I used to help organize protests against the lies and wars of this government, but I've really given up. After Bush got elected the second time (OK, technically the first time) I realized that there just isn't any way to defeat the power of big money government. They've been at this game a long, long time and they have pockets deeper than the Laurentian Abyss. MoveOn, Michael Moore, Al Franken, and many more tried pretty damn hard to keep the 2004 election of Bush from happening, and it didn't matter. Americans are that stupid after all, it would seem.

So I stopped doing anything about it - other than grumble and grouse, I suppose. You see, people just don't care what is really going on as they sleep walk through their lives under the narcotic influence of reality TV, kid's soccer games, and their daily-grind jobs. We're all numb. As long as it doesn't affect us too badly too quickly we just put up with it. Not even $3.50 a gallon gas has your average American motivated to get up off the sofa and try to find out where our country is headed and why.

And we don't think we need to, either. All the talking head pundits are more than willing to tell us exactly why things are the way they are, and so are all the economists and stock analysts. Stocks are up 100 points because of simple fact X, and the next day they are 100 points down because of simple fact Y. It doesn't matter that the world is a hugely complicated place, these people just know. All the convenient answers drone on all around us so we don't have to think for ourselves. We just read keep reading the stenographer media papers about the latest war with Eurasia or East Eurasia, I forget which, and swallow the kool-aid without question.
But I do have the solution, as counter-intuitive as it may sound: Vote the most right-wing neo-con you can every chance you get. The loonier they sound the better. I'm serious, and there is a method to my seeming madness.

You see, people in this country won't care until they are made to care. They won't care until it hits them where it hurts the most, and hits them hard. $3.50 a gallon gas isn't even a start. We need something worse - much worse - than the Great Depression to slap us in the face and wake us the @#%$ up. We need the economy to get so bad that at least 50% of us don't have jobs. We need not just big money investment banks to fail, we need the corner banks to fail. We need riots over loaves of bread.

In short, we need the utter destruction of the system that has brought us here. And the fastest way to do that is to stop giving the right wing the periodic excuse of losing an election. Keep them in power across the board for as long as it takes. It will hurt. People will die. But out of the ashes of our failed capitalistic republic (we ain't a democracy people, we fight wars for those in other peoples' countries) will rise the shining phoenix of a new hope for something better. It is more than rhetoric, it is our responsibility.
You see, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce our true freedoms and our true government under absolute Despotism, it is our right, it is our duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for our future security. I didn't write that preceding sentence, I am paraphrasing it from a great document, the Declaration of Independence. Its words are as true and relevant today as they were when they were written 232 years ago. I dare say even more so.