The Great American Circus

 

This circus is not a travelling show.  It stays in one place on the east coast of America.  Even so, it gets enormous coverage by the news media.  It operates sporadically but can be depended on to entertain when it does.  You can visit it if you stand in long lines and be patient.  Its star performers come home from time to time and visit with the ordinary folks. 

We all pay for this circus, whether we want to or not.  It doesn’t matter how much you complain about its cost.  The show goes on anyway.  Strangely, some of its best performances are conducted late at night when no one is watching.  It has lots of sponsors who donate enormous amounts of money so the show meets with their approval. 

The really strange thing about this circus is that is comprised entirely of ideologues .  Of course there are ringmasters too but the ideologues  run the show.  We should all like this circus because these ideologues come from all over our great country.  In fact, they are chosen by us – they say.  They also say that their antics and games are played with our best interests at heart.  It’s probably the only circus that makes that claim. 

Well, this circus has been losing fans for a long time now.  It’s performances have been rather – well – obnoxious lately.  One group offers an idea and the other group automatically says no.  They change their positions every four years.  Then the “no” group gets to offer ideas while the former get to say no.  In the meantime, nothing gets done.  Well I guess that makes sense.  Circuses are not designed to accomplish anything.  They’re just there for our entertainment.  Sadly, most of us are just not entertained by this one anymore. 

By the way, this circus has been running a long time now – well over 200 years.  Most of the original performers were pragmatists .  But the standards have really dropped.  We now have to suffer their antics quietly and commiserate amongst ourselves.

The current caste of ideologues is bought and paid for by the sponsors.  It doesn’t seem fair to me that what was once a great circus is so bad now by comparison.  As opposed to most entertainment, this one has an impact on the lives of the members of the audience.  You can go to most shows and be entertained, come home and be happy.  Not this circus.  This circus’ performances can cost our children and grandchildren their futures.  We pay dearly for this show.  Sometimes our young men and women pay with their lives.  It would seem that the ideologues would appreciate people who make the supreme sacrifice and conduct a much better show.  Unfortunately, these ideologues  pay little attention to their audiences.  They’re so caught up with their theories and ideologies that we, the audience, have very little influence over their antics. 

Oh well, the good news is that life goes on regardless of what happens in this circus.  Sometimes their antics make life a bit more difficult but the audience seems to be pretty resilient anyway.  And every once in a while a pragmatist joins the circus.  That fact seems to give us all a bit of hope.  So when it comes time to vote for who we want to represent us in the circus we have an option.  We can send a pragmatist or we can send the one whose ideology we like best.  Usually we send the latter.  I’ve never really understood why we always send that one.  Think it’s because we’re so gullible? I don’t know.  Maybe we just like circuses too much to screw this one up with pragmatism.  After all, circuses are not designed to reflect reality.  If we want reality we can find it on TV.

Robert DeFilippis