Warning: Grammatically atrocious political rant.

I just made the mistake of watching 10 straight minutes of CNN. I had the distinct pleasure of watching two conservative congressman who looked eerily alike pontificate about the evil tendrils of a communist menace wrapping themselves around the throat of free America. "If we are to ensure that the United States of America remains the greatest nation in the world we have to stop them (China)...their way of life (Chinese) is fundamentally incompatible with ours...they have no honor...they argue that it's their turn to have an industrial revolution with no regard to the rest of the world...sovereign wealth fund is just a euphemism for foreign government...when a foreign government buys free market assets that is socialism, it shrinks the private sector....they are a strategic, economic, and social threat and a rival model of governance just like the USSR was a strategic, economic, and social threat and a rival model of governance." Such impassioned exhortations from two men who looked as if they would be equally fiery about selling carpet cleaners. Quite stirring stuff. Behind them an oversized American Flag waves gently while the tagline reads in bold print RED STORM RISING. I like Tom Clancy as much as the next guy, but these instigators are a little too vehement for comfort. You could almost see the pitchforks and torches behind their gray suits and red ties.

In these difficult, well just plain shitty, times these burn em at the stake types will garner a strong following. As I recall the American dream is to make it big or bust. Throw a couple sticks of dynamite in your pack, strap on a shotgun and shovel, jump on the horse give her a good slap then ride off into the sunset to make your fortune come hell or high water and the injuns be damned. Problem is that the American way was a little too popular. Those injuns built palaces of positive EV and the rest of the world got busy strapping on guns and digging for gold. Now that Americans feel threatened by the very philosophies that they spread around the world, they're crying foul. The hypocrisy is overwhelming. Both the left and right wings demonize the "others" for all of the country's woes when the real tragedy is America's collective loss of spirit. Once the masses accept that the world's governments are actually controlled pharmaceutical and energy conglomerates maybe there will be far less strife. The less than 1% of the population which controls when and what we; eat, breathe, drive, sleep, work, play and die like to reinforce these artificial divisions between the general populace. As long as the puppets are busy tangling with eachother they'll never see the strings.

So rest easy as you listen to our fearless leaders espouse their convictions on NPR or watch them gesticulate mad with righteous fury on CNN. Your iPod, TV, sofa, probably even the sheetrock holding your walls up, they were all manufactured by small children who live on 2 cents a day, drive Bentleys, eat tibetan monks for lunch, get back on the assembly line after kung fu practice, hack into the pentagon after high tea at the Peninsula then munch on baby seals dipped in offshore oil spills and transfat. After all I'm sure Wal-mart and Macy's will have a great pre-WWIII sale and unbeatable post-apocalyptic blowout prices.