Politicians Are Matadors Wiggling Their Capes

By Rick Coddington
special to Mountain Mail

Mountain Mail/STPNS

July 17, 2008

SOCORRO, New Mexico (STPNS) -- Have you ever been to a bullfight? I went to one once, about 40 years ago in good 'ol Juarez. Not a good idea. I ended up cheering for the bull (which, by the way, doesn't sit well with the true fans).

I didn't like the bullfight because it was obviously not a fair fight.

The matador had a whole gang with him, including the picadores with their padded, blindfolded horses that allowed them to lance the bull with impunity, wounding and weakening him before the matador even started his "fight."

Evidently this unfairness was not an important point to the true aficionados, many of whom were not bashful about voicing their feelings toward me.

I speak enough Spanish to understand that a group of them were considering removing me from the arena, which would have left the poor bull with no fans at all.

Fortunately, a kindly officer intervened and to avoid all the paperwork associated with a full-out riot, convinced me that I would enjoy Juarez much more in a different area of town.

So with a few choice words over my shoulder about the unfair nature of bullfighting, I left. What is my point in all this?

We, the American voters, are just like that poor bull. Consider this: if the gang and the padded horses were not bad enough, the bullfighter also had the additional advantage of knowing about the bull's weak vision which causes him to blindly charge the movement of the cape, instead of the matador himself.

We voters, like el toro, lack vision. We are predictably short-sighted (not to mention weakened by an economy that is bleeding us dry).

So exactly how does the matador take his unfair advantage of the bull's myopia?

It's all in the cape. By wiggling the cape, he controls where the bull charges.

Silly bull, so easily controlled.

Just like us. Like the matador, the politicians clothe themselves in all kinds of flashy sound bites that have no more substance than the fancy pants that the matadors wear.

Then they wave a cape of some hot-button issue at us and we dutifully charge the cape, entirely missing the matador/politician/point.

If we are ever going to get anywhere, we will have to get our eyes off the cape!

As long as politicians can distract us by wiggling some "problem" before us, they can control us.

Examples: English as a first language. Obama just waved that one in our face.

He grabbed the headlines (good campaign move) and we all flail around about whether English as a first language is proper, prejudice or even important.

It's just a wiggling cape! What is important here is that we are facing economic disaster.

Oil is breaking us, the dollar is degenerating into worthlessness, industry has been replaced by welfare socialism and no one is offering any real solutions beyond raising taxes to cover up the problems.

Which is a "solution" that will hurt us even worse.

We need to wake up and smell the coffins. Our American way of life is very quickly slipping away from us.

We have been fooled by the cape-waving distractions of the politicians for decades and now we are coming to a time of reckoning unlike anything we have ever seen.

Gas prices, food prices, home foreclosures, stock market/retirement losses, bank failures, job losses, high taxes and no hope in sight.

The "great depression" of the 20s was brutal, but it took place in a time when America was still a free enterprise, rural, farming nation.

So if we are going to have another one, now that we are a socialized, urbanized welfare state, where people are used to relying on the government for their well-being, where are we headed?

Rick Coddington is a third-generation native New Mexican. He attended UNM and studied political science. He has lived in Socorro since 1974. His opinions do not necessarily represent the Mountain Mail.

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