Hail to the Grief

For the second time in 8 months, the streets of my neighborhood are blocked off for a presidential visit.

Oh, thank God, the president is on his way to inner-Seattle. Surely he’s coming to save lives, right wrongs, and fight for the rights of the average citizen. Right?

Wrong, and … see, that’s the thing. That’s why I, and some of my neighbors, are none too happy this afternoon.

While I think that every citizen understands and accepts that their daily lives must be disrupted for presidential business, the key to the understanding is that the president is working on our behalf, and is thus entitled to our inconvenience.

President Obama, however, comes to Seattle for one reason, and one reason only:

To take bribes.

To openly takes bribes at that.

Once or twice a year, he lands at Boeing Field, and the streets of the Puget Sound are randomly closed as the president makes his way from one fund-raiser to another, before hopping back on a plane and flying out.

You see, Barack does not come to Seattle for my benefit, or your benefit, or the benefit of our neighbors. No, instead, like most Pike-Pine developers, he comes to Seattle for his own benefit, and only for his own benefit. Unlike the wealthy developers from Arizona, however, he comes to Seattle on my dime, and your dime, and the dime of our neighbors … and that is where I have a problem.

Obama comes to Seattle to line his pockets, and then beats a hasty retreat, leaving nothing behind but gridlocked traffic and inconvenienced citizens … and to add insult to injury, the citizens get to pay for the pleasure.

Now, I’m not a Democrat. I’m not a Republican either. I detest both just about equally. I think both factions of the Bribe Party are hopeless and irreparably screwed.

That said, I’ve always kind of liked the Obama guy on a personal level. I mean, sure he’s a typically corrupt politician, but underneath the bullshit, he always seemed like a nice guy. A guy who probably wishes politics weren’t so corrupt, but dammit, he’s just a cog in the wheel … powerless to change things.

Lately, however, my opinion has started to shift.

These trips are completely and utterly superfluous, and he’s gotta know that, deep down, coming to a town solely to take bribes doesn’t look good. He has to know that it fosters a certain cynicism that is detrimental to the process as a whole.

He doesn’t care, though. He doesn’t it anyway. He comes to town, allows his detail to set up roadblock after roadblock, and he makes no apologies for it. He doesn’t even have the basic respect to lie to us … to pretend that his visits serve a greater purpose.

I mean, for God’s sake, after getting screwed, even whores get a cursory “you okay?”, so what must he think of us?

Year after year, it’s just “I’m going to Seattle to block streets, inconvenience citizens, and collect bribes, and if the people of Seattle don’t like it, then let them eat cake.”

And so we do.

Alas, the more things hope and change, the more they don’t and stay the same.