A few weeks ago I was performing with my Rock solo act in the beautiful Black Hills of South Dakota. While there one night, I was playing poker with some locals in the cool wild west town of Deadwood, SD at Cadillac Jacks, when an opportunity arose in our conversation for me to make an important point that even many Conservatives usually have to admit.
I had what seemed to be most if not all of the players at the table agreeing with me that what we are seeing more than ever in America today is a dire need for an independent 3rd party that truly represents ‘WE THE PEOPLE’ and not ‘WE THE CORPORATIONS’, as BOTH the Democratic Party and Republican Trump Party are currently sold out to.
One of the players was rightfully concerned about the growing level of divisiveness, hate and violence we are seeing between Americans today, that could easily erupt into at least a small scale Civil War.
I took that opportunity to explain that the MAINSTREAM MEDIA on BOTH sides (meaning both FOX NEWS AND CNN, MSNBC, etc) make their massive profit and ratings by grossly exaggerating the things that DIVIDE Americans…
I explained that the truth is that the vast majority of Americans are NOT reflected in the pockets of radical violence we are seeing across our nation, predominantly from the far Left…
NOR are they reflected in the Bible thumping evangelical fundamentalists, bigoted ‘Proud Boy’ and anti-Mexican immigrant types that the media constantly seeks to feature from the far Right. All of those types are FRINGE TYPES in both parties.
One of the players quipped, ‘So how are we going to avoid another civil war?’, to which I answered that number one, we need to wake up to this false manipulation by the media that tries so hard to keep us divided…
And number two, we need to realize those MANY areas the majority of us absolutely agree on in the name of equality, justice and liberty…in the pursuit of happiness and the American Dream, and in doing so we need to begin to COMPROMISE as AMERICANS, instead of being so ridiculously TRIBAL, wanting to see ourselves as EITHER REPUBLICANS OR DEMOCRATS.
Again, BOTH of those parties DO NOT have our interest at heart!
BOTH of them have been bought and are owned entirely by elite monopoly corporations today, and they represent the interest of an elite few.
They get away with this because they also own the mainstream media (90% of the mainstream media is owned by 6 corporations) and they make sure their puppet ‘news media’ continues to divide us as I described above, with lie after exaggerated lie, sticking to a pre-determined narrative that suits the agenda of those elite corporations that KNOW VERY WELL HOW MUCH THEY HAVE TO LOSE if we the 99% regain our rightful power over government as our U.S. Constitution intended.
These elite corporations DO NOT WANT you and I to have our own independent means of production. They want you and I – both Democrat and Republican – to be DEPENDENT on them, and have to work for them for the cheaper and cheaper amount they want to pay us, to serve their corporations!
Back to what happened at the poker game in between some ridiculous ‘bad beat’ hands…
When I made the point that the answer involves a simple, honest degree of COMPROMISE, the self avowed Trump supporter dealer at our table aggressively interjected that he did not agree with any kind of compromise between Americans outside of his party.
He had become visibly irritated with our discussion, because he was an example of the problem I am talking about – so deeply rooted in his identity as a ‘Trumper’, that was all he cared about, not waking up to the truth that most Americans DO NOT DISAGREE on MOST THINGS!
The mainstream media has worked overtime to make you think that we disagree on most things, but the truth is, we don’t.
Even on the hot topic of abortion, a recent big U.S. survey showed something like 75% of Americans from both sides of the political aisle (Liberal and Conservative) agree that before the end of the first trimester, abortion should of course be an option for a woman to have control of her own body and reproduction, but that AFTER the first trimester, less and less Americans on BOTH sides supported abortion the further along a pregnancy went, as the fetus is fully developing with organs and a beating heart, etc.
That is just basic, common sense human values and decency, and need not have ANYTHING TO DO with religion. Even an ATHEIST can understand that, and as the survey obviously reflected, many of them do!
The vast majority of Americans on BOTH sides of the political aisle support the 2nd Amendment and Americans’ right to bear arms for self defense, and would NEVER allow it to be abolished.
The vast majority of Americans on BOTH sides of the political aisle support LGBT equality, and condemn the bigotry of those (predominantly on the far Right) who use their ‘Christianity’ and their Bibles to ‘justify’ their bigotry and condemnation of those who are naturally gay or transgender.
The vast majority of Americans on BOTH sides of the political aisle understand that OF COURSE BLACK LIVES MATTER, and there is a lot of progress still to be made in ending racism and the uneven, unjust, still unequal playing field between whites and blacks, as well as other minorities.
The vast majority of Americans on BOTH sides of the political aisle, while they understand the need for major reform in policing, DO NOT support DEFUNDING and DISMANTLING of the police, etc. and accordingly DO NOT support this crazy recent rioting, looting, burning businesses, attacking and shooting at the police by angry anarchists, often ostensibly in the name of Black Lives Matter.
The vast majority of Americans on BOTH sides of the political aisle are not ‘atheist communist marxists’, and they support Capitalism and Free Enterprise!
The thing is, they understand that the American Dream version of democratic Capitalism that our forefathers intended, has become entirely corrupted by what one might call ‘CORPORATISM’.
The good news is that more and more Americans on BOTH sides of the aisle are beginning to wake up to this fact that I mentioned above…
That monopolizing mega-corporations like Amazon, Walmart, Google, Apple and Facebook, (and several others including Big Banking and Big Pharma) have had an agenda for some time that seeks to destroy the independence of the American working class, and make them dependent entirely on them, with a growing emphasis on “A.I.” (artificial intelligence) and pushing on-line retail shopping for everything.
Those of you who continue to support those mega-monopoly, community and local business killers, and only care about HOW CHEAP you can get something from either Amazon or Walmart, need to WAKE UP and understand this:
YOU ARE DOING TEN TIMES MORE DAMAGE WITH THAT
SHEEP-LIKE, ‘CORPORATE PUPPET’ CONSUMER BEHAVIOR THAN ANY LIBERAL COMMUNIST COULD EVER DO!
STOP SHOPPING AT WALMART AND AMAZON NOW!!
Start seeking out smaller mom and pops in your community…seek out any local community retail business – even an alternative corporation that is not so much of a monopoly (Like J.C. Penney and your local mall, Kohls or even Target)
But STOP ADDICTIVELY ONLY CARING ABOUT HOW CHEAP YOU CAN GET IT FROM AMAZON AND WALMART…THEY ARE CHINA’S RETAIL OUTLET!
That is not hard to understand. But you don’t hear it enough in the media, because the agenda of those who control the media is to keep you as a consumer moving in that direction, and gradually like a frog in a slowly boiling pot, eventually without realizing it, it becomes too late.
The Trump supporter dealer at our poker table couldn’t have been more wrong in his statement that he did not see compromise and coming together on these obvious areas of agreement as the answer. He just wanted to continue being hateful, hypocritical and TRIBAL to his ‘Trump Tribe’ mindset.
And sustaining that kind of dangerous, divisive ignorance is what those elite corporations who control the mainstream media are COUNTING ON!
It’s time for us to WAKE UP and realize that NEITHER party has our interest at heart. It’s time to WAKE UP and realize that the vast majority of us AGREE ON MOST THINGS, despite the lie to the contrary that is constantly thrown in our face on both FOX and CNN.
Neither Trump nor Biden is the answer.
You are LYING TO YOURSELF if you don’t understand that BOTH are as corrupt and sold out to elite interests as they can possibly be, in their own way. Don’t forget how Trump bragged so much in the past about how he would refuse to pay many contractors he hired to do work for him, in order to get them to have to SUE him, so he could end up settling for pennies on the dollar of the work they did.
Don’t forget about all the corruption he was caught having engaged in with the defrauding of THOUSANDS of Americans who enrolled in his fraudulent ‘Trump University’ which was forced to forever close.
Same with his so-called charitable ‘Trump Organization’, convicted of fraudulently using the organization to enrich himself, he only had to pay something like a 25 million dollar fine (you or I would have gone to jail for serious felonies, but not the top corporate elite).
I could go on and on with examples of Trump’s well known, lifelong career of documented corruption, some of which he actually admitted to in his book ‘Art of the Deal’, including his cozy connections with New York and New Jersey organized crime families.
What all of this is showing us is that we have to rise up and take our country BACK from these corporate elites that have control of both the Democrats and the Republicans in the White House and the Congress.
The first step is being willing to compromise like we USED to do in the past, and to seek out ethical individuals from BOTH sides of the political aisle who we can count on not to be bought by special interests, and to represent ‘WE THE PEOPLE’.
What would we call this new party?…Maybe something as simple and fitting as “THE AMERICAN PARTY”.
Connie Bryan
(Connie Bryan is a writer in Sacramento, CA…She is also the host and producer of “The Connie Bryan Show”, her monthly cable TV show airing in 14 cable markets nationwide including Washington D.C. Check out all of her material on her website and blog at https://www.conniebryan.com/)
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