What is that hollow noise?

    It's only February, and already I'm tired of political campaign rhetoric.
     Millions have already been spent on selling candidates' images and spinning messages that can only in the most generous terms be called visions for a better America.
     In order to prove we need a better America, they take turns blaming the other for what's wrong with this country, then they take turns chastising the other side for all the negative talk about U.S. conditions and culture.
     If people believe any of this claptrap, that proves that political parties should neither claim credit nor blame the opposition for the economy any other issues in American life. They spend money to bet that we can be fooled yet again, and the worst that can happen to the candidates is that they lose this election, but live to run again, and in the meantime, make millions with speaking engagements, consultation fees, and book deals.
     We are our own worst enemies, and with the speed of light provided by social media, we can spread ignorance faster than we can illuminate any complex issue.
     Advertising and public relations are like distorted fun house mirrors, approximating but corrupting reality.
     And it goes on, and on, and on.
     My theory is that we succumb to it because it's easy. Thinking is harder.
     Perhaps we are like rats who are attracted to the last few apples in the bottom of a barrel simply because the lid was left wide open. We lean in too far, and fall in.
     Our greed and the bounty at the bottom of the barrel has lured us into a trap, prisoners amidst an embarrassment of of riches.
     We may think to escape, but wait! There is a treasure of apples, plenty to satiate ourselves for as long as we can see into the future, so we stay and take our fill until we are so fat and slow that we can no longer leap to escape.
     As the supply of apples diminishes and then disappears, we are left to wallow in our waste, starving, learning too late the consequences of bad decisions.
     Meanwhile, the rats who would be leaders gather at the lid of the barrel and yammer at us about who is to blame for our predicament. Conservative rats blame liberal ones, and the liberal ones blame the conservative ones.
    The show is at the rim of the barrel, and reality is in the bottom. When you yell into a empty barrel, you get great acoustics, a satisfying resonance of sound, sufficient for a culture of sound worshippers.
    But the barrel is still empty.