Dyslexic Dystopia

Psychological disorder characterized by the incorrectly-distorted perception of our shared HappilyEverAfter

Things never really looked right to me but experts showed I always twisted stuff up and out of order

I guess I grasped events somewhat differently than what executives marketed as the actual reality

They told me that I pulled facts out of context and then got them turned around inside my head

I maybe was really smart but it was hard to tell since I was always scuttling off somewheres sideways

I saw corporate elders as furtive, shortsighted, self-centered sociopaths not as wise and honest sages

It seemed like the media was made for advertising with a few second thought interruptions thrown in

Elected officials appeared to act solely for a vile self-aggrandizement and re-election, not for voters

I even thought arms makers commissioned boogeyman-mongerers to channel vast sums to themselves

Never got how venal consumer spending and real estate gambling could sustain any real economy

The word of god came to me as a cynical pyramid scam, not the one true way to eternal paradise

Somewhere in my mind I conflated this wack expensive CO2 hoax with a reasoned working hypothesis

To me, flag burning, abortion, gay marriage and creationism just weren’t the most important issues

Evil saw as live, dog was god, sacred was scared and our patriotic burgers taste like tortured remains

Cravenly, I twisted their purest private dialogues with personal saviors into pagan comedy routines

Preposterously, Traditional Family Values™ felt like another recently ginned-up ad campaign to me

My warped prism showed industry self-regulation as a cynical coverup for smash-and-grab capitalism

I even mistook the ignored collateral damage of our divinely-ordained progress for a mass extinction

The distorted lens of my condition wrongly showed a vast human overpopulation, heading for a crash

I thought our spoiled and ignorant children’s pre-mortgaged futures did not look brighter than ours

I imagined costs for good air, clean water and healthy forests where, by capitalist right, none existed

I viewed most of our useless noise as a pitiful attempt to hide from the threateningly-frightful silence

Why, I even found ATVs, snowmobiles and jetskis to be obesely-wasteful, mindless and destructive

I actually deluded myself into wackly believing that if all men were created equal so were all species

I vainly wasted worry on non-issues of soil erosion, habitat destruction, fouled water and polluted air

A tiny minority shared a few of my delusions but the sane hewed to a slick, mass-market gospel truth

Quite revealingly, I even found tiny, efficient vehicles to be comfortable and a real pleasure to own

My bizarre perceptions actually led me to stray from home equity and credit card lifestyle financing

I had this nasty illusion that any new energy source was jointly sabotaged by the media for Big Oil

Contrary to common sense, I did not believe faceless multinational globalization was our salvation

This condition left me unable to swallow the dogma of clergymen, politicians or their talking heads

My twisted sensations morphed dignified religious figures into irrelevant cartoon charlatans

I even found myself believing we should preserve habitats and maintain our waters clean and alive

Unlike the truly patriotic, I couldn’t flaunt a loud and aggressive pride in my illiteracy and ignorance

I had no blind faith in our ability to control the emergent complexity of our spasmodic enterprises

Despite all evidence I concluded that anger, hatred and violence should not remain our natural state

Due to my malady, I thought we rapidly earned everlasting oblivion instead of some eternal paradise

Too Wise To Compromise

Reflexively denigrating all, even those rare, honest efforts to slash social spending or lower taxes

Too quick to accept the loud and postured, endlessly-repeated cawing of bristly rightwingers

Criminally elitist, yet sinfully disdainful of the exceptionist role granted only to us by our Creator

Unable to get beyond mere dry facts and figures to embrace this: ThE greatest country in the world

Too certain that even the quietly faithful are just utterly senseless, conned and frightened sheep

Far too full of skepticism regarding the incandescent jingoism of our new Traditional Family Values

Too quick to fall back upon a sardonic humor laced with bitter sarcasm to belittle real patriotism

Too paralyzed by their excessive junk science facts and intrusive alternatives to enact bold solutions

Too sure that trivia, sloth and greed have fatally infected our populace with a prideful ignorance

Too committed to the sacred belief that unquestioned faith is, in reality, simply a disabling handicap

Too certain that all organized religions are but old and wornout legends worked as scams for control

Too morally relativistic, believing that nothing we do can matter in our brief instant here on earth

Too busy deciding which costly commissioned catchphrase to repeat next to hear any other voices

So smothered by conflicting details as to be unable to take any rational action on the bigger picture

So overwhelmed by their own excess of facts, figures and opinions as to be totally immobilized

Too quick with that sarcastic smirk when all the illiterate lowlifes just don’t get it - Once again

Hopelessly addicted to a hazy, half-baked opiate dream of a tired socialist, New-Age Garden of Eden

Way too sure that slick advertising hype could actually be replaced by whatever reasoned debate

Far too suspicious of leaders who rely on their personal savior’s counsel to make guilt-free decisions

Too quickly dismissive and overly arrogant due to an excessive and totally unproven faith in reason

Too caught up in books and ideas to make any constructive difference whatsoever in the real world

Always and automatically looking first to their government nanny’s teat to solve every social problem

Bloated with a fatal hubris garnered from their pathetic belief that Man is the measure of all things

Blindly preaching an end to violence despite all the incontrovertible pop-science counter-evidence

Too busy trying to tax and spend to note their own closer circling of that widening drain to poverty

Too willing to throw our tax money at the fuzzy math of their vast junk science climate conspiracy

Skillful at acting like real common folk while living up to the responsibility of Ivy League backgrounds

Too slick at pimping wasteful deficit infrastructure spending as sure-fire, no-risk investments

Autonomously committed to government’s moral authority and ability to solve all of our problems

Too stubborn to see how controlling assault weapons is the slippery slope leading to dictatorship

Too eager to hand sovereignty to godless OneWorlders but against patriotic global outsourcing

Too often hamstringing our great economy with unnecessary and expensive bureaucratic regulation

Too deaf to the working people’s real needs to join in their loyal chorus of ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’

Still denying that constituent sacrifice in pre-emptively defensive crusades of liberation is not in vain

Unwilling even to admit that The Best and the Brightest of Wall Street really are our greatest hope

Unable to see that the blind hand of the noble free market automagically solves any and all problems

Yes, We Could Have

So-called Progressive Politicians are just as lame as their Conserve nothing friends across the aisle

 Sure, we can twist facts and omit at-odds details, just like our esteemed colleagues across the aisle

We too, can cunningly bump our poll numbers by reading other’s stirring speeches after tragic events

Yes we can, act like we held fast to our beliefs, after we compromised them up front and in secret

Know that we, as well, smilingly inflate potential savings and deliberately underestimate true costs

We, also, hype pitiful sops to the commoners as we find new ways to coddle our rich supporters

We find it possible to express our strong ecological concern even as we continue relaxing regulations

We speak earnestly of change while, behind the scenes, we simply carry on with business as usual

We trumpet wasted budget-busting giveaways to both sides as truly patriotic bipartisan compromises

We glibly promised jobs in clean energy but continued subsidizing ethanol and all types of fossil fuels

Hey, we too wear lapel pin flags and piously mouth God Bless America just as often as the Right

Turns out our donor base is also Big Money Movers and Shakers and not really just the little guys

And by god, our bristling, increased arms budgets prove that we are not even Soft On Defense

Yes we can! – Falsely pimp even whoppingly fat tax cuts for the rich as a victory for the working man

You bet we posture for the polls: Right up there with the best of their empty political fashion models

Just like them, we, too, are all lawyers: Masters of obfuscation, doublespeak and the fine print

We are able to ignore decaying infrastructure and failed kids just as well as our patriotic opponents

We can heap scorn upon the ruling financiers, even as we subsidize their remaining Too Big To Fail

Sure, we patronize phony corporate college and pro sports, just like previous lame administrations

See us worship schools never mentioning that students wont find the jobs needed to repay their loans

You’ll hear us rapidly co-opting their newly-minted Traditional family values™ to our own selfish ends

Yes we can, still subsidize corn sugar creating the diabetes that you can believe we overpay to treat

We can place the exceptionist wreath upon our citizens in front of the world, just like conservatives

We actually could have reformed healthcare but political expediency warped that effort into disaster

Watch as we, as well, recast unaudited earmark spending as shovel-ready, job-creating investments

WE could have sold off our pickups and SUVs, gone back to school and even lost some weight, too

We might have demanded they stop spending more on arms than the whole world put together

We could have admitted we pay much more but get far less from the worlds finest healthcare system

Yes we can, loudly demand deficit reduction, but without any real benefit cuts and no new taxes

Yes, we might not have hired illegales if we didn’t save so much in taxes, wages and benes doing so

We can talk of good nutrition as we permit expensive, patented GMOs to pervert our organic crops

Yes, we could have gone deeper than their soundbites and pondered a bit beyond their catchphrases

We might not have taken out liar loans, forgone some vacations and even saved a bit for retirement

Yes, up to our necks in the tarpits of Washngton we can still talk of change you should still believe in

Yes, we could actually have realized that things were far too gone to repair in like a year or so

Yes, we could have realized that consumerism, finance and real estate can’t anchor our kid’s futures

We might have even faced up to the tough reality of a bleak, gray, post-Gipper Morning In America