Welcome To Whatever This Is

We all grew up in the United States of America. At least that's what we were told, and most of us believed it. I certainly believed it. There was a lot of evidence, after all. Maps, etc., history books. We were raised on the American myths, Thanksgiving; cowboys and Indians; westward expansion; building the railroads; Freedom (with a capital F); the Constitution; the “Melting Pot;” one man, one vote; fair-play; equality before the law. We bought it. In fact, most of us bought it hook, line, and sinker. Those were innocent times, and now it seems that it was just some kind of weird political Tilt-a-Whirl ride. It is becoming obvious that everything that we were taught was wrong. Reality is appearing out of the mist, and what we are seeing is disturbing.

I live in an advanced developing country where most of the streets bear all of the same defining characteristics of streets in any of the world's most developed countries. There are lines separating the lanes, lines of different colors, solid lines, broken lines. There are all of the usual signs, and stop signs are in the universal form of red hexagons bearing the word, “stop!,” or in this case, “yut!” There are traffic lights that change from green, to yellow, and to red, including many in the form of colored arrows. There are also the usual rules about who may drive, at what age, etc., and the process is regulated and licensed. Car insurance is mandatory, as in most advanced countries. The difference here is that all of these rules and regulations are mere suggestions, and drivers feel free to ignore them whenever it seems expedient to do so. It seems chaotic at first, but one gets used to it. All that is required is that a driver must always assume that all of the other drivers are going to do anything that makes their driving experience easier, regardless of the traffic laws. This value-set seems to have infected American politics. Something has dramatically changed.

Here again I am not just talking about the fantastic and wonderful Donald Trump. As I have said before, he's just the canary in the coal mine. The more important bit, the deadly poisonous gas in this analogy, is our current crop of venal, hypocritical elected officials. The Republicans are more directly the cause of the shift that we are seeing, but they are joined in their guilt by most of the Democrats. The real brains of the outfit may be easily identified. Just follow the money! Who has almost all of it by now? Yes, the investment class. To refer to them so may be sarcasm or it may be an attempt to be polite. Perhaps their most apt description is, “the oligarchs.” “Galtian Overlords” also works. I usually just call them the “super-rich,” whom I consider to be anyone having so much money that they could never possibly spend it all. They, whatever you call them, are the new masters of the political entity formerly known as the United States of America.

The United States was a house of cards held up by gravity and supported by a critical mass of participants who were in tacit agreement over the norms and traditions that were to be followed at the risk of losing everything. Our problem today is that not enough of the participants believe any longer in those norms and traditions. We've had politics as total war since the Reagan days. Do whatever you want if you can get away with it, and keep pushing to make sure that you exploit every advantage. It's been pretty bloody. Now that the Supreme Court has a safe majority on the winning side, the battle is over. The war is won.

Reports of the demise of the Republican Party are premature.

Like the traffic in my adopted country, it has now become obvious that all of the rules, regulations, laws, conventions, and traditions of the United States have been mere suggestions all along. All it has taken was for a well-knit group of ruthless, heartless, selfish bastards to ignore the entire legal framework of the United States and simply do whatever suits their best interests.

No, of course congress is not required to hold hearings just because the president has nominated someone to a vacant seat on the Supreme Court! No, of course the Senate will not be required to hold a trial on the matter if the House, in due course, sends them articles of impeachment! No, of course the Executive Branch is under no obligation to cooperate with a lawful impeachment process!

We, all of us, have allowed this to happen over the last fifty years. Think tanks, big-money, and the Republican Party have brought us to this point, slowly but surely, and most Americans, including most of the Democrats, have just gone along for the ride. Now, after almost three years of Trump, the Republicans have succeeded in dismantling the Federal regulatory agencies; incarcerating vast numbers of suspected Democratic voters (i.e. Negroes); emptying out the State Department; impoverishing the country with a vast tax cut that made the rich much richer and Federal and local state governments much poorer; throwing out pesky regulations of industry and the environment; filling ambassadorships with the most crass, unsuitable cronies, if at all; militarizing our regular local police forces and filling the country with truly frightening Federal police in large numbers; criminalizing everything; Gerrymandering most of the safe Republican districts in the whole country; stacking the Supreme Court; stripping us of one Constitutional right after another; and hypnotizing a substantial portion of the population into liking it.

The Supreme Court! The real laughs will begin when cases revolving around either Trump's impeachment or election shenanigans start arriving at the Supreme Court. I've been warning people about the Supreme Court for about thirty years now, twelve of those years right here on this blog. The Constitution is whatever they say it is. Buckle up, Buttercup. This is going to be a bumpy ride.

So, what do you think? Is it time to come up with a new name for our completely reformed country? Should we stick with a “reinterpreted” Constitution, institute a vast amendment process, or just shit-can the whole thing and start over? So many new, exciting questions. Even if it may turn out to be just so much rearranging of the deck-chairs on the Titanic. One of the more dubious features of our new power-elite is their rejection of advice from the scientific community. Oh, they believe the advice, make no mistake about that. Many of them have good educations, and they know facts when they see them. They agree, secretly, with climate change, for instance, but they reject it publicly, because to do otherwise would cost them money. They know that they will need that extra money some day to protect their own families from the effects of climate change. There's a circular-logic going on there, but I think that the real dynamic is the race for the money itself. Those super-big-shots are in a competition with each other. Whoever has the most billions wins! (Extra credit if your company owns a colony on Mars.)

I'd suggest keeping our Constitution, because they're all ignoring it now anyway and keeping it offers good optics. It allows the illusion that we're still the good old U S of A. For a name I like the Republic of Freedomland. Then we could all call ourselves “Republicans” with a straight face. We should keep the two political party thing, but new names are in order. How about “Lincoln Republicans” and “Liberal Republicans?” Everyone could hate the Liberal Republicans, who would be allowed to pretend to fight to restore some of the social freedoms that we now take for granted, even as we are losing them. This is a work in progress, so I'm not sure where the white supremacists and Neo-Nazis fit in.

I miss the old America, even with its many imperfections. It was a pretty good place, all in all. This new thing, whatever we call it, is a poor substitute. It'll be a dirtier and poorer police-state, and everything will be more expensive. All of that is true already, so you can't disagree.