Stooge Time: Scripting the Empire

Memories of the glorious ’70s, at least compared to these terrible times, occasionally flow through me. I can recall the manager of the local pub near our small business that would regularly make the same announcement late each afternoon. “Stooge time!!” He would shout from behind the bar. It was time again for the re-runs of The Three Stooges Show. Well, aren’t we lucky to be able to see stooge time with regularity this election cycle?

All one needs to do is tune in to any Congressional debate and watch the stooges operate. Last night this writer was channel surfing and caught the debate for Virginia Senator between Allen and Kaine. Once again, the two candidates parroted each of their respective political party’s script on every issue presented to them. What really irritated me was when they discussed, as all debates do, foreign policy and military spending. The Republican candidate will go right to the Fox channel’s retorts about the attack on our embassy in Libya. They will use this to strengthen the argument for increasing our military presence worldwide…to stop the terrorists.

Then the Democrat will laud how this president has curtailed Al Qaeda and has them on the run…oh yeah, we finally got Bin Laden under a Democrat’s watch. Then, both candidates will argue as to which party and which candidate is tougher on terrorism and a friend of the Military Empire.

And many of you serfs will run out and vote for one of these two gangs of liars, hypocrites and….stooges.

In my almost 40 years of sales experience, I know that the old adage of KISS is relevant: Keep It Simple Stupid. Well, it is quite simple if you really wish to change the direction and conditions of our great nation. Before we can deal with the multitude of peripheral issues, the paramount one is staring us in the face…as this writer has written about perhaps too much.

We need to pull back our Military Industrial Empire, drastically cutting the funding first, and then getting the hell out of the over 100 nations with our over 800+ bases. Imagine if instead of the 56 cents of each federal tax dollar sent to Uncle Sam going towards military spending, the figure was dropped to 30 cents. Translated: we would have tens of billions more each year to help our states and cities with the infrastructure upgrades and improvements to soften the blows of any natural disaster.

Ask the folks in New Orleans and the NYC metro area about that. Instead we get twiddle dee and twiddle dum vying for your precious votes, and then handing it over to the ‘friends of the Military Empire’. How many weapons systems does one nation need to perform overkill? How many precious lives and precious dollars need we waste in invading and occupying countries that pose NO threat to our survival…only to that of our corporations?

Step # 1 is to stop voting for either of these two phony corporate-run parties. Step # 2 is to get out regularly and let your neighbors and elected officials know that enough is enough! Do it with love in your heart, but with righteous anger. The more we get to join us, the quicker change may come. The stake of our nation and of the entire planet is dependent upon us.

Philip A Farruggio is son and grandson of Brooklyn, NYC longshoremen. He is a freelance columnist (found on Information Clearing house, Doomstead Diner, Op Ed News, Dandelion Salad, Activist Post, Dissident Voice and many other sites worldwide). Philip works as an environmental products sales rep and has been an activist leader since 2000. In 2010 he became a local spokesperson for the 25% Solution Movement to Save Our Cities by cutting military spending 25%. Philip can be reached at [email protected]

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