In my younger days I had a t-shirt that read "Don't Blame Me, I Voted for Alice". That'd be Alice Cooper for the younger set.
Alice was never an actual candidate for anything. Alice Cooper was still a band led by a skinny guy named Vincent when they wrote the most honest campaign song in history just in time for Dick Nixon's shellacking of George McGovern in 1972.
Vincent changed his name and the "Alice Cooper for President" sales campaign made the album the song was on, Billion Dollar Babies, the band's biggest seller.
"I'm top prime cut meat I'm your choice, I'm a yankee doodle dandy in a gold Rolls-Royce, I wanna be elected!"
Although that was four years before I could vote, I knew the song "Elected" illustrated many political sleazeballs. Some candidates were just selling something, maybe peanuts, maybe oil, or maybe golf courses. Running for office was just a marketing gimmick.
The real truth in the song came in the fade out lyrics. "Problems, I know we've got problems...everybody's got problems and personally, I don't care."
That was fifty years ago. It has been the song in my head every single time I've walked into a voting booth, no matter who the candidates were, no matter what the election was for.
Another election day is upon us and that song is blaring between my ears. Except now it seems to have been co-opted by an entire party. More than one big lie is being promulgated by the party of no.
Inflation is real. But inflation is worldwide, not just in the United States. If anything, it is lower in America. People who are not Republican candidates for office will tell you our inflation is the aftermath of a worldwide pandemic shutdown which broke supply chains and shrunk capacity combined with an illegal war in Ukraine which has cut oil and food supplies in Europe, Asia and Africa.
The truth is right now there are more jobs available than any time in the last fifty years. It's a workers market where salaries and benefits are rising. Coal production is up in the region over any time during the last administration.
The "socialist" programs pushed by the Biden administration will create more jobs than any tax cut for corporations ever has. Considering unemployment is the lowest in history today, those jobs will just get even higher paying. Isn't making more money the opposite of socialism?
I never thought fixing infrastructure was socialism, but all these candidates must think so. In the words of Inigo Montoya, I don't think that word means what they think it means.
Don't bother pointing that out to a candidate, by the way. They'll just tell you its part of the grand conspiracy. You know, the same one that includes space lizards, pizza delivery child sex rings and jewish lazer beams.
Fifty years ago Alice sang "the kids want a savior, they don't need a fake." It's easy to identify the fakes these days. Ask them who won the last presidential election.