We are told there is a "base" of support for this maniac. We do encounter them, sometimes among our nearest and dearest, but definitely in little knots at intersections, waving flags and banners as if this would convince people of something. And it does: I'm convinced that nearly half of my fellow citizens are barking mad. I don't know that we can ever recover from that. But maybe not: perhaps they are just dreadfully, spectacularly misinformed.
I don't know which is worse.
But as much of a terrorist as he is, the current occupant is not the source of our national collapse, he's just surfing on the avalanche that was poised to go at the slightest tremor. The architects of our downfall, who themselves picked up the baton when the likes of the Dulles brothers laid it down, found willing disciples in the likes of Rumsfeld and that dick Cheney, and now, to our everlasting shame, the likes of Bannon and Miller and their creeping backers. But even they were not the root cause of this madness.
Another history is finally gaining some traction. The trouble is our collective worldview. This makes neurological sense, since the trouble is our collective behavior, and perception is so tightly linked to actions as to be the front and back of the same pattern of firing neurons in the brain.
The colonial worldview has driven us "west" for centuries like some migratory bird whose breeding-grounds have sunk beneath rising seas on the warming planet. Indigenous people, that is, humans who have lived in harmony with the land all this time, have been decimated, absorbed, their cultural artifacts hijacked an hung in museums. But their DNA is still with us. In us. It accounts for the deep despair that keeps rising in our throats whenever another hideous project lights up the horizon with grotesque artificial dawn.
America has always been infected with festering hatreds, fed on by psychopathic parasites. They were usually held down by the simple hygiene of more or less coherent public discourse. Until about 2014 almost everybody agreed on the basics of reality, even if it was deeply flawed, colonialist, misogynist, xenophobic and gender-hidebound. Despite all that it was more or less coherent, and although it had mood-swings, we were learning.
But that has been fragmented and subprimed and bundled and tranched to a fare-thee-well. The Internet was born in war, and privatized before it could walk. "Social" media derived vast profits by isolating us. Suddenly it was nobody's job to do the dishes anymore, and the roaches have taken over.
Now the Speaker of the House has, about 30 seconds from the "election," opened proceedings related to the 25th Amendment of the Constitution that could (in theory) result in the president's removal from office. This could continue beyond the "election" if the administration is successful in discrediting the vote, but will be snuffed out if they also manage to fiddle the legislative contest. And that years-long effort is now out in the open, heavily funded by vast corporate interests, and all perfectly, dreadfully legal.
Speaker Pelosi's pathetic gesture should have been implemented when the president decided simply to ignore the Legislative Branch, and arrogate two thirds of the government to himself. Inexplicably, the dozens or hundreds of out-and-out crimes being carried on daily, emoluments, misappropriation of funds, even the crime of ignoring subpoenas in the impeachment process, were ignored. He just pretended he was Emperor. And he got away with it.
But we watched. We watched him do it.
We have not begun to see the limits of the disruption this one demented human being is capable of. He is not constrained by any sense of compassion or human dignity. Nobody among those propping up this strutting popinjay has the will or the guts; they are so delusional as to hope they will be among the Chosen. All the "adults in the room" (including the Democrats) are just "distancing" themselves in hopes of surviving the blast-wave when this suppurating carbuncle finally breaks.
45 clearly intends to create so much chaos that win or lose, nothing substantial can be done for months into his second, possibly permanent term. By that time the damage will be complete, and the chaos will be overwhelming. The pattern is clear, ongoing, and so far, terrifyingly effective. He will stop at nothing, including open warfare, foreign or domestic. He will end the world before he will stop. He has means and opportunity right now. Motive is obscure; infantile, volatile, hair-trigger, seems to fit. Or just psychopathy.
Seen enough yet? How much is enough, America?
This is going to take much more than a landslide victory at the polls. It is going to require a general strike that Wall Street cannot ignore or repress. The big money that has all three Branches by the short hairs must be shut off, and sealed off. Until that happens, nothing will change except for the much, much worse. When they shut down the Internet, we'll know we almost won.
But it's still possible.
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