If you watch enough TV cop shows, you know by now that one of the big catch phrases is “there are no coincidences.”
If there are two dead bodies, one M.O. in the same neighborhood at around the same time, chances are there’s only one perp.
The TV Cops should give lessons to the real-life politicians, who would then stop insulting our intelligence with both word and deed.
Political coincidences are a little less cut and dried. But only a little.
Is it a mere coincidence that the amount of highway construction ramps up during the summer before election?
Is it a mere coincidence that the price of gasoline falls all the way down to outrageous just before election day.
Look at the pump! What was $3.25 or even $3.59 a week or two ago now is $2.47.
A miracle! A downright miracle.
It’s hard to say how an office seeker might force ExxonMobil and others to cut their prices, if only temporarily.
But put nothing between an office seeker and the electorate around election day. If there’s a way to do it, these inventive men and women will have figured it out and done it.
It’s surprising that there isn’t a way to make abortion laws both more and less restrictive at the same time.
It’s hard to believe no one’s yet figured out a way to continue and end the war at the same time.
It’s astonishing to notice that no one has been able to control the price of drugs and maintain a free market in the price of drugs at the same time.
It’s not so hard to believe that they’ve figured out a way to make taxes go both up and down at the same time.
How?
Easy. Cut federal taxes. Everyone gets a check signed by the President.
Then, to make up the shortfall, everyone also gets a new and higher bill from the city or the county or the school district or the state or all of the above.
The good news for most of us is that when the election is over, all this stuff will go away, or at least leave our immediate consciousness.
The major political parties are two giant corporations. They’re like the auto companies: essentially, they’re all selling a frame, a body, four wheels and an engine.
They may be incrementally different, but essentially, they’re the same frame, body, wheels and engine.
And look what’s happened to the car companies after 80 or 90 years of that nonsense. Three are left, one of which is foreign-owned and the other two are talking about bankruptcy protection – which was unthinkable only a decade or so ago.
Maybe it’s time for the Republicans and Democrats to file for Chapter Eleven.
But not until the roads are all smooth and the price of gasoline hits $1.99.
The office seekers think that we think they walk on water (or on gasoline.)
Got a match?
I'm Wes Richards. My opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.™
©wjr 2005
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