The Scheme 23: Let's Say

[Moostache]

12. My only surprise here is that ANYONE is surprised by this at all...

I have become increasingly disillusioned with all levels of government as I have aged. When I was young, I believed that people in the highest levels of our government were honorable, smart and capable and did what they did out of a sense of duty and patriotism. I bought the myth of the founding fathers as benevolent deities on Earth, of the Constitution as the truth of the question "what is the best way to govern free peoples?" and I ignored the bad and unsavory elements of American History.

Things began to change when I was in high school and watched Ronald Reagan's OBVIOUS mental decline during his second term. My family has been Democratic (large D, party supporters) since they emigrated to America between the wars. FDR was third in line behind Jesus and the Pope in our family history. My grandfather and his brothers (all 6 of them) all served in WWII. My father and his cousins served in Vietnam. But it was Reaganomics and the gutting of the unions in America that started the decline into the current morass. Reagan from 1986 until he left office in 1989 was enfeebled, mentally suffering from dementia and cognitive impairment and it was obvious to anyone looking. But the corruption of his administration was already destroying the country, his administration took what Nixon had done and put it on steroids and proceeded to do pretty much whatever the hell their donor class demanded. That pattern has NEVER even slowed down since the election of Bill Clinton.

Whitewater, Lewinsky, Florida recount, "what do liberals hate America?", Fox News, 9/11 story time, Afghanistan, WMD Iraq lies, Iraq invasion, torture, water boarding, and on and on and on...then Palin was unleashed in a desperate bid to unseat President Obama (who had already been knee-capped and tormented by House bomb throwers and overt racism over birth certificates and the might of the drug industry and medical insurance lobbies). Finally, the culmination of all of this race to the bottom - Trump. The worst elements of all of them - Nixon, Reagan, Shrub, Palin, Beck, Limbaugh - all rolled into a self-unaware man-baby with personality disorders, a tortured relationship with both the truth and reality and no conscience at all.

The horrors of the last decade have been unrelenting. But McConnell and the theft of the seat that Gorsuch now contaminates was the low point up until January 6th, 2021. I cannot even adequately communicate my horror at the continued viability of Trump as a major party candidate for the Presidency...and then it hit me...the real power does not (and NEVER has) resided at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (or even in the Senate) since the Kennedy assassination. It resides in the shadows and pockets of thieves, billionaire vampires who have sucked their very existence out of the nation's bounty and our workers and the poor. The very nature of capitalism unchecked is monopoly and fascism, it is financial Darwinism run amok.

The cure for all of this is currently unattainable. Constitutional amendments are functionally impossible to achieve in the political climate that has oozed into existence. Getting a 2/3rds majority of ANYTHING is impossible - even life and death issues like pandemic prevention and vaccinations have shown that. There is no hope of changing this without a massive awakening from the squishy middle that they MUST stop voting for things as a popularity contest or who they'd like to have a beer with and recognize the peril of the republic that has wrought.

The influence of money and greed is unfortunately a human relic from our savannah-monkey past - the banana scarcity paradigm is ingrained into our monkey brains and forces us to respond like Pavlovian apes (sorry for the forced and somewhat bad analogy!). I am left in the end to wonder what was the greater evil - Citizen's United or Neil Gorsuch? Richard Nixon or Donald Trump? Ronald Reagan or W.? Perhaps it does not matter who or what was worse, just that all led to the same path and like small stones heading down the mountain into an eventual avalanche, it is no one thing that becomes the eventuality, but the combination of them all.