It's our fault...we voted them in

NOTE: The following is a reprint of my column, "Reality...And Other Tall Tales" that was published in the April 20 edition of the Keith County News. Enjoy...Mikey C

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More than 20 years ago, the progressive heavy metal band Queensryche released a concept album called “Operation: Mind-crime,” which contained a song that speaks well, more than a generation later, to the current state of our nation.

In the song, “Revolution Calling,” vocalist Geoff Tate issues a call for change in Washington:

“Got no love for politicians, or that crazy scene in D.C., it’s just a power mad town,

But the time is ripe for changes, there’s a growing feeling, that taking a chance on a new kind of vision is due...”

Last week, “Tea Party” protests were held across the country as a sign to the “leadership” at Washington, D.C., that the American people are not happy with the government bailouts and the outlandish spending that has driven our national debt so far into the red (paying interest on the debt, for this year alone, will cost more than $800 billion) that it will take several generations to pay it off.

Some claim these demonstrations are being directed at the Obama administration, but the blame goes well beyond the new president and his tax paying-avoiding henchmen.

The blame goes far beyond the free-spending, liberal Democrats who control both sides of Congress. And, the blame is cast beyond the previous administration, which took a government surplus and turned it into the biggest deficit our nation has ever experienced; and the Republican party, which took greed to a whole new level during the past decade.

While they are the ones actively ruining our once-proud nation, the blame goes beyond the bozos in our nation’s capital. It falls on you and me, because we put these idiots in office to begin with.

Those who blindly vote along major party lines have historically voted for “representatives” who are nothing more than career politicians, willing to tell you what you want to hear to get your vote.

Many people don’t even pay attention to these bozos while they wildly spend millions of dollars on television advertising that, more often than not, points more to their opponent’s bad points than what they, themselves, will do if you elect them to office. People will, more often than not, vote for, or against, the candidate whose ads they see most often, regardless of what their position is on the issues of the day.

In the weeks leading up to the last election, I made a discovery: the problem is not that EITHER party is running the show in Washington – the problem is that BOTH parties exist as hollow, prostituted shadows of their former selves.

With that epiphany in mind, I came to the conclusion that neither party’s candidates were worthy of my vote. So, when it came time to mark my ballot, I voted for third-party or independent candidates, and even wrote my own name in for the Senate seat.

Everybody I talked to about my decision (and I’m sure some of you reading this will agree) chastised me for “wasting” my votes. Why vote for someone who you know is not going to win the election, they asked.

Ah, but here’s the rub...all but one or two of those individuals currently “representing” us in Congress are either Republicans or Democrats. And, guess who is running our national debt into the ground right now with their government bailouts and socialist agendas?

Those of you who went to the polls last November thinking that voting for Obama, or whoever else, was “the candidate of change,” obviously, were sold a bill of goods.

I, on the other hand, saw these frauds for what they have shown us to be, and in no way do I, nor will I, support anyone in Washington who has any ties to either of the two major political parties. The only “change” we saw is new faces, singing the next verse in the same old song and dance. And, as long as we continue to vote for representatives of these pathetic political parties, we will continue getting the same results.

If you want to vote for real change the next time around, make sure the ballot you cast doesn’t include a single Democrat or Republican. Only then will we begin to see real change...the “new kind of vision” our country so desperately needs right now.