Week of 07/01/2019

The Disunited State of America
– by David Matthews 2

Almost two hundred and fifty years ago, a group of white, privileged British citizens met to discuss the state of their status in the Empire.

They were not happy with their privileged king, who some believed was mentally unstable and even incompetent.  They were not happy with the privileged members of Parliament, who treated them as nothing more than second-class citizens and tax revenue for their follies.  They had staged a revolt, but they really didn’t know where they wanted to go with it.  It took quite of bit of arguing and shouting and screaming, not to mention annoying messages of desperation from their chief military general, George Washington, to finally decide they were done with the British Empire and they were going to be their own nation.  And they did so on the claim that they were united in this, hence the name “The United States of America”.

I seriously believe that they would regret their decision if they knew who would inherit the leadership of this nation of theirs today.

Let’s get brutally honest here... our “United States of America” is only a nation in name.  It is founded on ideas that is only defended for an elite few and to the hypocritical exclusion of everyone else.

We have two groups of people that make up this country that is “united” in name only.  On one side are the red hat-wearing so-called “conservatives” who are nothing more than bible-thumping hypocrites and fascists.  They can be “white supremacists”, “Christian supremacists”, “nationalist supremacists”, or even “conservative supremacists”, but they’re still nothing more than self-righteous fascists who defecate the very flag they wrap themselves up in.  They live their lives in a bizarre, orchestrated alternate reality thanks to talk radio and cable news that declares themselves to be both persecuted and triumphant, that re-writes history to suit their bigotry, and that their leaders are anointed by God and are beyond reproach.

Their leaders, supposedly “anointed by God”, are corrupt sociopaths and psychopaths who gut laws and regulations to benefit big corporations.  And the one on top of it all is a corrupt orange-stained malicious narcissist.  A modern-day Alfonso de Borgia.  A self-admitted predator that lives on fear and chaos, that demands absolute fidelity, and believes himself to be beyond question, beyond reproach, and beyond the law.  Someone who associates himself with dictators, tyrants, and thugs while belittling and shaming our long-standing allies.

And then there is the other side... the rest of us sorry lot who are just trying to get by.  Liberals, progressives, libertarians, free-thinkers, anyone with a functioning brain who sees past the propaganda and the alternate reality, who remember the lessons of history and are seeing them repeated in the here and now.  Fragmented, fractured, fighting among ourselves, squabbling over who is more “pure”, and being told that our “hopes” are in the hands of power-mongers and career politicians that refuse to carry out their duties for fear of “fracturing” a nation that is already divided seemingly beyond repair.

Yes, the rest of us are trying to get by.  With big corporations bleeding us dry.  With big pharmaceuticals and big insurance companies driving us more and more into debt.  With prices ready to spike with every trade war enacted or even threatened by our orange-stained narcissist.  With companies laying people off one by one.  With war or the threat of war just an ego-insult away.  With a recession all but inevitable, if not already upon us.  All we can do is just try to get by.

Vote them out?  Easier said than done.  The red hats continually vote, and the rest of us have to fight just to get to the ballot box.  And the red hats do everything they can to keep the rest of us from voting.  They enact rules that all but bar third party challenges.  They demand specific forms of ID that exclude certain groups from voting.  And, thanks to a blatantly rigged judicial system in favor of the red hats, they have orchestrated gerrymandered districts to ensure their party’s supremacy.  So even if every single voter votes, the red hats continue to prevail because the districts are deliberately configured to ensure their dominance.

The whole system is rigged.  But it is being rigged in favor of the red hats and their American Borgia and against the rest of the nation!

This is where we are as we celebrate America’s birthday.  Do you think our founding fathers would be proud of the orange-skinned American Borgia and his red hat partisans and what they have done?  Do you think they would have any kind of hope that the power-mongers on the other side would be competent enough to put the country ahead of their own ambitions?

Benjamin Franklin once reportedly said that what he and his associated created was “a republic if you can keep it”.  Clearly, we cannot.  Clearly, we have not.  We have failed our predecessors, and our descendants will no doubt look back at us in shame.

Happy birthday, ‘Murica.