The B.S. of A.: A Primer in Politics for the Incredibly Disenchanted

ALSO BY BRIAN SACK

In the Event of My Untimely Demise

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Copyright © 2011 by Brian Sack

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sack, Brian, 1968–

The B.S. of A. : a primer in politics for the incredibly disenchanted/Brian Sack.

p. cm.

1. United States—Politics and government—1989—Humor.

2. Political satire, American. I. Title.

PN6231.P6S23 2011

818’.602—dc22                             2011004918

ISBN 978-1-4516-1671-2

ISBN 978-1-4516-1673-6 (ebook)

To my Founding Father, Skip,

who saw Harry Truman in his underwear

CONTENTS

Preface: Wherein It is defined

Part the First: These Ailing States

Wherein we take a quick look at It and consider how It has

influenced the current condition of affairs in this country

1. The Declaration of Introduction

2. Miserable and Lied To

3. Partisan and Misinformed

Part the Second: Background Check

Wherein we take a look at the history of this country so as to

better understand It

4. The U.S. Constitution

5. The U.S. Government

6. The Parties

Part the Third: Washington, B.S.

Wherein we enter the bowels of the nation’s capital looking

for It and investigate how It permeates everything

7. Think You’ve Got Issues?

8. Making the Rules

9. How a Bad Idea Becomes a Regrettable Law

10. Our Politicians

11. The Campaign Trail

12. I’ve Prepared a Few Words

Part the Fourth: Knee Deep and Shovel Ready:

Wherein, finding ourselves standing in It,

we explore ways to get out of It

13. The Seven Habits of Highly Partisan People

14. Partisans Anonymous

15. Know It When You See It

Glossary

Acknowledgments

PREFACE

Wherein It is defined

The It that will be repeatedly referred to in this book should be understood to be the bullshit of America as the title of the book suggests.

Also, it should be noted that this is a humor book.

I’m hoping that fact will become obvious—or in fact was already obvious after you took a quick glance at the cover—but I feel the need to remind you:

This is a humor book.

I felt like I had to say this just in case you get mad.

Now, why would you get mad? Well, the book’s subject is politics and as we’ve seen quite often—such as every single time someone talks politics with friends or strangers, in person or on the Internet—people seem more and more inclined to get mad. Teeth-gritting, hateful-thing-saying, muttering and cursing mad. Especially in these really, really disenchanting and partisan times. Case in point: I was recently at a very nice dinner where someone called someone else an idiot because of who they voted for in 2008. This was inaccurate, as the accused idiot speaks four languages and actually finished college whereas the accuser doesn’t and didn’t.

Why people are so easily able to attain these stratospheric levels of anger isn’t rocket science. Folks are used to staying well inside their comfort zones. They read the books and weblogs that reinforce their views, tune in to the TV and radio shows that tell them what they want to hear and generally shy away from encounters with viewpoints or facts they don’t know how to handle or want to consider. As a result, in the event they stumble across one of the myriad differing opinions that do exist in the world, they’re taken outside their comfort zone. When that happens, even for a moment, they get disoriented, bothered, mad. If you’ve spent any time on a comment thread anywhere in the vast reaches of cyberspace you know what I’m saying is true.

Now, since I’ve actually made an effort to be nonpartisan in my book (no, really!), I run the risk of making someone from anywhere on the political spectrum angry about something. There’s really no getting around it if you’re going to observe something objectively—to be fair and balanced, as they say. Presumably with tongue firmly planted in cheek.

The only way to avoid making someone mad would be to embrace partisanship and do what everyone else does: Write a book like Liberals Are Pinko Commies or The GOP Is Hitler. In doing so I’d join a long line of authors who have large, enthusiastic, built-in, partisan readerships. Because, let’s face it, the only people who would buy a book like Liberals Are Pinko Commies would be people who believe liberals are in fact pinko commies. And maybe the one guy from the New York Times book review who picked up a copy in order to write a negative review. Likewise, the only people walking around with a copy of The GOP Is Hitler would be the folks who already believe the GOP is comparable to the deranged leader of the Nazis who was a great orator but unfortunately started a global war and in the course of trying to murder an entire ethnicity caused millions of deaths.

So yes, the easiest thing for me to do would be to write something solely for people who agreed on every single thing I was writing. Heck, a lot of them might not even open the book—they’d just add it to their collection of unread, partisan books so that everyone who enters their house can look around and ascertain where they stand politically. I’d probably sell more books that way. They’d be happy. I’d be happy. Everyone would be happy.

But not really. Because that kind of silly partisanship begets even more partisanship. And partisanship is one of many things screwing the country up at the moment, as you may have noticed. It’s unhealthy. It’s awkward. It can get really ugly. When someone is rabidly partisan they will defend anything their party does no matter how ludicrous, stupid or reprehensible. Take voter fraud, for example. When one side screams about voter fraud and the other side shrugs it off because they benefited from it, they might score a temporary win but it’s ultimately bad for everyone. Bad for you, for me, for a democracy in general. When the only goal is victory over your political adversaries at all costs, you tend to cut corners and sacrifice things like common sense, morality and principle. Those are really things you should hold on to as hard as you can because their absence tends to come back and bite you on the bum-side.

We’re living in a time when people are quite incredibly disenchanted with politics. Credibly so. Not just the other guy’s politics, but politics as a whole. The kind of politics that asks you to support and defend candidates who have no business running for office. The kind of politics that has you cheerleading a very bad idea solely because it makes the other guys insanely mad. The kind of politics that has one party fighting another party tooth and nail solely to keep anything from being accomplished. The kind of politics where our public servants have become our masters—telling us how we’re going to live, spending our money like a spoiled-rotten, spendthrift teenager and using political office for personal enrichment as it was never intended. The kind of politics that’s not just bad for the business of governance but that also threatens the country unlike any insane, saber-wielding Middle Eastern theocrat or half-literate Latin American dictator ever could.

We spend a lot of time scanning the horizon (and groping our travelers) looking for threats, but we’re often blind to threats that actually exist. These are threats that aren’t going to be coming from overseas because they are from right here. If we’re going to fall apart anytime soon it’s going to be from the inside. You know, in the midst of a hyperpartisan, anything-goes, ends-justifies-the-means atmosphere where people are so eager to beat the other guys that they forget the things that made this country one of the better places on earth to find oneself. Sure, the sunsets are nice but it’s the liberty and security and prosperity that we enjoy that has prompted people to drag themselves here for as long as they have. I like the place.

So, I wrote this book. I did so partly to lighten the atmosphere—like a kid who runs between bickering parents and makes a funny face in an effort to get them to stop. And partly to point some fingers in an objective manner in the hopes that folks might stop all the bickering for a moment and go, Yeah, you’re kind of right.

It felt like a good time to be a uniter—not a divider. And not a uniter like George W. Bush wanted to be, because he was actually one of the most divisive presidents in history. No, a uniter in the sense that I’d be able to stand back with my fellow countrymen and call bullshit on everyone and everything in politics that deserved to have bullshit called on it—regardless of his, her or its political affiliation.

Back to what It is: That was the genesis of The B.S. of A.

Now, I suppose a book of a political nature should offer the reader details of the political background of the person writing it. After all, partisanship breeds suspicion. If you’re at all inclined to partisanship, the natural assumption is that someone saying something you might not totally agree with must have some kind of agenda. Conspiracies abound at every corner! Everyone is suspect! Certainly, many of you are thinking, the author must be writing this book for a reason.

So, yes. Truth be told, I am writing this book because I like to write. And I like politics. And I like to entertain. And if there’s one topic in dire need of some damned levity—it’s politics. Today’s politics has people seething, barking, foaming at the mouth, saying/writing/tweeting/posting horrible things to one another. Levity is needed, stat, lest another otherwise enjoyable dinner be rendered uncomfortable by someone saying You’re an idiot to someone else at the table.

Do I have a political agenda? No. I’m certainly not looking to advance any party. I don’t have any particular candidates that I’m rooting for. I like to follow and talk politics—in a civil manner, using my indoor voice, and rarely with strangers. Like most people I think the government is broken and I’d like it to be fixed sometime in the near future. I have my own ideas about how people might go about doing that, were they so inclined. Some of those ideas are probably good. Some are probably unrealistic. Others might be simplistic. I think it’s important to detach emotionally from issues and evaluate them objectively—like a Vulcan with normal ears and eyebrows. I’m not afraid to entertain alternate viewpoints and I’m not afraid to change my mind if, once entertained, those viewpoints wind up making more sense. There are also issues that I am unwilling to form strong opinions on because I just don’t know enough about them. I often wish a lot more people felt the same way.

I grew up in an average, fairly apolitical household. There was no ranting or raving about politics going on at dinner. A glance at the bookshelf didn’t offer any insight into the political leanings of the occupants, just lots of history books and an encyclopedia so outdated it mentioned that NASA hoped to one day land on the moon. There was nothing hanging on the walls that would help either. No bumper stickers on the cars offering clues. No campaign signs on the lawn before elections. Nothing. My parents never made us wear political candidate T-shirts and never took us to rallies to make us carry signs for things we knew nothing about. I’m grateful for that. Prior to the 2008 election I was profoundly creeped out by all the kids at the playground wearing Obama shirts, just as I would have been had they been wearing McCain shirts. Or Reagan shirts. Or Clinton skirts. They’re kids! Keep them out of it.

My parents were Independents who favored whatever party had the best candidate. They liked John Kennedy, but Ted Kennedy turned them off completely. At the request of a friend, they hosted a fund-raiser for Democratic representative Gerry Studds back in the day, and declined holding another one after he was caught in a sex scandal.

I can’t speak for grandpa Sam, who died in my late teens, but my paternal grandmother, Bertha, was a wonderful, adorable woman loved by everyone who knew her. This contrasted dramatically with her (hilarious) deep-seated hatred for Mike Dukakis, whom she routinely dismissed as Mike Do-Caca. She also did not hesitate to tell everyone that she lived in Taxachusetts. She loved Richard Nixon. There was absolutely nothing you could have said or done to convince her that Richard Nixon was anything but a saint. Nothing. Not the crookery, not the anti-Semitism. Nothing. And if you tried, she’d simply cease listening to you until you were done.

I was a typical, apolitical New England adolescent. I didn’t have much to show in the way of my personal political leanings other than a subscription to Soldier of Fortune magazine because I fancied the life of a mercenary. And I joined the NRA because I really liked guns, as most young men do.

Then I went to college.

It was there, with no shortage of encouragement from professors, that I developed a fairly typical worldview for an eighteen-year-old with no responsibilities other than showing up for class whenever it suited me. In short order I was to become an enlightened, overly vocal, I-have-all-the-answers kind of guy. The kind of loud, overtly political person I can’t much stand now. I morphed from awkward teen to ponytailed vegan socialist animal rights activist for whom everything was black or white. I hated George H. W. Bush with a passion, hissing and frowning every time his mug came on TV. When I heard him complain in a debate about card-carrying members of the ACLU I rushed out and joined the ACLU just so I could carry one of those cards to spite him. My NRA membership lapsed and I joined People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. I always sided with the underdog—the homeless drunk, the Palestinian militant, the murderous revolutionary. I even voted for Jesse Jackson in the 1988 primaries. Please forgive me. Please, please forgive me.

After college I entered the workforce and moved to Atlanta, a southern city that was, due to the transient nature of a lot of its population, moderately conservative in a heavily conservative region. The president was Bill Clinton and I was surrounded by people who were not at all happy about that fact. The DON’T BLAME ME, I VOTED FOR BUSH bumper stickers actually annoyed me. I loved Bill Clinton! How could you not? Whip-smart. Mischievous. Charismatic. Driven. Then came the parade of scandals: Campaign funds from China, selling the Lincoln Bedroom, the FBI files, Whitewater, his bimbo eruptions and the more serious allegations of rape. Then the Lewinsky scandal, the subsequent finger-in-your-face denials of it, the bombing of a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory to divert our attention from it, and the pièce de résistance, the blatantly politically motivated, incredibly shady, unpardonable pardoning of people like fugitive Marc Rich.

The love affair over, I found solace in many of the ideas held by the Libertarian Party. I developed a taste for smaller government and it took more effort to make my bleeding heart bleed. I also promised myself that from that point onward I would never again vote for the lesser of two evils candidate. If a party couldn’t be bothered to deliver me a candidate worth voting for, they would not earn my vote. I would vote only for the candidate in whom I believed, regardless of his or her chances of winning. Despite the routine accusation that I’m wasting my vote I know it’s the smart thing to do, like sterilizing the Kardashians is.

By the election of 2000, presented with a choice between Al Gore or George W. Bush, I lived up to that promise and found myself voting for Libertarian Party candidate Harry Browne. I knew he would not win, but Al Gore could out-wooden Pinocchio and had the stigma of the Clinton administration. Bush the Younger didn’t do it for me either. Though he struck me as someone I could have a beer with, that’s not necessarily the kind of guy I wanted heading the country. Plus, he didn’t drink beer.

On the evening of the election I went to a Libertarian Party function. I only remember two things about that night: First, we didn’t have to worry about winning, so it was a very relaxed affair. Second, some strange bearded man approached the table, placed audio cassettes on it in front of libertarian talk show host Neal Boortz and announced, I write libertarian science fiction. That’s the trouble with Libertarians. They’re often just plain weird.

Hours later, having gone to bed with Al Gore the presumed winner, I awoke to Bush Wins. I saw it as a repudiation of the Clinton years even though we now had a president who couldn’t form a sentence to anyone’s liking. And then, like everyone else, I watched the wrangling over the election results. As an outsider who’d voted for the obscure unknown candidate, the stakes weren’t as high for me. I watched as both sides disingenuously pursued a victory. They insincerely attacked the Electoral College when it didn’t work in their favor and insincerely defended it when it did. Like many of us I was disheartened at the spectacle of partisan lawyers arguing over chads and furious at the legal maneuvering that sought to disqualify one vote while at the same time counting another—often for the same reason. Eventually Gore was outmaneuvered and took a leave of absence from politics to go grow a beard.

It was an eye-opening experience that shook our faith in the system. Many of us Americans who had grown up believing that we had the moral authority to show other countries how democracy was done now realized we’d no longer be able to frown at the world’s throne-seizing despots and tyrants and tsk-tsk their rigged elections and political dog-and-pony shows. The once-shining example of democracy now looked like some tin-pot banana republic, albeit one with more legal structure. Sure, we hadn’t stooped to the level of stuffing ballot boxes, killing rival candidates or faking election results—but we succeeded in showing the world that underneath the surface of our successful democratic republic was an undercurrent of partisanship and cutthroat players who would do anything to win, even at the expense of democracy and the country itself. It was a pretty bad way to start the twenty-first century.

After moving to New York in September 2001 I learned