A final plea to all the Boomers in the House:
I've noticed that what should already be a really exciting election season is already so very stale. It's only one year away and this is like a company party no one wants to be at. Gather round your nearest Obama or Clinton supporters and try to see if anyone can talk to you for longer than 9 minutes without sounding like a hypocritical douchebag.
I sense that it is the first serious crack that we're going to see now that the boomer's coddled, distracted, and sometimes disenfranchised babies (myself included) are trying to get all grown up. This is not a unique occurrence in history but the people are beginning to lead more aggressively and effectively than the leaders. Since fortune and seniority are not on our sides, I implore that that all members of Congress born from 1948-1960 either make way or start leading again.
Yeah, we could deal with our parents re-electing all the same people from Reagan's team (Classes of '80-'92, represssseent!!!) and then the whole ridiculous cold-war and post-cold war economic policy ( so far, a lot of the practiced neoliberalism vs neoconservatism is like watching two blind dudes stab at each other) but this is getting to be asking too much.
For too long, we've had to watch a dollar get floated by yuan with no explanation and for a job market to be paradoxically suspended between a simultaneous increase in service AND anti-labor cultures.
Losing money to a RON PAUL campaign? If anyone involved at the highest levels would study their Constitution, they would see that three parties would sink the American executive in it's current state (no matter how much GWB tried to suck up that extra wiggle room along the way). Therefore, it is beneficial to both the rulers (because really that's what we have now, now that the parties have mingled and conglomerated so much) and the citizenry to have these two parties fighting for our ideal.
Currently, people with the hindsight of both Vietnam AND Reaganomics have abused the two-party system by becoming desperate for the same one fourth of the country's donation pools. Instead of looking at all of American's faces
- even the illegal ones who get hired by American business owners over and over again
- the ones who teach your children every day
- people who love people of the same gender
- the ones that clean and serve you every day
- even the ones who are born on the wrong side of town
- or born in different countries
- perhaps the ones you send to illegal wars
you have chosen to instead play to insatiable, uninformed, uniformed, or corporate, whale donors. There are smaller wallets to pry open out there, you know.
I know this is not a radical concept because I've have seen normal people (I luh you, Ned Lamont)accomplish incredible fund-raising and political efforts and of course they were boomers and had others mentoring them and helping them along the way. All too often though, those people are crushed by the familiar and boring boot of this throwback government (Democrat-Republicanism at it's finest)!
Now is no time for one side to abandon the other. Let's channel this codependency the real 'Me Generation' instilled in us and direct it towards the voting populace instead of our pop culture's fascination with romantic love. I for one do not want to slide into or let the boomers suffer the destitution they have promised themselves at present with these social security, mortgage crisis, and foreign trade boo-boos.
Anyhoo, let's spice it up a little and talk about these latest rounds of pharmaceutical, insurance, energy, and Walton family donations shall we? I know that people like Dick Cheney thought that seducing us with corn syrup, Britney Spears, C/coke, and a whole lotta made in china was going to help us live in his City in the Clouds forever but holla if you hear me other bricks in the wall: These donations don't HAVE to be bad do they? No. But are they? Oh yes they are.
So congress, step it up a notch. Heat it up inside where the real legislative power lies and maybe the presidential race could begin to make any sense at all. For instance, let's stop pretending like global warming or alternative energy are like strategic policies that have to be anaylzed by idiot-savants a la Paul Wolfowitz. Other countries are already kicking our asses at it. Same with the drugs. Science and technology are amazing and all but let's work on something other than restless leg syndrome and Ambien substitutes for awhile, shall we? I wanna hear more about that whole AIDS thing and getting that off the agenda. We could start by making sure all these people you like to build prisons for had condoms in there but whatever, baby boomer steps. Also, when that universal healthcare comes around (and oh it will, the direction you already have us going in, I think you know who I'm talking about) the drug and insurance companies are going to have to be in a much more flexible negotiating decision. 'Preciate ya.
Chop-chop, mom and dad!
Love,
the boomerang, lazy assholes, Gen Y, Gen Q (wtf, Tom Friedman?)