I first heard the name Barack Obama in 2003. At that time I was working in the lowest levels of Cook County civil service. It was one of those do nothing jobs that politicians love to brag about creating. Naturally this put me in the position of being part of a tiny white minority. But that did not present nearly the kind of hardship that my other minority status did. I was not treated as badly on account of my race as I was maltreated for my refusal to sell out my Republican principles to the Chicago Democrat machine. But that’s another story.
The point is that in 2003 Barack was running for the seat of Illinois Senator to the U.S. Congress. I found myself in a position at that time that hardly one in a million white men has ever experienced. I was outnumbered by women, blacks, Hispanics, gays and any other “minority” you might care to mention. If you know me you know that I leaped all over this unique situation as an opportunity to get educated. One of the things I got educated about is how Democrats use bigotry to divide and conquer “The People”. It was there, too, that I got my first inkling into who Obama was.
The day before the election one of my black workmates asked me who I thought was going to win the senate seat. Naturally my answer was ‘whoever the Democrats have chosen’. (I did mention that I live in Chicago, didn’t I?) The guy’s response was, “Right, that would be Obama”. “Who’s Obama”, I said. “Obama is the future First Black President of the United States”, he said. I smiled, thinking that these are just the sorts of things people say out of wishful thinking. He smiled back – telling me silently that ‘this ain’t no wish, it’s a done deal’.
I gotta tell ya this rattled me more than a little. I had a guy telling me that he knew with near certainty that this person I had never heard of was lined up by the Chicago Dem machine to be a future lock for President. Even more surprising was the fact that my friend was so certain of this that he knew that skin color would be absolutely no barrier to his path. How could this guy who was as much a peon as I was know such a thing? And who was this Obama person and why would Daley want him to be President? I could not make any sense of it and could only dismiss it for the time being.
Then yesterday the light came on. I woke up to the news that the most influential members of the Kennedy family were publicly proclaiming Barack to be the second coming of John F. Kennedy himself!
WHAT AM I TELLING YOU HERE PEOPLE????
In the year 1960 Senator John F. Kennedy was running for President. He knew he would be a shoe in if he could lock down the State of Illinois. It is practically a part of the historical record that Joe Kennedy, JFK’S father, made a phone call to Richard J. Daley and the machine went to work. The sick were healed, the dead were raised and the miracle of changing Repub votes to Dem votes was accomplished in the dead of a single night.
Now blink ahead 48 years. Did you think that the Irish connection has been dead all these years? Hardly. Favors are now being called in. This time it’s Daley calling Kennedy. But today’s favorite son is an Irishman of another color; Barack Shaunesy O’Bama.
Now you might wonder why Daley would play his most valuable chip to get a black man elected President. If you can’t answer that question it’s because you don’t understand the motivations behind politics. Few outsiders do. In fact I’ve never in my life heard it properly explained. Why do people get into politics and why do they make the moves they do?
I remember that my father always said it was about the lust for power. I’ve heard many pundits say the same thing. Others say it’s about the money or the glory or the fame. A lot of the more naïve among us still cling to the notion that they do it for The People. None of these things is the whole truth. Each of them is only one part of the truth about the Great Game. The real truth is that politics is an addiction to an all-consuming game.
Republicans have played the game by different rules than the Democrats in the past but the old distinctions are hardly visible anymore. Democrats have always played divide and conquer by race, creed, sex, class envy and so on. Republicans have always played the politics of self-determination and American values. But the politics of bigotry and socialism has become an overwhelming force and Republicans have been abandoning the good of The People in order to keep their hands in the political game. Because if you are a politician the game is your life.
So while politicians will divide The People for political gain race, creed and gender, et. al. mean absolutely zero to those who actually play the game. Daley doesn’t care that O’Bama’s black. He’d put Bin Laden up for President if he thought it was a move that would work. And what will Daley gain from playing the king maker? Power? Some, maybe. But that’s not what he’s after. He wants recognition from the other players that he’s not just a king maker like his father was. He wants to show that he can take a no name black man and in ten years make him President of the most powerful country on earth; a feat out of all proportion to any other in American political history.
Not clear yet? In recent years people have begun to recognize that computer gaming is addictive and has the power to destroy people’s lives. There is no financial reward to computer gaming. No fame. No glory. No material reward of any kind. Yet the addict will maneuver his character to destroy the characters of all his friends and family, and even sacrifice real career and family to succeed in his virtual fantasy. When you can understand this you will understand the game of politics. Money, power, rank, fame…these are only ways of keeping score in the game. The game is the end in itself.
14 comments on The Pipes, The Pipes Are Callin'
Add a comment
To add comments without entering your email and image verification, you must be logged in. Login or Join Blogster
Don't know why you'd say conservatives belittle the poor and middle class. I've never known such a thing to have happened - unless you mean our constant harping about the able bodied poor who would rather scam the system than contribute to society by the simple act of supporting themselves. That's always seemed a fair expectation to me.
GOD pity you for you live in a world inside your own twisted little mind !!!
At the moment O'bama is playing a very careful game of hiding his true intentions. He has definitely got a talent for speaking in a way that enflames the 'spirit'; a JFK/MLK blend as you've noticed if you've lstened. Underneath it all, I believe, he harbors a serious racial bias that the media is colluding to cover up. He will eventually reveal himself to be one or more of the following things:
1. A puppet of the Dem Party in which case he will continue to use class to keep The People at one another's throats.
2. A socialst on the scale of Hillary and Marx.
3. A beautiful dreamer like Oprah and Jimmuh Cahtuh.
None of these are good.
Keep an eye out for me and don't shoot. I'll be the guy wearing the blue and orange knit Bears hat.
Don't forget about your tin foil hats and pajamas to block the cosmic rays, but don't fret, while the rest of us are enjoying a shwarma sandwich and a beer with our reasonable Muslim neighbors, laughing about the crazy old days and that whole war on terror thing you'll be living in a cave and having philosophical discussions with yer dog. My friends and I will toast. He'll laughingly call me an infidel and I'll wink and call him an Islamo-nazi terrorist. Then will make plans for dinner at some nice sushi place with our wives-who incidently still have all their teeth. Over appetizers we will lament about the poor souls who let fear and ignorance rule their lives. By the way, a hint, be sure the cave isn't already occupied by one of those Y2K survivalists.
They say the head retains consciousness for several seconds after it is chopped off. Not long enough to eat that shwarma sandwich I'm afraid.
You defame the name of GOD with your blog name, and you are the type of person who would sell his , Mother , Wife , and Daughters to a raghead muslin terrorist for a glass of sweet tea and a cold shwarma sandwich, before the rape your women before your eyes and then cut off your tongue and blind your eyes with bamboo splinters ,,and we use tinfoil to wrap our potatoes in before we bake then on the grill with a thick T-bone !!!!
Must be torture being afraid of your own shadow. An Irish-Catholic boy who never shied from a fight, but always gave everyone a fair shake, I lived in a trench for a week with Bosnian Muslim soldiers under siege by Croatian Catholics. One night Afghan Muj mercenaries, who got paid by the head took exception to me being there. The Bosnians told them hands off or they(the Muj) would have a real war on their hands. One of them asked me, "Why should we trust you?" I replied, at the tip of a knife I might add, "Because I'm right here in this trench with you, and those bullets and mortars don't give a shit about religion. Shoving my Bosnian friend Shevko aside I told the guy straight out, "If you're really on the side of right then you better be able to tell who is standing for justice, and if you can't then fucking kill me." It didn't make us fast friends. The Muj were zealots and bigots often, but I didn't have to worry about them after that. The point is, those were the fundamentalists on the frontline of a war. If you believe all Muslims are that way you live a sad, bitter, scared, sheltered and terribly ignorant life. Your comments show your lack of experience and contyact with Muslims, and a near total reliance of the media's cartoonish portrayal-sad when one is constantly railing about the incompetent media. There is a world beyond your bunker, get out and see it. Oh, and by the way, when you do, take along a few of those MREs(*had my fair share already)because the Bush Administration has driven the value of the dollar down to the value of toilet paper world wide. Then again, you're probably content to buy cheap Chinese goods pouring into the country while sucking out jobs and lowering the standard of living in this once great country. Have you seen the roads and bridges lately, the cheap quality of construction, sewers that aren't maintained as well, or the cuts in extracurricular activities that you took for granted as a kid. So you keep fearing your own shadow, while the elites and powerful rob and rape the nation, unless you're one of them. By your comments you must be consumed by your own fear and hate, a shill for some corporation, or exceedingly wealthy. Which is it? Real working class folks see what's happening to their country, and it ain't Muslims and immigrants. It ain't Liberals and conservatives. Wake the F%$#k up! Pe@ce
By the way, I chose the name for the blog so it would always remind me to speak to the weak, the poor and those without a voice. I attack the powerful, the tricksters and manipulators of truth and justice, just as Jesus and the Bible you claim to revere so much tells us. Do you believe and live by the words in that book, or use it to bludgeon those who don't see the world from where you stand? I can't answer that. I won't. That answer lies between you and the loving god. Unless you believe in a wrathful god. In which case you are the same as those Muslim zealots you hate. Hmm, I guess then the war is between you guys, while the vast majority of us will try to find a way to love and let live, and just get on with our lives.
All conspiracy theories have one thing in common. They are so intriguing that you really want to believe. How do you know that your co-worker was not just another blow hard who was desperate to be seen as in the know.
Sometimes even, blow hards, like broken clocks are right. Right not about cause and effect, but just lucky guesses about outcomes.
Otherwise your analysis is interesting and has the ring of truth about it.