Track A:

The center, a fleshy amoeba, engulfs, digests, regurgitates. Marginal whispers in forgotten corners – universal healthcare,social security, worker drones murmuring rights. A dusty tome unfolds: public education, a flickering screen – net neutrality, privacy rights dissolving in the ether. The amoeba sighs, burps, spits out policy, mainstream and bland.

Track B:

Decades tick by, a Burroughs cut-up of time. Minimum wage, a twitchy insect, pinned to a board. Public transportation, a rusted chrome skeleton, lurches down forgotten avenues. The center, bloated and sluggish, drones on about “reform,” a word with teeth filed down, meaning hollowed out.

Juxtaposition:

The far left, a ragged carnival barker, shouts into the void. Affordable housing, a mirage shimmering in the heat. Anti-discrimination laws, a fly swatter against a buzzing horde. The amoeba, all-consuming, assimilates, grinds down, spits out a pale imitation.

Fold Back In:

The barker’s voice echoes, distorted, warped by the amoeba’s digestive tract. Criminal justice reform, a rusty key, unlocks the wrong door. Renewable energy, a flickering neon sign in a wasteland. The cycle continues, a slow, grinding reel-to-reel playing out a pre-recorded script. The far left, a persistent itch on the amoeba’s vast, fleshy back.

The Reality Virus and the Limousine Liberal Shuffle

The far left, those bug-eyed cowboys howling at the neon moon of revolution, exist on the fringes. Fringes that fray and bleed into the mainstream with a sickening regularity. One minute they’re gibbering about “universal healthcare” and “workers’ rights” (words like psychic cockroaches scuttling across the media landscape), the next, those very words are being parroted by the center, regurgitated as policy by limousine liberals with hollow eyes.

The virus of reality, you see, it mutates. Public education? A bread and circus for the proles, once a radical notion, now a crumbling edifice echoing with the screams of standardized testing. Labor protections? Shackles on the free market machine, they shrieked, until the machine chewed them up and spat them out, a desperate plea for a minimum wage echoing in the gears.

Environmental regulations? A plot hatched by commie tree-huggers! Until the air grew thick with smog and the rivers ran black, a desperate scramble for “renewable energy investments” a testament to their short-sightedness. The cycle spins, a grotesque ballet of reaction and co-optation.

Anti-discrimination? “Social engineering!” they cried, until the weight of public opinion shifted, leaving them sputtering about “political correctness gone mad.” Open-source software? A communist plot to destroy intellectual property! Until the tide of innovation washed over them, leaving them clutching at the wreckage of proprietary monopolies.

This is the dance of the powerful, a tango with reality as their unwilling partner. The far left may be marginal, but their ideas, like spores on the wind, take root in the fertile ground of discontent. The center, ever the opportunist, snatches these ideas, twists them, repackages them, and sells them back to the masses as progress. A never-ending cycle, a funhouse mirror of progress, a maddening echo chamber where revolution becomes milquetoast reform.

The Interzone Shuffle: A Political Fold-In

Flickering fluorescent lights.  Marginalized agendas crawl across the floor like roaches chased by a mainstream spotlight. Every few decades, WHAM! The center swallows them whole, regurgitates them as policy. A grotesque political centipede, each leg a different shade of red and blue.

Cut-ups, jumbled, reassembled:

• Universal healthcare bleeds into labor protections, a wet dream of the bureaucratic roach motel.
• Social security, a desiccated husk, rattles with the ghosts of environmental regulations.
• Public education reforms morph into monstrous minimum wage increases, chewing on the gears of the machine.
• Discrimination dissolves into net neutrality, a digital insect swarm buzzing in the circuits.
• Open-source software tangles with affordable housing, a labyrinthine code for the dispossessed.
• Gender equality writhes with criminal justice reform, a monstrous dance in the flickering light.

The Interzone shuffles.  Wealth redistribution policies ooze like radioactive sludge, nourishing the ever-expanding public sector.  Renewable energy investments sprout like twisted flowers from the cracks in the monopoly pavement.

Who controls the remote? The answer flickers on the screen, a distorted image of power, a grin painted on a skull.  The game resets. The roaches scurry back to the margins, waiting for the next WHAM! The political centipede inches forward, leaving a trail of slime in its wake.