two parts of the problem

Nearly everyone I know has elevated heartbeat and respiration over tonight's televised debate, the first between the two major party candidates. Too bad for them, because what they're going to see instead is a TV show in which a couple of actors recite memorized scripts and stupid one-liners, in performances designed to garner the biggest "audience share" -- the political version of "American Idol."

Writing at Huffpo, Alex Jones of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government skewers the trend of substituting showbiz for policy with the pungent observation, "It is now a huge advantage, if not an absolute requirement, that a candidate for high national office be a good actor. Ronald Reagan's delivery of his lines was that of an experienced thespian, and occasionally there is a natural, like Bill Clinton. But at a minimum, a credible candidate must be able to act authentic. Not be authentic. Act authentic. The theater of politics is a massive effort to manufacture a sense of authenticity."

Fake authenticity, like the fake apologies we get from our corporate masters when they don't want to give us what we paid for, are a big part of this country's problem today, and stem from the same source: the corporations that own nearly all commerce and economic activity in the US also own the political system. That's why both candidates and both parties are so determined to put on a good show tonight, because a well-crafted song, dance, and comedy routine distracts voters from the necessity of coming to grips with the true state of affairs.

Where is the candidate that will tell us that while banking is still a necessary and vital function of a healthy economy, that such banks today exist only on a local level, and that the megabanks who do 90 percent of the business are nothing more than criminal enterprises? Which candidate will level with us, and inform us that Ben Bernanke's open-ended "Quantitative Easing III" is a scheme whose only purpose is to inflate the dollar, thus providing a windfall for debtors, the biggest of whom are currently the megabanks?

And which candidate tonight is going to let us in on the little secret that GW Bush and Dick Cheney are a couple of shitheads who had no understanding of the places or people they decided to invade and destroy, which is why the winner of the Iraq War is...(wait for it) Iran!? Or that Iraq today is ruled by an Iranian general named Qassim Suleimani? (This is detailed today in a front-page story at the New York Times.) Speaking of Iran, if you're waiting for a candidate to admit that US plans to attack that country are the most blatant example of fascist aggression since Adolf Hitler cited the "Polish threat" to German security as a pretext for launching World War II, don't hold your breath. Ron Paul won't be a participant tonight.

You're either part of the problem or part of the solution, as people used to say a few years back. Corporations, corporate lies, and the corporate takeover of government are the problem. Free enterprise, an intelligent and informed electorate, and truth are the solution. Don't be fooled by glitzy, media-driven, so-called debates between candidates like the hapless and clueless Romneybot or the cynical phony, Barack Obama.

There is such a thing as truth. It actually does exist, but at the moment it's buried under mountains of bullshit. Instead of wasting time getting hoodwinked by another TV show, we need to get shovels and start digging.