Team America - Not in the Playoffs

"That's it, man. Game over, man. Game over! What the fuck are we gonna do now? What are we gonna do?" - Private Hudson, Aliens (1986)

Something horrible has happened over the past, oh, say - thirty years. Politics in America has become The War on America. But this one isn't fought out on the front lines, this one is trench warfare. The trenches are so deep that neither side can see anything that isn't two feet in front of their collective faces.

Team Politics has become so prolific, so rampant, that the enlightened serf of America who has been classically trained in the art of team worship and rivalry, has become a split-camped, foam-mouthed, rabid sociopathic rotten curd of the really underbelly-cheese. Blindly so do they frolic forth, vitriol streaming from both sides. It's as if they've been trained, from a very young age, that the other side poses a threat to their very way of life, to rob the coffers and send do-gooders to the pokey, and those baddies would sell out America to get what they want - and what they want is the purity of unfiltered evil. But here's the rub: both sides think this.

Wade through all the baloney, all the rhetoric, peel back the patina of importance, look beyond the talking heads - try, just this once, to participate in the Actual Truth, and this one fact will become blindingly clear. What is the real a-bo-bo of truth here isn't quite a lie, but rather, an exaggeration. What has happened over these thirty-some-odd years is that what was once a simple and well-intentioned leadership vote has been fueled by every throbbing pundit-exaggeration into a gas fire and can be distilled into one simple question: Are you ready to submit to orifice-probing by your new Martian Nazi Overlords?

The Truth: If everyone is so wrapped up in the greased-back slime pitch of either party, convinced that the opposite team is trying to destroy America - blood-lusting, screaming, frantic - guess who wins? Take a moment and think about who stands to gain the most when a royalty-free, content generating behemoth not only takes over the airwaves, but takes over all the attention, AND - and this is the big one - AND pays through the nose for a huge chunk of prime airtime throughout the land?

Could it be? Could the media be stoking the flames of discontent, only to sell airtime to a couple of bozos who it has been established that nobody likes - and everyone is on the sidelines lapping it up like a bunch of grateful strays?

Peak America

The jig, as it were, is officially up. We have reached peak America. The experiment has died on the table, the only thing left in it's wake is something like a granfalloon consisting solely of our own truncated philosophies. The nubs of these philosophies poke out, probing, searching, never fully expanding - for fear of Stepping on Toes. We have become a nation of toes. You can be anything; you just can't do anything.

So, with that I present to you: Peak America. We are speeding toward an election, the foreplay of which has lasted much longer than anyone could have ever, not in their most nightmarish dreams imagined, we shutter down the tracks at break-neck speed in this unruly game of chicken. As a child I remember the worlds most dangerous roller coaster, at Quassy Amusement Park in Middlebury, CT; the Monster Mouse. The rickety construction of it wasn't particularly scary, nor was the ride, until you made your way to the top, and the fear kicked in as the little cart cut ninety degree turns, at speed, far too high off the ground, and that crummy little cart would go on two wheels, and it wasn't fear of heights or speed that gripped you, it was the fear that some half crazed drunken coaster designer didn't factor in all the calculus that keeps a young boy from being ejected from the top of this hastily constructed scaffolding. But I digress...

Back to the facts: Due to recent events, this has now become a gun vote. There is a huge swath of middle America that has, much to their horror, had their collective face rubbed in men in dresses, and now in their agitated state they are being told that men dark-colored suits will arrive at their homes in black SUV's to take their guns. The lizard brain vote is now activated. This was a sleeping giant two months ago, and the lizard brain demands a lizard king.

Enter the Reality Show Host officially as a contender. Not even his own party can stop him, try as they might. The genie is out of the bottle... His speech patterns are erratic, stream-of-consciousness style, and dripping with the thickest sauce of velvety bullshit. The very type of bullshit I know rote, because I see the same identical meandering quick-thought patterns that I use when completely out of my depth and unable to stop talking, grasping for the punchline. Completely eviscerated of all meaning. But this type of talk the lizard brain eats it up, like so much bagged food, because it's not about meaning, it's about presentation. The unwashed reality of it assaults the senses. Acrid. Pure entertainment, like traffic-cam footage of highway pileup. One simply cannot look away.

But there is hope. All party lines aside, there is one factor, one weapon, that could change what looks to be the apex in American history - that moment when the poor, destitute remnant of society look back to and see the glaring flaw to which we are all so blinded, unable to steer the past and avert complete and utter wreckage. Ryan Seacrest. If there is one person who could divert this disaster, it would be him. An anti-political battle-royale with Michael Bay at the wheel - give the people their bread and circuses. Ryan Seacrest is the only pop culture figure as ubiquitous; the benign to Trump's malignant. If we're going to crazytown anyway, might as well.