See, there's a curious divide in America, and it's not between the "haves" and "have nots," but between people who are capable of understanding their own situation, and those who aren't.
There's an issue that's making political hay for both sides right now: illegal immigration.
It's a totally simple issue, actually, but politicians want to make it complex, because if it's complex, they can bamboozle a broad swath of the voting public into whatever they want from their agenda because people don't understand it.
So what IS illegal immigration, anyway?
Well, it's where there is a legal process for someone to enter a country, and become a resident, and someone decides not to follow it.
They break the law.
They enter the country illegally, they remain in the country illegally, and they take advantage of the system of that country as far as they can until they get caught.
Now, politicians on one team blather about how state laws are trying to "criminalize" illegal immigrants.
That's actually impossible; see, when you break the law, you are a criminal.
Federal law prohibits entry into the United States other than by the legal, prescribed methods; therefore illegal immigrants are criminals.
So, no law here can "criminalize" them; they are criminals because they're here.
Other politicians are blathering about eliminating the 14th Amendment, which states that a person born in the United States is a citizen of the United States.
This law is used by illegals to gain residency without using the legal channels; they get pregnant, they get close to their delivery time, and they sneak across the border to have their child, knowing that once that has happened, they can't - under current law - be sent home.
This group of politicians are half right, and all wrong.
See, the problem with amending the Constitution is that you cannot then predict what ELSE will get amended.
Yeah, anchor babies are a problem; but repealing the 14th Amendment is not the best way to go about it.
Improving border security is the best way to do it; keep them from sneaking in, and then you don't have to worry about anchor babies.
Convening a Constitutional convention, allowing Congress to change the fundamental, most basic law of our nation's social contract, is a terrible idea. Because there's no way whatsoever to predict what our elected officials would be able to get changed, especially in this era of back-room deals and secret agreements among our politicians.
Guard the border, and do not let them across. That is how to accomplish a solution to the problem.
Then we have the flap over Arizona SB 1070.
Arizona SB 1070 is a state law that echoes federal law.
One hundred percent of what SB 1070 does is to require state law enforcement officers to enforce existing federal immigration laws.
Politicians are screaming about Nazis, and having to show your papers, but federal immigration law makes it a crime - a felony, a deportable offense - to fail to carry your immigration documents and identification on your person AT ALL TIMES if you are an immigrant.
Immigrants are already required by law to do what the Arizona law requires; the federal officers tasked with enforcement are simply not doing their jobs.
Politicians are also screaming about "racial profiling."
The Arizona law not only requests, but requires, that all state law enforcement officers take classes in avoiding that exact thing.
It states that officers can only EVEN CHECK the immigration status of people who have already been detained for something else; in other words, only people who are already suspected of breaking the law in other ways.
Which means that the politicians who are trying to reverse the Arizona bill, are supporting rapists, murderers, thieves, drug pushers, human smugglers, vandals, and other various and sundry miscreants.
Because if officers aren't allowed to stop people for breaking the law, then there is no law.
The supporters of illegal immigration are, de facto, saying that they believe that the criminals are more important than the law-abiding citizens.
These same people try to remove the ability of the citizens to defend themselves by violating the Constitutionally-guaranteed right to keep and bear arms, knowing full well that if there is a law against guns, the only people who will have guns are those who ignore the law to begin with.
The supporters of gun control laws are, de facto, saying that they believe that the criminals are more important than the law-abiding citizens.
There are plenty of our politicians - again, often the same ones - who turn the cities under their control into "sanctuaries," places in which the officials in charge of protecting the citizens and upholding the law simply refuse to enforce that law.
They are, de facto, saying that they believe that the criminals are more important than the law-abiding citizens.
There are even more of our politicians who are scheming to return from political exile in triumph, using the indignation of the citizenry against the politicians currently in power as a means of overcoming the indignation of those same citizens against themselves; relying on the citizens to forget that mere years before, they raged against the schemers with frustration just as vast, just as fiery.
Those politicians are potentially committing political suicide, not for themselves, but for our existing system, and they do not know it.
Because when they return to power, and in turn betray their constituents, ignoring their will and needs in favor of a return to what those politicians see as the desired status quo, those constituents will be done with them.
Not even so much as a terror of the alternative will force them to remain.
Because there is another force in American politics, and the "establishment," on both sides of the figurative aisle, is terrified of it.
One side is trying to co-opt it, and the other tries to dismiss it.
But both fear it.
Because they know that no amount of political grandstanding will save their fortunes should that growing force become a legitimate third party.
And all it would take would be for the conservatives in this election to continue to believe that they can conduct business as usual.
This election isn't about illegal immigration. It's not about gay marriage, it's not about anchor babies or crime or the economy.
It is about one thing, and one thing only: are our politicians our servants, as the Founders dictated, or are we theirs?
Our politicians openly and obviously believe, regardless of their associations, that we serve them, and not the reverse.
They believe that criminals, and their rights, are more important than the citizens, and their rights.
They believe that the economy only matters insofar as they can loot it for their own gain.
They vote themselves massive increases in their pay and benefits at a time when millions of their citizens are unemployed, homeless, stricken with poverty, reeling under financial collapse and massive debt thanks to the fiscal policies of those same politicians; they ignore the measures that would actually benefit the citizenry because they believe - truly believe - that the economy cannot, ultimately, collapse.
They believe that the golden goose cannot die, cannot stop laying eggs, and will always provide for them.
They are wrong.
On both sides of the aisle, their policies are leading us towards disaster both fiscal and social.
They cannot see it.
We can.
And they must not be given a chance to make it even worse.
Notice must be served to the Republicans. If they take the Congress in this election, and then abandon their constituents in favor of business as usual, they will have destroyed their own electorate.
And they will have made a force of the Tea Party that they will neither be able to control or stop.
