly very religious guy that wouldn’t even serve booze at the White House.  Well, he did serve wine but any Irish Democrat, like me, should have found that to be a distrustful thing to begin with.  It was a way of controlling other people and their behavior.  It was also a continuation of Democrats having to be southern and white to be president.  It seems Democrats couldn’t carry the south without it.  Those Democrats from the south tend to be a bit more conservative than their more liberal, northern cousins.  I gave Carter a “buy” all of these years for his inability to govern this country.  During the Carter years Michigan was devastated.  In fact it was during this time that many people left Michigan for greener pastures or at least a job in another state.  Our current situation in Michigan isn’t really much different than the late seventies and early eighties, which is another story for another day.  Well, I survived Carter and voted for Mondale but of course we all know that the supreme leader, Reagan, was elected.  Please note the sarcasm in my voice.  Republicans want us to believe that Ronald Reagan was the greatest president that ever lived.  I, of course, remember him for being a union busting freak.  We all remember the plight of the air traffic controllers.  He busted them like a twig.  It’s been a downward spiral for unions ever since.  Unfortunately, the propaganda that we have been fed about unions doesn’t help but unions are responsible for many of the work place rights, however small, we have as well as the salaries and protections and benefits that they helped negotiate.  Unions brought up the pay of non union workers as well.

After Reagan’s popularity it seems like the Democratic Party was looking for a Democratic version of Reagan.  Maybe this is why Barack has such an admiration of all things Reagan. Remember how he said Reagan was a transformative president while Clinton wasn’t.  Those were code words to get the old turncoat Democrats that had voted for Reagan and were secretly voting for Republicans to come back and vote for Barack.  After Reagan the Democratic Party put up Michael Dukakis.  He was a decent guy but of course quirky like Dennis Kucinich.  The Republicans were able to reduce him to a cartoon character.  Everyone remembers the helmet he wore, Willie Horton and of course the ridiculous question about if his wife had been raped.  He was quirky and nerdy which is not popular.  I remember he even mowed his own lawn with a push mower.  That wasn’t going to get the macho, white man’s vote.  I did my best to canvas the highly Republican town of Empire, Michigan with Dukakis literature.  However, with no measurable results as Leelanau county went for Reagan.  My heart was still in it.  I was still keeping my beliefs in the Democratic Party.  Those horrible Republicans, however, were still in office!  I suffered through those Bush years when my pottery sales started taking a hit.  Under Reagan there were many wealthy consumers out buying art at the art shows.  They didn’t mind spending a hundred bucks or more on a piece of pottery.  There were still many poor people but there was a group of young buyers that I was happy to see at the art shows spending big bucks.  Under Bush all of that changed.  People wanted the same pottery for less money.  Every artist had to adjust their prices if they were going to sell art.

The nineties gave us Clinton.  Now I love Bill but let’s be real, he really wasn’t and isn’t a big “D” Democrat.  If he was he wouldn’t have sold out the unions and everybody else with NAFTA.  He also wouldn’t have made all of the heartless cuts to welfare.  Business was booming during those dot com years that probably gave people a false sense of reality because for the “little guy” there really wasn’t a boom.  They actually just survived and got by which leads us up to the Bush years of gloom and doom and more war.  The problems Clinton had in office probably hurt Gore’s election but of course Gore hurt Gore as well.  We were all manipulated by the fake outrage about the Monica Lewinsky affair.  All of those Republicans and even Democrats, like Lieberman, were oh so disgusted with Clinton.  Well, of course today we are finding out that many of them have their own little skeletons in the closet.  They only are let out of the closet when we, the people, need to be controlled.  This is all part of the many ways we are manipulated.  We all have the fresh sting of the Bush years in our rear view mirror, where if you are a Democrat, you will always feel the elections, both of them, were stolen!  I learned to believe that Republicans steal elections.  Now, I know those Republicans think that Democrats steal elections because they always go back to the Kennedy, Nixon election and Chicago politics and vote counting.

Ok, so I survived those Bush years and was really excited about the 2008 election.  I thought the Democrats had a real chance to do something big and of course get us out of these wars which I have never believed in.  I believed in a candidate who has since become the symbol for “Worse Husband of the Year Award”.   I was deeply devoted to the candidacy of John Edwards.  I gave over five hundred bucks to his campaign.  Anyone that knows me will know that for me to give money to campaign, I have to be a true believer.  It was the message that I believed in which has now been killed because the messenger was imperfect.  I blame the Democratic Party for much of what happened in this past election.  They wanted Barack Obama and they manipulated all of us Big D Democrats to get what they wanted.  They knew all about John’s problems and probably know about current secrets of people in power.  They needed John to get Obama through Iowa.  If John hadn’t been in the primary, Clinton would have probably won the election.  Those of us in the “know”, know she had more votes in the primary any way.  It was those pesky super delegates and the way they divvied out votes in Michigan and Florida that hurt her.  After John got out I went to see Clinton in Southbend.  I loved her and would definitely have voted for her even though there were things I disliked about her husband’s presidency.  John and the other good boys including Obama staged a “coups” in the Michigan primary.  They knew what they were doing when they removed their names from the ballot.  They set everything up for May 31^st, 2008 when my vote for John was confiscated and some votes also taken from Clinton and given to Barack Obama, a man I would never vote for because of his stance on merit pay for teachers.  That’s union busting talk for anyone that understands the lingo.  On that day my blinders were torn off and I saw the Democratic Party for the down and dirty dog it is, a shill for the corporations just like the Republican Party.  They aren’t “Blue Dog Democrats” or even “Yellow Dog Democrats”.  They are pit bulls for the corporations.  How long we have been manipulated, I’m not sure.  I know that we, the people, haven’t been represented for our own best interests, whether the president is a Democrat or a Republican, for many, many years.  I’m angry about being manipulated as I well should be but I can’t understand why more people aren’t fed up with this systematic manipulation of our vote and even our thought process.   The Democratic Party with Barack Obama can’t seem to get anything done.  It’s just a game folks as the stock market is fine with how things are going.  The wars that so many thought a Democrat would pull out of continue and business is the same as it has been.  Stimulus money is going to China and no one is outraged.  It’s just business as usual. A billboard of GW shows up in Minnesota asking if we miss him yet.  I say, “How can we miss him?  He’s still in office!”   For all the “hope and change” that Barack Obama said he would bring to Washington D.C. it is amazing how nothing has really changed.  The only thing that continues is the constant manipulation of the American people.  We hear about Sarah Palin writing on her hand and Robert Gibbs, Obama’s press secretary, yucks it up with the press about it.  More manipulation as we are told she is soooooo stupid.  I sit here unable to be manipulated and controlled any more by these two parties that are shills for the corporations.  I don’t care two twits about Sarah Palin writing on her hand.  She isn’t in office.  She doesn’t control my taxes, job and everything else in my life.  The government does.  I’m angry that Gibbs wastes time on such frivolous matters when there is so much unemployment, under employment and people hanging onto their jobs by the seat of their pants!  I’m angry about all of the political manipulation of my mind and most of all, my vote.  Do I really care who these guys are sleeping with?  You know that’s what done in John Edwards.  If I cared, I would probably have to hate FDR as we all know about his love life.  Today some woman is selling love letters from JFK!  Do I really care who he slept with or do I care about how he governed?  We all know that Jefferson slept with his slave, Sally Hemmings, who happened to be born from the slave of his wife’s father, and today we respect Jefferson as a great man.  I read that she may have been the half sister of his wife.  Of course his wife was dead when he took her to bed but come on we see Jefferson as one of the great founding fathers of our country.

The Democratic Party continues their manipulation with the sick portrayal of the TEA Party, Taxed Enough Already Party.  You know they didn’t refer to themselves as “tea baggers”.  I first heard that on MSNBC.  It was another form of manipulation.  Of course, I didn’t know what “that” meant until I googled it.  I couldn’t believe the media would be so distasteful.  I remember a lot of it coming from the likes of Chuck Todd and his cohorts.  As far as I am concerned people have a right to protest our government if they don’t feel they are being properly represented.  I know Michigan is not getting the representation that they need in Washington D.C.  We’ve been hurting for years and nobody seems to care.  They’re too busy working on their next election and finding ways to manipulate the masses into believing they are actually doing something constructive for the people.   The two parties, Republican and Democratic both work hard to manipulate the masses into going along with the current plan.  When Bush was in office we were manipulated by that phrase Bush used, “You’re either with us or against us!”  Today we are manipulated by the Obama administration with race.  If we don’t like the Obama way or policies we are automatically branded a “racist”.  Now nobody really wants to be labeled a racist.  For me all of this just makes me angrier and angrier because my party has let me down and through the corporations my country has been hijacked by these two ineffective, shills for the corporations, parties.  Corporations, as noted by the Supreme Court, have more rights than I do.  If you aren’t angry about this manipulation, like me, you should be!