thoughts from a brokenSoldier

I just got finished reading a piece from Johann Hari over on the Huffington Post that I think everyone should read before pulling that voting booth lever in November.  I’m not asserting that the article is unconditional truth, but the reasoning in the article - along with the well-documented purchase by Big Oil of one of our former Presidents (Warren G. Harding) in order to gain access to the Teapot Dome reserve in Wyoming - shows that the claim it makes certainly passes the common sense once-over. 

The article is worth reading and researching, and I encourage anyone reading this to do exactly that.

It tells of how the Teapot Dome oil field was being held in reserve for the Navy in the event that a national emergency arose, which quite obviously pissed off the oil companies chomping at the bit for access to such a large domestic reserve of crude.  They needed to get the government to release the hold on the Navy’s reserve of oil so they could get their hands on it.  Here’s a teaser from the article explaining the beginning of what would come to be known as the Teapot Dome scandal:

So Big Oil thought of a solution. They decided to buy the presidency. A consortium led by Jake Hamon — a J.R. Ewing for the Jazz Age — started to buy the delegates to the 1920 Republican Convention with brown-envelope bribes, one-by-one. Once they owned a hefty block, they approached the initial front-runner — General Leonard Wood — and said they would make him the Republican nominee if in return he had to promise to make Hamon Secretary of the Interior — and therefore boss of Teapot Dome. Wood yelled: "I am an American soldier. I’ll be damned if I’ll betray my country! Get the hell out of here."

So Big Oil picked a different candidate instead: an obscure, bumbling Senator called Warren G. Harding, who had been a forty-to-one shot at the start of the convention. He had barely been out of Ohio and had only fuzzy ideas about politics — but he could be marketed as Mr. Normal, the 1920s equivalent of a hockey mom. Big Oil lavishly funded a PR campaign selling him to ordinary Americans as One of You. He was pictured at baseball games eating hot dogs with his sweet family — while his opponent was presented as arid and "elitist."

Sound familiar?  The GOP selects a candidate for their ticket for the White House that was widely unknown prior to emerging on the presidential ticket (not to mention one who is currently embroiled in an ethics investigation that originated prior to her selection as the VP candidate).  The GOP selects a candidate that can easily be portrayed as "one of us," with the express purpose of duping the voters into believing that once in office, said candidate will look out for the interests of those whom she is supposed to be identified with.  The GOP then uses that candidate’s image to try to cast even more of an "elitist" light on the opposition.  If the similarities aren’t clear to you, you might need glasses…I’m just saying…

The lesson we should take from this is clear.  We all know that anyone with the means to run for the highest office in the land (especially in today’s political machinery) is well above - economically speaking - the average American, yet the Republicans (the party historically linked to cooperation and collusion with large oil conglomerates) are still trying to slide their candidates into office by presenting the image that they are somehow just like the rest of us.  Well, since we know the opposite to be true (when is the last time a Republican - or Democratic, for that matter - candidate had to choose between paying the mortgage and buying groceries?), why do voters keep falling for it?

The idea that any major party candidate for the Presidency or Vice-Presidency could be "one of us" is merely a political trojan horse.  Do you honestly think that - regardless of their past - a senator with 20+ years in Washington or a Governor so prone to covert maneuvering and manipulation of state funds (re: charging the taxpayers of Alaska for per diem payments while she was actually in her own home) can honestly claim to be a regular, salt-of-the-earth citizen like the majority of us?  It is pure theater of the type that has dominated our political landscape for the better part of a century, if not longer.

This deception has to be laid bare, and Johann Hari does a good job of getting that ball rolling.  Check out the article and draw what conclusions you may.  The ones I drew enhanced my sheer apprehension toward letting the Republicans slide another faux-normal candidate past the voters this year.  For our country’s sake, I sincerely hope their efforts are in vain this time around.