Despair

Post-midterm election reality greeted me this morning, telling how one established party won over the other well entrenched political  party.  Two years ago, I awakened at my friend Jake's apartment in San Francisco and listened to the results of Obama's victory and the Republicans many sorrows and regrets.  Now this election season the GOP are singing and its the Democrats turn to cry, a cycle of one party this year, the other party winning next year with little variation in between.   If this is democracy at its finest I can somewhat understand why only one third of the total eligible voters cast a ballot this year.  Does anything really change?  Yes and no is the answer, the usual one step forward and two steps back.  Having personally involved myself with local taxi issues, and after meeting many of the important political players, I can only despair at our future here in Seattle, having discovering so-called "liberalism" isn't any more expansive than stagnant conservatism.  If anything, "liberal" arrogance equals a  "New Royalist" attitude while Republican intransigence compares to a wounded dinosaur roaring at lifes' indignities somewhere in the misty prehistoric past.  How can this confounding combination of sadly comical characters achieve anything reasonable?   Not easily is the answer.

Saturday night a town car driver told the four kids that he would drive them to Pioneer Square for $15.00.  Jumping instead into my taxi the meter was rate was $5.00.  This type of theft is unfortunately commonplace.   Where is the the outrage and municipal intervention?   There isn't any, only empty rhetoric and legislation that is never followed.  Vote it is touted, let your voice be heard.  But the truth is currently your voice is lost somewhere in a cultural vacuum, a political "black hole" consuming the elective process.  I think back to a young woman my then wife and I met in "Iron Curtain" Hungary back in September of 1984.  Whispering to us in a  Budapest art museum, she recounted scary stories of governmental oppression, clearly afraid of being overheard and arrested.  What she longed for was freedom, simple freedom to talk and go where she wanted minus limitations.

We in this state, city, county and country are free to shout out our dissent.  Appear before the Seattle City council and speak your two minutes, telling everyone what and how you feel.   And what happens to your concerns?  They are ignored, the decisions already made.  Call the Seattle Mayor today and ask him to implement many of the rules he signed into law a few months back.  You will not hear laughter.  You will not hear explanation.  What you will hear is nothing whatsoever as you are left staring at your telephone.  Welcome to our current Democracy!