Politics Stinks

Paraphrasing a comment I have often made, in other venues, it is my opinion that…

• The divisive nature of partisan politics…
• The capitalization of political campaigns beyond any rhyme or reason…
• The personal power ambitions of those who seek public office…
• Deliberate, concerted media distortion…

…effectively renders much of the American political process a farce. None of the aforementioned elements can be relied on to generate candidates with characters and value-systems exclusively devoted to fair and moral governance of the body politic, i.e., We The People.

In simpler terms, the American political system is corrupt, the politicians are mealy-mouthed, fork-tongued and two-faced at best, and mentally imbalanced megalomaniacs at worst.

Howard Weliver has pretty much summed it up visually, for me, with his painting, “Politics Stink” (upper right).

Poo-Flags

I first became acquainted with poo-flags when I saw a story back in 2005, about how German police were seeking anonymous poo-flag “vandals” in Germany–

Achtung, schweinhund! Setzen sie sich hinunter pooflag und übergeben sie der Polizei!

Police in Germany are hunting pranksters who have been sticking miniature flag portraits of US President George W. Bush into piles of dog poo in public parks. Josef Oettl, parks administrator for Bayreuth, said: “This has been going on for about a year now, and there must be 2,000 to 3,000 piles of excrement that have been claimed during that time.”

The series of incidents was originally thought to be some sort of protest against the US-led invasion ofIraq. And then when it continued it was thought to be a protest against President George W. Bush’s campaign for re-election. But it is still going on and the police say they are completely baffled as to who is to blame. “We have sent out extra patrols to try to catch whoever is doing this in the act,” said police spokesman Reiner Kuechler. “But frankly, we don’t know what we would do if we caught them red handed.” Legal experts say there is no law against using feces as a flag stand and the federal legal experts say there is no law against using feces as a flag stand and the federal constitution is vague on the issue. (source)

Poo-flagging seems to have caught on in the United States, and there is now a San Francisco-based site, madeyouthink.org, which hosts a gallery of user-submitted poo-flaggings from across the nation, and also distributes free poo-flags via snail mail or download.