Big Brother takin' care of business on the www

I love my big brother. He and I were best friends; we are best friends, even though he has passed on and I am still here. If I thought he were in the grave, I'm sure he would be rolling over. . . and over, and over, and over again. He was not here to see what you and I have seen come to pass these last six years. Did he say 'six' years? Didn't he mean the last two years? Yeah, you heard right, six; this mess didn't just begin with the inauguration of our present prez. It didn't really begin with Dubya either. We can trace it back decades. Mr. Obama is merely the establishment's hope and change designated cleanup hitter. Wait a minute?! Did he use establishment and Obama in the same sentence? I thought the establishment was big business, Republican, warmongering, poor people hatin', minority loathin', union despisin', gazillionaire, big Wall Street (and Switzerland) bankin', industrial military complex? Well. . . it was, and is, with one exception; it wasn't and isn't lorded over exclusively by those dastardly Republicans. Look closely folks, those pulling the strings for Hope and Change fit the dead ringer description of the establishmentarianismic elite. You want your MTV? You can have it. But they want your finances, your education, your media, your transportation, your medical welfare, your weapons, and now, your internet.

Skippy (my esteemed big brother) and I had many a discussion about politics around the campfire, and we agreed nearly one-hundred percent of the time. He considered himself a Democrat, and I considered myself - well... most of the time, Republican. I even ran for state senator in a Republican primary in '98; and Skip vigorously campaigned for me. He didn't back me because he had decided to turn Republican; for that matter, neither did I run to further the Republican cause. I ran primarily (did I say that?) because I could see something deadly wrong in the ranks of status quo republicanism. They were looking more and more like conciliatory lemmings mesmerized by the notions of pro-recessive democrapism. I didn't wander away from traditional Republican values--

They wandered away from me, and left me and my ilk swingin in the breeze.

I thought I was standing pretty firmly on the Republican platform built by the Founders, and more recently reconstructed by President Reagan and the rest of his like-minded supportive constituents. All of the sudden,these days, I have become an ideologue, a right wing fanatic - and all the while, I hadn't moved an ideological inch.

Skip became a 'democrat' in the late eighties and early nineties because he saw how the poor, the rank and file, the workingman, and most recently, our own dear elderly Folks were systematically being trounced under the heel of 'the establishment.' He deduced that the Democrat partiers were the official champions of the underdog. Anyway, that was how the media saw it, rehearsed it, and reported it. It was on mainstream news TV, on Letterman, MTV, Oprah and SNL; it must be true.

He was no fan of shrub senior (George H.W. Bush) or shrub junior (George W. Bush), but he certainly was no fan of Democrat, Clingon ("Slick Willy" Bill Clinton), even though technically he and Billy were of the same party. And unsurprisingly, he was critical of many goings on amongst the Reagan administration.

As he and I bantered back and forth around the campfire, it became very apparent that we were arguing for, and against the very selfsame things. We were both standing on the very same platform, preaching to our mutual choir. The only difference was that he was wearing a hat with a jackass on it, and I had one sporting a bloated pachyderm. It became painfully clear that we had nothing to argue about. For a long, awkward moment or two following our sudden ideological epiphany, all that was to be heard was the sputter and crackle of the fire we had both built, fed and stoked, and that without respect to bunion, ingrown toenail, hammer toe, or athlete's fungi - warmed the soles of all four of our tired, cold and aching dogs with the same heat, coming off the same flame. (to be continued)