I spent much of the last two weeks attempting to  oust one of the good ol boy’s in the good ol boy network here in Northern California.

I admit I probably exceeded my limit in patiently dealing with political parties and their faithful adherents.

Here are some impressions of my experience:

One: Local politics captures the energy and concern of mainly older people. Probably because young adults are too exhausted, what with working, having a social life and attempting to raise their children, it falls on the over-fifty crowd to make waves politically.

Two: Although it is my fervent desire to see a third party enter the scene and help change the way local political power is established, when there is a need to overthrow some local petty tyrant’s strangle hold, it does seem that choosing to help the Democratic Party makes sense.

But then of course, one is rubbing shoulders with all these wonderful people who are still so starry-eyed over Obama. If engaged in a political discussion, they will admit their hero has his flaws – “he didn’t do nearly enough on the BP issue,” and the clumsiness of the Affordable Health Care Act does weigh a bit on some of these people.

But for the most part, they are more affluent than my household, and probably have health care due to a spouse working for a corporation.

I guess they can afford to be pro-Obama. I can’t.

Their response to any of my statements of what a fix we are in, now that it is obvious that Globalization and the destruction of the middle class will continue unabated, regardless of which Party wins the bid in November, is always a dismissive one.

Rather than admit that the main issues that offered us our original reason for voting for Obama have been ignored or forgotten, they insist that he still intends to do good things, only he needs a second term to attempt them. “The Republicans were just so mean to him, so how could he accomplish anything with all that hostility!”

To hear them tell the story, the Republicans waylaid Obama, this small boy of a man, in a back alley somewhere, and threatened to kick in his rib cage if he didn’t give Geithner the top post at Treasury, and the Monsanto people their places at FDA, and Department of Agriculture.  To hear them tell the tale, he doesn’t possess any Presidential abilities,  only the  helpless and pathetic posture of a little kid against the big bully world of the trolls of Republicans.

It’s a given that the wars and the huge financial burden that our military defense establishment forever wangles for itself doesn’t seem to be on their radar. After all, “wouldn’t it be worse if Romney wins?”

The problem of Obama and his criminal appointments doesn’t trouble them. They believe sooner or later Geithner will be given the old heave ho. They haven’t yet looked into the economic situation carefully enough to realize that some fifteen to sixteen trillions of dollars were created digitally by Bernanke, then handed over to the Biggest of the Head Financial Honchos.  (This fact was discovered during the Fed Reserve audit that Bernie Sanders helped put into place.) They aren’t worried about how that money must be re-paid  from somewhere – mainly our Social Security Fund and our grandchildren’s futures.

Their main answer for almost everything: working harder for the Democratic Party will ensure that maybe not this election cycle, but someday soon, things will work out.  You just have to believe, as though we were all sitting in the theater watching “Peter Pan” and we audience members must simply clap very hard so that Tinkerbelle will continue to have her fairy powers.

When the words “working harder” are used, I immediately flashback to my desk in high school, with the book “Animal Farm” by George Orwell propped up and open. How clearly I can remember the whole scandalous section where some of the animals try to convince Boxer the cart horse that something is amiss on Animal Farm. Immediately, he reminds them that he, for one, will simply work harder.

Too bad if he remains unaware of what Napoleon has in store for him.  Of course, the next part of the tale would have to be revised, were Orwell alive and writing it out right now. No longer would Boxer, the cart horse,  merely be killed and then sold to the local glue factory. Now that whole saga would have to be explained differently, as aren’t  the glue factories all in Mexico now? So Boxer’s demise would have to be somewhat more elaborate.

But then, maybe not. One of the Congressional pieces of legislation that Obama did quickly sign off on was the act that allowed for horses to be killed in the USA rather than be sent down to Mexico to be made into shoe leather!

How far we have come on the road of “Change and Hope” – that one of the only pieces of legislation quickly settled was one allowing for horses to die here rather than a thousand or two miles away.

Of course my fellow local citizens don”t see themselves as Boxer. Like so many cart horses of the past, they too wear blinders most of the time. They are too busy “helping” their party to think back on that semester in High School when one of the world’s more brilliant satirists explained so clearly the end tale of modern day political hopes, dreams  and changes.