Pathetic Spectacle

Charles Hugh Smith sums up neatly the dismay many of us feel when confronted by the antics of our national politicians:

All we have left in the U.S. is a deeply impoverishing Political Theater of the Absurd. Policy, theory and governance have all been reduced to competing stage performances in the Theater of the Absurd. The actors are transparently given to farcical overacting in exaggerated dramas drained of meaning; they proceed through the cliched motions as if the audience hadn't seen the same charades overplayed dozens of times before. "Government shutdown" and "debt ceiling" may have engaged audiences starved for entertainment in a bygone age, but now they exemplify a theater that is so impoverished it can only re-stage tired formulaic dramas with a savage appetite for incompetence and buffoonery.

So what should we do? I think the time for trying to elect better politicians within this corrupt system has passed. We need to recognize that our interests simply aren't represented in this corporate-friendly regime. Our attitude should be akin to those of colonized populations biding their time until they can reclaim their own land. Collaborate with the regime as little as possible and support our own independent attempts to build communities and institutions that promote sane, healthy living. Continue to resist oppression, but begin to construct a new, more humane society on the scorched earth of the ravaged world left to us by the greedheads.