Image by Freepik

Yeah, that’s us. Being manipulated. Led around by the nose.

A while ago – three years! – I wrote a post on this very subject: On Being Fitted for a Nose Ring (https://divided-states.com/?p=347). That post, written at the height of the pandemic, is not only still valid, it has never been more true than it is today. Nothing has changed; in fact, it’s gotten even worse.

There is a popular saying that is incredibly pertinent, dare I say critical, right now:

“The definition of insanity is to do the same thing and expect different results.”

I submit that this country is insane.

The same power brokers have offered us the same candidates with the same shortcomings and the same baggage as before. We’re staring at the same geriatric, cognitively-impaired candidates promising the same divisive, polarizing agendas… The same hate…

And we’re sitting still for it. No, worse than that – we’re contributing to it, doing the same thing we have done before, fanning the same flames, yet expecting a different result. We are insane.

We must do something different. We must break the cycle. Prove we’re not insane.

The only way we’re going to make America great again is to not do what we’re told. To see through the charade. To do something so unexpected that it rocks the power brokers to the core, destroys their ultimately destructive grip on this society.

We need to be Americans.

We deserve better.

And we have the power to make it happen. We just have to use it.

Vote. Vote in numbers that make 2020’s record turnout look like an off-year election.

But don’t vote for who they’re telling us to vote for.

This is something out of a third-world banana republic… The Republican party has been usurped by wealthy extremists, offering us an extremist candidate for the White House. Likewise, the Democratic party has been usurped by wealthy extremists, offering us an extremist candidate for the White House – at least, one so easily manipulated it makes no difference…

Either way, We The People lose.

And they know it. They know we don’t like this pair of candidates (most Americans are very unhappy that it’s a Biden/Trump rematch), but they’re shoving them at us anyway. They know how unpopular these two are, but they parade them out as our only choices in spite of it.

They don’t want us to remember that it’s We The People who have the actual power.

I steadfastly refuse to vote for either of these two candidates. I reject the oligarchy. I reject the autocracy. I reject the extremism these two represent. I want a candidate who actually cares about this country, who realizes that neither political extreme holds a lock on truth and justice, that all the answers are not held by a single political party. I reject the pachyderm, I reject the jackass, and I reject the fear-mongering that has already begun. I urge you to do the same.

Think for yourself. Only then will we make America great again.