by Brandon Smith
Alt-Market dot com

If Americans are looking for anything in the dark clouds of political dust and powdered ash that choke our air and leave us feeling naked against the elements, it is but a simple moment of sincerity. It sounds like an easily attainable thing, and yet, we continue to gasp and clamor. The visible surface of our nation is so devoid of honest connection with our social voice that we have turned to a cynical form of loneliness. We have embraced a life without clarity, and been made wretchedly bitter, desperate for even the faintest taste of truth.

The false two party paradigm that drives America gives us a measure of sustenance. Just enough to keep us from going completely mad, but not enough to end our hunger. As this process continues, however, and the establishment grows bolder, we too become savvy in the ways of the machine. Eventually, the old standards just don’t keep the masses distracted like they used to, and so, the system, not willing to give up power, decides instead to become “like us”, at least outwardly. It steals our vision and our song and goes on parade. It tries to make us believe again…

The campaign of Barack Obama in 2008 was a perfect example of the propaganda pageant, complete with visceral slogans like “Hope” and “Change”. After eight years of the clownish George Bush Jr., when our country spiraled down into a state of disturbed and vicious adolescence, people were looking for a renewal. They were looking for a path away from the edge of the abyss. Instead, they were given a better liar, with a brand new costume. The American Dream has become harder to sustain since…to say the least.

In 2012, what I see is like a lightning bolt in slow motion. I can sense it branching out across the sky towards the ground and tearing through our surroundings, upending everything we know. Both the President and Congress have some of the lowest approval ratings in history. The question of whether anything can be accomplished through government has been answered for most people with a resounding “no”. The citizenry is on the verge of total fury.

I wish I could say that most have abandoned the fleeting hollow satisfaction of choosing the “lesser of two evils”, but that would not be accurate.

Recently, I was invited (by several separate people) to a central event in the state elections of Montana called the “Lincoln-Reagan Dinner”, and promptly tried to avoid it like a rat infested plague ship. I know from experience what these kinds of political elbow rubbing parties can be like, and have been thoroughly unimpressed. Somehow, I ended up there anyway. If your only experience of the Republican Party was to attend such shindigs, you might think the stuffy anal-retentive caricatures we often see of conservatives are well deserved. In stark contrast to a Ron Paul rally, most of the attendees were little younger than 55, and few seemed very animated. Perhaps they were suffering from the same distaste of the whole thing as I was. Luckily, a solid 15% of the crowd were Liberty Movement oriented, which helped me to weather the overall painful proceedings (I also won a door prize; a coupon for a free dinner, mmmm…), but a pair of earplugs and a bottle of whiskey would have been far more comforting.

The party also gave me a momentary window into the future of the state in which I now reside, and even the probable nature of campaigns occurring across the nation. The prospects weren’t very pretty.

If Americans plan to look to the GOP to save them from the jaws of impending disaster, they had better reconsider that foolish notion. Obama may be riding the economic collapse straight at us like a wild Mako shark, but that’s no excuse to delude ourselves with fantasies of a Republican savior. Mitt Romney (a man whose legislative record is little different from Obama’s) is just the tip of the iceberg. At the state level, a much more dire charade is taking place.

A most noticeable trend is the language that fake conservatives (Neo-Cons) have adopted in the past year, switching from die hard statism to sudden “opposition” to Federal encroachment. What happened to the GOP’s love affair with centralized government? Well, the tides of the populace have changed considerably over the past few years, and in 2012, co-option is the name of the game.

Read the rest of this post HERE

h/t zerohedge