I have this story in my head and I can’t get it out right. I have mistakenly approached it like a serious, informed journalist and I am neither. I am staring at a page of bulleted points. It is a lifeless list of system breakdowns punishing all of us, whether we are on the Left or the Right or whatever ideological territory we claim as our own, inalienable right. In this circus of an election year, we are awash with pundits and they have exploited our divisiveness.

In the past few years, we have celebrated political Spring Time in countries that have attempted to throw off the shackles of brutal dictatorships, most of which we supported at one time or another. Thousands and thousands of people have taken to the streets and many have been killed or imprisoned. Money, power and God are the trifecta, insinuating servitude on the streets of this global struggle, bringing a deadly chill to the possibilities of that recent burst of idealism.

The streets of America are empty and for good reason. We are a painfully divided flock, focusing on our differences and they seem to be irreconcilable. In fact, we are all pawns in a game and the rules have been written by a fairly small group of individuals and corporations.

The popularity of the Donald and Bernie Show is purely symptomatic of what all of us have been quietly living with for a handful of decades. While the Right has blamed the Liberal bias of virtually every American institution for every conceivable problem in the country, the Left has held a quiet disdain, aloof from the crass behavior of the Neanderthal Right. I am here to tell you we have all been used and at this moment, this country we all love has been kidnapped right out from under us because we are too damn busy with our stupid arguments.

I just took a break to have some Greek Salad, courtesy Safeway and came right back here because I had a pretty good analogy and it couldn’t wait. I thought about the gladiators in the Roman Coliseum. They were brave men, fighting to live until the next time and the next time. Eventually, they would all die because they were merely entertainment for royalty, playing in a death game just to pass the time of day for the robed, grape sucking bastards.

I am standing in the Coliseum, wondering what the hell we are all doing here. I mean all of us Americans, the Donald tribe and the Bernie tribe and those of you who just go your own way. We can continue to focus on our differences or we can look for some real estate outside the Coliseum.

We have let mega-corporations elect our Presidents and write our laws and declare our wars. My friends, this is insane. We have to figure out a way to have publicly funded elections because that is the beast in our Coliseum. We are all disconnected from our own government, one that only speaks for the super rich, while the rest of us fight amongst ourselves. We pay for our insane wars everywhere, while a handful profit exponentially and pay only a fraction of their taxes.

Our government seems to operate with impunity, crushing our right to privacy in the name of security, while keeping far too many secrets from us.

We have a serious healthcare problem and it doesn’t give a shit what your politics are. Our trade treaties bring an embarrassment of riches to corporate shareholders at the expense of our hard working people, while they pay next to nothing for poor countries to provide our toys.

America belongs to all of us and unless we find common ground, we will continue playing a game that is rigged.