Sorry fellow Suns… boredom set in.

Facilis est descensus Averni, America

Politics and its pundits, money and its movers, power and madness, Axis of Evil, the greedy Elite…

The ole’ boy politicians, bankers’ buddies, power brokers playing the people, sowing the seeds on the soapbox, kissing babies and buggering interns, hoping to reap the rewards at the returns. Their fealty and allegiance owed only to a fiat currency, pieces of forest colored paper proclaimed a green god… payable for all debts, public and private.

Damned self-centered do-gooders and anguis-en-herba busybodies, special interest groups and deep-pocketed lobbyists, a Pandora’s box of partisan pandering and mollycoddling, the all-powerful political action committees, pledge so-called soft money support to their candidates, counting out cash to help vie for votes, a vigorous campaign.

Dividing the booty between Asses and Elephants, feeding time at the Animal Fair…

Alma mater rings rap on the varnished redwood round-table, reminders of furtive relationships, cunningly concealed collusion of secret school chums…

prurient popinjays, popular usurpers of our “inalienable” rights…

ex-executives, ex-lawyers, ex-economists, ex-warriors, unwholesome hacks, the whole lot of them, Fraternity of the Fraudulent.

Par nobile fratrum, faux foes, patting each others’ posteriors, with a sly wink and a nudge, while we, the People, profanum vulgis wage slaves, wait, soft-headed and weak, crawling on the frowsy floor like whipped curs, for unwanted scraps of the suzerainty, scant crumbs of freedom, to fall from the Controlling Class’ food laden plates.

Perverting the facts, the muck-raking yellow media, jaundiced journalists and their multi-national corporate masters of illusion fuel the fray, foisting pointless polls, parsimonious surveys, and sordid statistics… sleight of hand, smoke and mirrors… election misdirection.

The nightly news sponsors banal debates, decorum-less debacles, rife with self-bravado and frenzied strife… name calling, finger pointing, fist shaking, and podium pounding.

Controversial issues abound: strained Social Security, the high costs of health care, sick schools and eroding education, faltering families flood into swelling slums, fuel bills and oil consumption overkill, imminent economic collapse, the burden of burgeoning tax, big business bailouts,
corporate corruption, organized labor attacks, the behemoth bureaucratic budget, environmental
exploitation, racism on the rise, equal rights and opportunities demise, gun-toting teenagers toking tobacco and grass, and, of course, the provisions of a stylish patriotic police nation, strip searches and “Papers, please,” for Lady Liberty’s protection, safe against sinister alien aggressors and ourselves, a prison secure from terrorism.

Both parties brag proudly the half-bright promise of their “big fix”…

yeah, the fix is in alright… a grift from the start.

On a sweaty summer afternoon in the Sunshine State, I, humble Xibalban parvenu, pull my broken little red, white, and blue bandwagon, rusty and rattling, worn rubber wheels wobbling, along the winding road’s broad shoulder. A long limousine rushes past, sleek in polished gleaming black, Old Glory flashing on the front fenders, surrounded by a gaggle of government gray suited secret service goons, belching poison gas fumes. Ebullient belly laughs and wild guffaws, raucous whooping baboons blaring through the thick, mirrored Lexan windows. With a maniacal honking of the horn, rutting bull-moose howl, a well manicured hand emerges from the moon-roof, heaving a half empty bottle of Dom. A heinous ambush!

The alcoholic missile shatters on my head in a glittering halo of jagged glass shards and a great shower of golden champagne. Seeing stars, and stripes, my Constitution crumbling from the skull crushing blow, I stumble hard on the hot blacktop, skinning my blistered hands and knobby knees. A brook of blood streams down my sun-fried face, mingles with the trickle of tears from my stinging eyes, traces sanguine lines to my chin, across my chapped lips, and spills to the chafing asphalt.

Two antithetical means to a singular end…
a choice between drowning and burning.
Vox populi, vox et praeterea nihil.