We are all Pawns

Pawns of
the Game

Posted on July 17,2011

When I first started writing, it was mainly for me. I wanted to chronicle my feelings and opinions about current events. It started because of the old photographs of past family members that I knew little or nothing about. In my mind I could see future generations looking at pictures of me and my family blankly, not knowing anything about the people in the images. It would be my writing that let future generations know who we were and try and impress upon them that we were once vital with passions and had ambitions for a better future.

Without a written or digital record of our thoughts and ideas, future generations would only be able to stare at the old photographs and maybe wonder about us. When I look at the old photos of past family members, I am left to wonder about what they thought, their politics, and how they interacted with their world instead of just being images that nobody can relate to.

As I struggled with putting my thoughts down on paper, I realized just how hard it is to convey and accurately articulate those thoughts onto paper. All of a sudden you realize your inadequacies in expressing ideas. Your thoughts wander back to those English and grammar classes that you didn’t pay any attention to as a youth and now wish you had been more attentive.

Writing is a struggle for me. Some sentences I reconstruct several times with the hope that it conveys what I wanted it to convey. No one more than me realize my inadequacies as a writer. My appreciation for those gifted people who have that knack for articulating what they think grows with each article that I post. With that having been said, and with the limited communications skill that I possess, I present my opinion of today’s political turmoil.

Our opinions are as varied as we are. In my own air-castle, I have imagined a logical world where one’s philosophy is dictated by logic and not by emotion. But logic has its own pitfalls. Imagine if you will, a drunk searching the ground for a ring. A passer-by asks him what he was doing and the drunk replied, “Searching for a ring that I dropped”. The passer-by wanted to help him and asks the drunk for an approximation of where he dropped the ring, to which the drunk replied, “About half a block down the street”. “Why are you searching here instead of where you dropped the ring”? asked the passer-by. The drunk replied. “The light’s much better over here”.

The silly story points out that we can be both logical and illogical at the same time. Our opinions can be just as conflicted as the drunk’s logic. Logic tells me that our economy can’t improve if we keep up the assault on the people who create the wealth. Yet I look around and it is the story of the ant and the grasshopper that is being lived out in real time. Our society has both ‘wanters’ and ‘doers’.

In our land of make believe, the wanters want what the doers have, but at the same time depend upon the doers. Wanters would have nothing if not for the doers, but still they want to destroy the doers. How is that for logic? “The light is much better over here”. The wanters are like the bully collecting the lunch money from little Billy as he goes to school. Little Billy has figured out how to get his lunch money, but the bully has not. The bully sees little Billy as his source for lunch money. The bullies organize into groups to take even more of Billy’s money. But in the end, the bullies make it impossible for Billy to function, so they both starve. But starving the doers is in fashion with Liberals. For some reason, the wanters can’t figure out how to get along without the handouts of the doers. Yet, the wanters resent and are jealous of the doers, so they busy themselves to destroy them.

I find it really hard to wrap my head around the logic of the Liberal. Logic tells me that even Liberals will get it someday, but until little Billy stands up to the bully, it will only get worse.

It is time to stop this insane punishment of the people we depend on. Wealth creation is something that is open to anybody who will put in the time and effort to be an achiever. Wealth creation is not just for certain people. Anybody can be a wealth creator if they want to. It takes effort, sacrifice, and that special motivation to do it. Our economy, in fact, depends on these special people.

As the title to this piece reads, “We are All Pawns”. Politicians have found their ticket to Nirvana dining at the public trough. There is no desire on their part to really solve any problems. Passionate, new legislators get hobbled quickly by the seniority system. Over time, they too become what they campaigned against. The politicians know that as long as the system stays in turmoil that the voters will keep supporting them and their craziness. Their contentious divisions are all part of the game to stay in power. It is we who are caught in the middle of this great power struggle. We become pawns of sacrifice for the empowerment of politicians.

Campaigning is an art form. To a man, every politician running for office is out there claiming that he/she has been fighting for you the voter and needs your vote and donations to continue the fight. The two parties pit us against each other and smile as we become enraged enough to send them our money. We are hoodwinked into thinking that here is a politician who will save the day. … Enough already!

For all our trouble we get vague ambiguous laws containing exclusions for the sole purpose of creating chaos. Disputes arise because of the ambiguous and vague nature of the legislation produced by the politicians. It usually takes legal action to sort out the different interprtaions of these legal products. The writers of the legislation can’t seem to write a law that is clear and leaves no doubt as to its meaning. If they wrote such black and white laws, then fewer disputes would occur. But the legislatures continue the madness churning out law after meaningless confusing law. Remember, more laws mean more costly disputes that have to be settled by the legal system.

Worse, most laws are written as a sieve so that certain groups and knowing persons can skirt the intention of the law and fall through the sieve unscathed.

Blame cannot be attached more to one party than the other. They both play the game. Inflaming the voter's passions about issues that will never be fixed only serves to fill the campaign coffers of the politicians. But take heart, the voters have the power to put an end to their being manipulated. It is the American people who have the power to ultimately determine the fate of the professional manipulators that infest our government. Presently, these are dark times. Our economical health is deteriorating. We have never been given a starker choice than what we face now. It is time to stop being pawns and put an end to the partizan wrangling that is tearing at the fabric of our country. We can either have perpetual indebtedness that will absorb us or we can take away the trough that feeds the beast.

Robert welcomes your comment to this or any other of my commentaries.

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