Brutally Honest Rant - 06/20/07

Brutally Honest Audio Rant: The Cult Mindset of the Status Quo
Audio Transcripts
06/20/07

[Start Program]

(Computer – Introduction)
(Music intro – “American Idiot Remix” – by Green Day and David Matthews 2)

Good evening and welcome to this week’s Brutally Honest Rant. I’m David Matthews 2, writer of the weekly online column Brutally Honest.

I want to talk about a very dangerous and ultimately destructive cult mentality tonight.

Now note that I said cult MENTALITY and not a cult itself. A cult is a religion, and what I’ll be talking about is certainly NOT a religion. It has many of the elements of a cult, but without the religious overtones.

I’m talking about a very corruptive force in politics, one that manifests itself in governments large and small. And it is one that is next to impossible to remove once it does manifest itself.

I’m talking about the status quo. I’m talking about the irresistible force that exists in politics to keep things pretty much as they are.

Now I’m sure some of you are wondering what I’m talking about and why I’m trying to personify what can easily be explained as nothing more than just political apathy, and that of course is part of the reason WHY the forces behind the status quo are allowed to get away with what they do. But once you look at the bigger picture, then it all makes sense.

For starters, we need to separate the political process from the politicians, because they really are two separate entities. The people whom we elect or whom are appointed to positions of power are a key factor to the political process, but they’re not the only ones, and they certainly are not the only ones with any kind of pull in the system. In addition to the politicians, you have staff members, employees, union officials, consultants, and of course you have special interest groups, lobbyists, research organizations, and, yes, even certain members of the media who are also tied into the political process. And they ALL have a say in the overall process. They have more of a say that you or I ever will have! Some of them actually have more political power than the politicians themselves.

THESE are the real people behind the status quo. THESE are the people who hold a cult-like mentality that says that you will NOT be allowed to shake things up in the system.

Now, much like the rules in the movie “Fight Club”, the first rule of the status quo is that you do not talk about the status quo. And the second rule of the status quo is that you DO NOT TALK about the status quo. As a political movement, it is simply not supposed to exist.

One of the ways that the status quo gets concealed is through the “Law of Unintended Consequence”. That’s when you try to resolve a problem and end up creating a much bigger problem. Prohibition is the best example of this. The failing “War on Drugs” is another. It presupposes that politicians are incompetent morons that enact mindless legislation without so much as a single consideration as to how that legislation applies to the real world.

And I suppose that kind of simplistic explanation works for those mind-numbed demographics who can’t fathom anything beyond the ten-second soundbyte that serves as political pabulum. But the truth of the matter is that what goes on in passing legislation – both on a state and on a federal level – is less of a knee-jerk situation and more along the lines of political puppetry.

You see, I DO NOT subscribe to the concept of “Unintended Consequence” when it comes to the legislative process. I don’t accept it because I know that many of the laws and regulations passed by the legislature are not only supported by special interest groups, in many cases they are actually WRITTEN by them as well! So any time you have a situation where some group actually prospers from a law, it’s really not “unintended”. In pretty much every situation of late it’s done by design. If you see some “reform” measure enacted where a certain company ends up making off like a bandit because of it, it’s not by accident, and it is certainly not by coincidence.

Now the third rule of the status quo is obviously the most important of them all. You can promise reform. You can promise to shake things up, but if you’re part of the status quo, then you must do everything in your power to make sure that any kind of “reform” measure DOES NOT change the status quo!

You want to “reform” the tax system? Well you’re allowed to tweak the numbers a bit, add a few more exemptions, issue tax “credits” and tax “cuts”, but you are not allowed to make fundamental changes to the system. You can’t mess up their “perfect” system which keeps endless accountants, tax preparers, and financial institutions employed for life.

THESE are the people who oppose any kind of SERIOUS tax reform! And they’re not above committing all-out SLANDER to demonize those reform plans. They will openly lie and exaggerate and re-write the plans so as to make them unappealing for the masses because they know that if it passes, then something like the FairTax plan will fundamentally change the government’s revenue-collection system and destroy the status quo.

Look at the previous attempts as “reform”. They were supposed to make the tax system simpler for Americans, and they only made things worse. THAT is the only kind of “reform” that is ALLOWED by the status quo!

Even Bush Junior’s tax cuts are affected by the status quo. Why do you think that it got an expiration date? Why do you think that the GOP, which controlled BOTH houses of Congress for several years, systematically REFUSED to make those cuts a permanent part of the tax system? It is because the status quo said that they will ALLOW the cuts for a brief period of time, and then it’s back to business as usual.

Political reform is also next to impossible when left to the politicians to resolve. Democrats and Republicans have been in power for so damned long now that they have essentially become permanent fixtures in Washington… or at least the status quo certainly believes it to be so. That’s why they sound alike and behave alike. All the zero-sum “Mad Cleric” rhetoric aside, the Dems and the Reps literally ARE interchangeable! And they damned well KNOW IT!

This is also why they work so damned hard to make life miserable for any third-party or independent movement. They know that if the Libertarians or the Greens win any kind of political power that it will change the status quo, and obviously they cannot allow that!

Even WAR itself can become part of the status quo! You can have a war, but you can’t have a draft. You can’t disrupt the business world like we did in World War II. The people who serve can fight and die, because that’s what they’re there for in the eyes of the status quo, but the rest of the day-to-day operations need to go on as usual. You can’t show funerals. You can’t publicize all the names of those who died. Casualties are just numbers. You can hype the war, but only as long as it is something that is going on “over there”.

Look at the recent Iraq spending “compromise”! The Democrats had PROMISED when they took over the Congress that they would enact timetables to get our people home. Then they caved after the first veto. They passed a compromise bill that traded timetables for benchmarks, and even then the White House can actually NEGATE those benchmarks if they feel like it! So what the Democrats did was essentially gave the White House… ANOTHER BLANK CHECK!

Score yet another one for the status quo.

Then there is the immigration “compromise”. A so-called “omnibus reform program” that has more holes in it than the US/Mexican border! And yet both Republicans and Democrats are going to the mat for this and are actually BLAMING talk radio for interfering in their “done deal”! Yes, it is quid pro quo for the new Iraqi blank check, but the reason why it is flawed in the first place is because it is the only kind of “reform” program that is ALLOWED by the status quo! They will only ALLOW a reform program that really doesn’t reform a damned thing!

Now here’s the thing that separates the cult-mentality of the status quo from being an actual cult: cults usually have charismatic leaders. The status quo in our political system wants nothing at all to do with those kinds of people!

Why do you think that Tom DeLay was able to be forced out of power and out of office by a local prosecutor… and by a Democrat prosecutor from the GOP stronghold of TEXAS no less… for just ONE of the many things that he was accused of doing? It was because he and his ego personified the status quo. This was a party that CLAIMED to end politics as usual, and when DeLay came to power he went to K-Street and told the lobbyists that HE was calling the shots now. He became a liability to the system, and unfortunately for the GOP, they moved to purge him just a little too late.

Same thing with Jack Abramoff. Why was HE singled out from of all of these other lobbyists? Because somewhere along the line, he pissed off someone else in the status quo. He assumed power that was not his, and it started to catch up to him. He became a threat to the status quo, and the status quo cut him loose.

That’s the thing with the status quo in government… it is a delicate balance of various forces. You step on the wrong toes, or you piss off the wrong special interest groups and they WILL retaliate. Granted, it’s done with OUR money and with OUR resources, but that’s the whole point of it all. They wouldn’t care one bit about government if they were forced to rely on THEIR OWN resources to get things done.

And that of course brings us to the last part of this rant… the true SCOPE of the status quo. You heard me go over this list of people who are committed to keeping things as they are, but what some of you don’t realize is just how extensive this group is in the halls of government.

I want you to think about this for a minute: special interest groups will actually PEN the legislation that they want passed. They will come up with the RESEARCH from their friends in the research organizations to back it up. They will call their friends on the staff of a congressman or senator and schedule an appointment for a meeting. They will tell the politician that they have this bill that they want him or her to sponsor. It’s already written up and has all of the research for it, including their own polling results to convince the other legislators that this bill is needed and popular. All he or she needs to do is to put their name on the bill and submit it as their own. The politician’s staff will go over the whole bill and come up with a brief summary of what it does so it can go before the committees and subcommittees.

The other politicians WILL NOT read a single word of what that bill entails! They will instead defer to their staff members, who will read the bill and determine what is in it and whether or not it is politically expedient for them to support it.

Other special interest groups will step in and ask for their amendments to be inserted, which the politicians will eagerly do, and again they will often do this without even bothering to read what they are supporting. Earmarks… pork spending… get inserted. The bill can often get completely gutted and re-written without the politicians even knowing what is going on. You want to know why bills are sponsored that will make encyclopedias look like a Tijuana comic book in comparison? This is how it happens!

And the special interest groups that actually WROTE the bill will then do all of the politicking for that bill; twisting arms and cashing in favors to make sure they have the actual votes to get the bill passed. The politicians who support the bill get rewarded with campaign support for their next re-election.

And IF by some chance the bill is passed and signed into law and then is challenged in the courts, I want you to think about this: whether or not a court appeal even MAKES it to the US Supreme Court is in most instances dependant not on the justices themselves, but on their law clerks! They will also be the ones who will actually WRITE the decisions that their bosses will take the credit or the blame for. These are also the people who eventually become judges themselves, so they also have a vested interest in keeping the status quo going.

Oh, and for those of you who think that my “goodbye and good riddance” rant for Jerry Falwell that was posted in my blog was giving that waste of oxygen just a little too much credit, I should point out that the lion’s share of law clerks in the US Supreme Court come from Liberty University… which was set up and run by Falwell for the purpose of bringing in people who will support and advance his theo-political agenda in the halls of government. Jerry Falwell was many things, and not all of them nice, but the one thing that he was not was an idiot.

NOW do you understand the scope of the people behind the status quo? Do you understand now how these people can have more influence over how laws get passed than you or I could EVER have on our own?

Now let’s get brutally honest here… the reason why I bring all these things up is NOT to discourage you from getting involved in politics. Quite the contrary; I believe that we need A LOT MORE people being politically active!

But I want you to see what we are up against! When we talk about reforms and shaking things up and bringing REAL changes to government, you need to understand who your REAL adversaries are! It’s not just the politicians. It’s not just the special interest groups. It’s not just the media. It is literally the men and women who make up the very INFRASTRUCTURE of our government that you also have to deal with!

If you REALLY want change, you have to pay close attention to it. You have to pay close attention to the bills being sponsored and to what they say and what gets added to them. You have to pay close attention to the people whom you elect, and to whom they support, and to whom they employ. You have to be JUST as politically active as the people inside the status quo. And you have to be FORCEFUL in making sure that your reforms get through. You CANNOT let the political system handle it, because if it affects them, then they will do everything in their power to BURY IT!

And as I just pointed out… they can do that quite well.

(Computer – some appropriate stuff that you refuse to listen to)
(Fade Music In – “Session” by Linkin Park)

Changing our political system isn’t easy. It didn’t get messed up overnight. It got this way through literally GENERATIONS of manipulation and deal-making and gerrymandering. It’s not going to be resolved overnight. Nor can it be resolved simply by changing out the politicians or trying to enact some sort of lobbying reform. It takes time, it takes determination, and it takes being thorough in making sure that the system doesn’t try to force itself back to the status quo.

Remember: when you’re out there trying to change the system, you’re missing with these peoples’ bread and butter. They’re going to be just as sensitive and adversarial to any kind of changes as you would be in similar changes to your job.

(Pause)

Brutally Honest is a Get Brutal production; all opinions expressed are those of the commentator, and may or may not be shared by the online provider. This is David Matthews 2 saying good night, and I’ll speak with you soon!

(Fade out)
(Computer – Ending/“End of Recording”)

[End of program]
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