31 Aug 2012

The Hope Button: how politicians continue to fool us

Everybody likes to have hope, myself included, so that’s what every politician promises come election time:  hope and change.
In fact, it’s not over-simplifying to say that the candidate that wins the election is the one that convinces the most people that he will bring hope and change.  He never actually does of course, but if he’s a good talker and convinces enough people, he wins.
There seems to be a quality in most of us, a soft spot in our consciousness like the one in a baby’s head, which, if pressed or stroked in the right way, reduces us to giggling children with mouths full of candy.  I call that spot “The Hope Button.”
Any candidate or public figure that finds and presses that button on enough people is on the road to wealth and power.  It’s quite amazing that even with the most intelligent and educated people, pressing their hope button turns them into something akin to docile drooling puppy dogs, panting happily.  No doubt every successful politician since the dawn of civilization understands that, but for some reason most regular citizens don’t.
Like other people my hope button has been pressed many times in my life, but apparently unlike other people, mine has become calloused due to misuse and abuse.  Because I now know who they are, politicians can’t press my hope button anymore.

I know that politicians are the conmen, used-car salesmen and evangelists for the ruling class.  The politician’s role is to sell the working class on the plans and schemes of the ruling class, to convince the lower classes that the upper classes bring hope and change, and if we pay enough homage we’ll all be led out of the darkness and into the light.  And somehow in every election an amazing number of people fall for it.  Like the one-dollar solid gold watch that Arvide Abernathy buys in the play Guys & Dolls, the public keeps buying the con over and over.
With Barack Obama, they swallowed the con hook, line, sinker, rod, reel, creel, boat, motor, and most of the lake.  They swilled down his whole spiel like a starving animal might gulp a piece of rotten meat without sniffing it first.
Few asked, “Where did this guy come from?”  Or, “Who is financing his $750 million campaign?”  Or even the most basic question of all, “Why does he want to be president so badly?”  People just rolled over on their backs and drooled and swooned.  Few people can resist a one-dollar solid gold watch, evidently.
Similarly, few can resist a smooth talker.  With all the talking heads we see in the media, a large part of their success depends on talk, or more precisely, smooth talk.  People love smooth talk.  It lulls them into some kind of euphoric state, I guess, because a smooth talker can convince a lot of people that night is day, bad is good, war is peace, and that he brings hope and change for all.  And Obama is one smooth talking son-of-a-gun.  A real spell binder the likes of which we haven’t seen in a long time, and a lot of otherwise intelligent people lined up to do his bidding and fill his campaign coffers.
It was embarrassing to anyone who had sense enough to be embarrassed.  He was just another politician but you’d never know it by listening to his supporters, or should I say suckers.  Because, boy, that’s what they were, suckers with a capital S.
Obama barely got his chair in the oval office warm before he was handing out huge amounts of the taxpayers’ money to the richest people in the world.  And I don’t use those terms lightly.  I absolutely mean the richest people in the world.
The Morgans and the Rockefellers and God only knows who else had their hands in our pockets.  These are the kind of people that can buy and sell small-timers like Bill Gates or Warren Buffet.
Of course that’s precisely why Obama was installed in the White House; to be the front man, the smooth-talking carnival barker who stands in front of the big tent and speechifies while inside slick operators fleece the rubes.  And he’s doing a great job of it too!
Some people have figured him out but a lot of people still haven’t.  They are too busy fiddling with their one-dollar solid gold watches.
There are no doubt those that would argue that Obama is still better than McCain.  And therein lies the biggest con of all:  both candidates were financed by the same corporations.  That’s right, the very same ones.
The elections are theatrical productions to keep us peasants distracted and pacified so we won’t revolt and demand better government.  It’s a big flashy Punch & Judy show with both puppets on the same hand.
For those naïve souls who are still under the spell of myths they acquired in grade school, I’ll explain elections. It goes something like this: politicians get into office by playing ball with the right rich people, and by telling the masses what they want to hear.  Yes, it really is just that simple.
“By the time a man gets to be presidential material, he’s been bought ten times over.” – Gore Vidal
Edited by Madison Ruppert

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