Over on my Facebook page, I fear that I’m sounding like a broken record about government corruption, but the thing that has become massively damaged is the fundamental basis for our way of governing, the thing we are so proud of when we wave our flag.
The People are no longer in charge of most decisions that are being made by those that supposedly represent them. Is it obnoxious to say this 1,000 more times? Is it worth saying 1,000 more time? Same answer. My hope and my goals this that this noise will grow until no town meeting will occur, no press conference, no front page article without acknowledging this tragedy. And without further acknowledging that without fixing this fundamental problem we are incapable of discussing anything at all. The bloviating politicians keep warning us that “terrorists” will hurt us. Not THIS bad. Not even a tiny fraction as much as we have hurt ourselves by turning our government over to a select few wealthy people who steal the public treasure for their own benefit, with corporate welfare, insane approaches to taxation and “trade” policies that hurt most of us. 
Every news story should begin: “We no longer have a country run by the governed.” After a few weeks of this stating of the obvious, we’ll see if more than a few members of Congress give a shit, and we would then run the rest of them out of office. The solution starts with a simple recognition of the scope and danger of the problem, no matter how cozy some of us are in our lucky little corners of the country. Here’s an organization that is approaching the problem correction: Represent.US .
Here’s how I would respond to this week’s campaign financing decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, McCutcheon, et al. v. Federal Election Commission. It’s only a matter of time until the $5,200 per candidate limit is knocked out too, because the majority of the Supreme Court thinks that rich people are more capable of governing than those who are not rich, and should be able to control the process. If you’re thinking that you get to make a choice on election day, you are not focused correction. You should be thinking about who has enough money to run in the primaries, and who the corporate media ordains as “serious candidates” at the outset. Here’s a hint: It’s always about who has lots of money. Piles of money and bad ideas always beat no money and great ideas.
We need to change that with public financing. We need to un-tilt the table. We need to realize that we are in a state of national emergency. It’s time to turn off the TV, quit obsession about sports teams, quit fretting about finding new cool things to buy and show off to your friends, and become active on THIS issue. For starters, go to represent.us, read the proposed Anti-Corruption Act and then join up. Talk with friends and family. Whenever they complain that a societal problem is being ignored by Congress, jump in and remind them that we can’t even have a conversation in Washington D.C. because the entire process is corrupt. That’s the starting point.
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Every time I see the expression, “like a broken record…,” I am reminded of the Beloit College mindset list — a list put out every year so professors can calibrate their lectures to the life experiences of their students. For example, the first item on the 2014 list — for the students who are graduating college this year — is that few of them know how to write in cursive. Although vinyl records are making a revival, most college students have probably never seen one, much less heard what a broken one sounds like.
Grumpy: What’s a good expression to capture the function of “like a broken record?” I agree that it’s getting quite dated.
Maybe instead of, “sounds like a broken record,” we could use, “beating this to death?” That, at least, avoids the problem of archaic technology.
BTW, I’ve always wondered why the phrase refers to a “broken” record. A “broken” record implies it is shattered into separate pieces which, of course, could not be played and would, therefore, not create any sound at all. It is a scratched, *unbroken* record that skips and repeats, which is the desired meaning.
“Stuck in an infinite loop.”