Home   >   News   >   Current Affairs   >   A Letter Home from a Delinquent Camper

A Letter Home from a Delinquent Camper

By on August 19, 2012

This column will resemble the letter I used to write home every summer from camp explaining to my parents why I had not written in some time. It wasn’t always because I was having too much fun. Quite the contrary. Sometimes it was because I was bored, mosquito-bitten and wanting to come home early, which wasn’t an option on the home front.

I know now it was probably my parents who were having too much fun with me away at Camp Kiddierelief. After all how many lanyards, key chains, wicker baskets, amateur wampum belts, pet newts and native rock collections could one suburban home want in payment for these weeks with nature? How many archery targets with holes near the center did it take to cover the refrigerator door?

I had a piece written last week about the significance of the selection of Paul Ryan to  Health Care Reform and was ready to post it, when I was struck with what can only be called a mid-summer blah. I have complained in these pages about how awful the presidential contest has become. I have railed about both its length and cost. But recently there has been a sharp increase in stupid political ads that blatantly play games with the truth. With Ryan’s selection, this has accelerated. The number of political robo-calls has increased. The TV is plastered with PAC commercials, some real head-scratchers. I have been surveyed twice this past week, something that never happened in 36 years of living in California. Either no one wants to hear what Californians think, or they feel Californians don’t think.

Last week I asked myself who wants to read anything more about any of this, including health care reform? Maybe I should switch my column to fly-fishing or diet tips for the older set or how to deal with elm blight. Maybe I should start worrying about Jennifer Anniston’s wedding.

I am finding cable and conventional TV news and information shows hyper-repetitive and super-predictable. There seem to be armies of flaks combining the channels paid to go on and speak like human robo-calls. Some of what they say is so overly scripted they start their answer before the question. Much of it is unresponsive. I turn the set off.

What masochists are following this any more? And can we up their medication? Every hiccup, every squiggle is seized upon by the opposition wanting to make it the media event of the day. The obsessed and colicky reporters following all this seem to need periodic burping like babies.

All of which comes down to why I have not written to you from camp this week. Do you really want  to read anything more of this nature? Don’t get me wrong. Health care reform is as important as ever. The need to change is huge. People are still dying because of under-treatment. People like yourself are still filing for bankruptcy because of unexpected medical bills they cannot pay. I heard a new horror story this morning. But solutions like “trust me, I got a better plan here that I don’t want to talk about” is strictly for suckers.

Both sides are now are engaging in hate wars of dis-information. Candidates or surrogates rattle off stuff they surely know is untrue. And they are being egged on by so-called commentators of whom there are far too many on all channels.  They should be sent to summer camp this year to learn how to weave lanyards.

I have lost patience with interviewees trying to evade tough answers. “My opponent is a total villain” is wearing awfully thin as an answer to any question. Increasingly you know what they say is untrue as soon as they say it.  They are lucky they aren’t Pinocchio, although it does seem to me that Mr. Ryan’s nose looks longer than when he first entered the race.

We still have 80-some days of this torture left to go, and both conventions (info-mercials which I repeat that Congress should stop funding so they will go away) are just around the corner. This national orgy of half-truths, lies, dirty tricks designed to confuse voters, underhanded voter suppression tactics designed to steal elections you can’t win honestly, outright greed and corruption has reached a crisis point. It is threatening the very fabric of our democracy.

We need to be able to talk about the serious problems we face as a nation, and we can’t. For the past four years in the face of two foreign wars and a world-wide economic catastrophe, we have had experienced nothing but paralysis, obstruction, egomania and blatant attempts to deceive and distort. It is all about winning elections at any cost. And it is being financed by a few people/corporations with excessive amounts of money that intelligently invested might have ended the recession months ago. We should raise their taxes just so the money goes somewhere helpful.

Only the vast middle, Independent voters, whether they lean right or left,  standing up and saying “enough” can save our American form of government which is crippled and stumbling. This year intelligent voters must say ‘no’ to extremists, dirty tricks, hypocrisy, political payola and the politics of anger and obstruction that has brought us to the brink of economic chaos. Change will only come when the passive Middle finally speaks loudly and firmly on the topic of political misbehavior. Until then, we can only expect more of the same.

What say you?

About Tom Godfrey

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

HTML tags are not allowed.