Impeachment – This is Game of Thrones
I decided to do my civic duty and tune into the impeachment hearings. The best part so far are the reverse mortgage commercials. I had forgotten how fatigued I’d become looking at the same politician’s faces and the same blue ‘back curtains’ and side-whispers. I’m tired of seeing the recurring line up of white guys in ties parsing words and splitting nose hairs in some vainglorious attempt to etch their name in the legislative history books. Their droning, self-aggrandizing voices haunt my sleep and their non-sensical references to our nation’s founders are cheap and exploitative.
There are mental hospitals filled with people that swear they regularly converse with Thomas Jefferson --- perhaps they should all be on the 2020 ballot.
This is Game of Thrones --- except with sweaty lips and microphones. It is Clash of Clans as we scurry around trying to save our cities and municipalities while they press their suits for their next investigation, hearing, or political probe.
These prosecutors and lawyers turned legislators approach our political system not to see how they can best help their constituents or the American people --- but to see how they can best take down their political enemies. And the joke, of course, is on us. They get high quality lifetime healthcare and life-long pension benefits. They have cameos on CNN and Fox News where they shamelessly plug their latest book.
We’re left with the broken promises and unfulfilled pledges to make our lives better. Our crime-infested cities, opioid addicted neighbors, huddled masses of homeless and interminable struggle to make ends meet ---- are the realities of the street. This is class warfare plain and simple, the political class and the rest of us.
My grandparents came to this country for one thing --- opportunity. And that is what these political hacks are taking from millions of Americans by not dealing with the things that we give up each month because our take-home pay doesn’t go far enough. Forget kitchen-table politics. We don’t have time to sit down for meals anymore --- we’re too busy working so we grab some food at Uber eats or Eat24 and sit on the couch and try to lose ourselves in Candy Crush, Jeopardy or Wheel of Fortune.
I have a few words for Congress. Your feigned patriotism and mock embrace of the constitution is offensive. Your allusions to the Nixon and Clinton impeachments are nothing more than a depraved attempt to become part of some twisted history that will earn you a Wikipedia entry. Despite your appeal to America’s high moral standards --- your “brilliant disguise” is paper thin. You are a JUUL cigarette dipped in deception.
My heart breaks for the good people of this country. The ones who go to work every day to help secure their little piece of the American dream. The ones that deliver Amazon packages or sell insurance. The folks that run QA at Boeing or code at Blue Cross. And all the people that fuel and feed the gig economy. They deserve better.
What’s playing out across the airways today is not where the real war should be. While this Congressman or that Representative is sitting in a leather chair, adjusting their eye glasses, and sipping filtered ‘Capitol Hill’ water --- street people are pouring feces over pedestrians’ heads in Los Angeles. Yes, that happened and that is what’s happening in this wealthy, well-meaning, and most admired of nations.
That is what’s occurring each day in our progressive, high-minded cities. That is what is transpiring in places where Pollyanna policymakers rarely venture. It should repulse all of us regardless of where we stand politically. And our outrage should not depend upon which state, whose district, or what the meaning of the word ‘is’ --- is.
