Our Essential Dupe-hood!

You watch our "democracy" at work and wince. It's hard not to be cynical. You still have hope. You still vote. You still stay engaged. You feel that if you don't vote and aren't engaged you are just a Dupe. But then again, you vote and stay engaged and feel like a Dupe too. Maybe that's why it all seems so pathetic. We have all achieved a complete and certain Dupe-hood...

Or as Matt Taibbi puts it (speaking of our hired representatives):

"But to a bunch of hired stooges put in office to lend an air of democratic legitimacy to what has essentially become a bureaucratic-oligarchic state, what good does such advice do? Would it have made sense to send the Supreme Soviet under Andropov or Brezhnyev a list of policy ideas for enhancing the civil liberties of Soviet citizens?"

You mention the Soviets and it all seems so clear. Here in the American Aquarium it is all so murky. But "bureaucratic-oligarchic state" rings so true...

And then the market tanks, and you know you probably shouldn't root for it to crash, still you kind of think it might be a good thing. Maybe the Wall Streeters need to feel our pain. Maybe then the stooges wake up?!

You vow not to hold your breath on that one...