Ya Gots to Run the Pigeon

People in the US bandy political descriptors Far Right and Far Left as if there's some sort of balance or equivalence. There ain't.

There is no Far Left in the US. Period.

Collectively, the US is about as progressive as a Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

Far Right is the new mainstream. With the systematic dismantling of public institutions - vital institutions like the public schools - begun in the Reagan era, it shouldn't surprise us that anti-elitism is rampant. Reagan's aw shucks demeanor was the birth of decades of appealing to mis-informed, middle-class schmucks, while simultaneously making our lives incrementally worse.

Unfortunately, the US brand of anti-elitism is not a populist backlash against rich folks putting the screws to us. Rather we suffer a peculiar brand of anti-elitism that celebrates the right for all of us to be uninformed, lazy and disengaged.

It is a badge of honor in the US to be a vituperative redneck.

The US airwaves are dominated by the most frighteningly ignorant, mean spirited animus one could have ever imagined in a lifetime. Traveling across Wyoming, the AM dial had 3 venom-spewing talk-show hosts fomenting anger by a manufactured mythology of misinformation and 3 nutty Christian stations in praise of Him.

In fairness there was a lone knothole of light piercing this privy of appalling ignorance -- Yellowstone Public Radio; albeit a public station with a weak signal that faded in and out.

Far Center - Alive & Well

The US Congress, and the Executive Branch, is where the Far Center resides.

Congress, and President Obama, understand the policy issues and how to fix them, but they operate in fear of how the Far Right will spin any inkling of progress, any inkling of a federal program that will help people, into the feared S-word, Socialism.

Welcome to the Far Center. The Far Center panders to the scent of political expedience.

Democrats are NOT aptly described as the Tax and Spend party. But it is now fair to say that Democrats ARE aptly described as the party of Tax and Waste Billions on Two Elective Wars.

I don't get the message so you gots to run the pigeon
~ American hip hop group A Tribe Called Quest from Check The Rhime

I am not a member of the professional left that Obama's press secretary Robert Gibbs recently dissed. The notion offends me. Citizens should critique their president. The flip-side of criticism is apathy, or worse, lock-step simpletons.

I am a seeker of what's rational and what's fair. That's progressive.

Progressives are rightfully disappointed in the path President Obama has taken - the Far Center path.

President Obama's single-most egregious failure is not ending two elective wars on day one. Because Obama chose to escalate in Afghanistan, and chose to continue nation-building in Iraq, his administration has earned the derisive badge of Bush Lite.

Check The Rhime

The Far Center doesn't get the message.

We gots to run the pigeon to politicians paralyzed by political calculation. President Obama, and the soul-less Far Center cohorts in Congress, don't understand that Tax & Spend is good - but only if we Spend on shit people actually need -- like an education, or a job (see Constructive vs. Destructive Spending).