We have parasites eating away at our national parks and monuments, further insulting already mortally injured Native American tribes, an escalating food fight between two enfants terribles over their nuclear toys, and a pseudo-American political party dedicated to using phony "tax reform" in a determined effort to restore their beloved feudal system to their favorite donor oligarchs. We have the same political party, led by an admitted sexual predator, appropriately endorsing a pedophile for the U.S. Senate and actually using for their excuse the fact that his vote is necessary for the passing of a tax bill ensuring the restoration of that feudal system. We have the party's leader undermining and destroying his country's diplomatic corps, stripping anyone with experience and expertise from its ranks so he can substitute nonsensical palaver from bogus alt-right propagandists in place of rational thinking, thereby systematically destabilizing practically the entire planet.
We have a political party dedicated to spreading pollution, endangering the lives of children, killing as many people as possible with guns, as well as restricting the use of renewable energy and its potential for millions of new jobs. It is a party that seems dedicated to destroying Social Security, Medicare and virtually all social programs, referring to any "public" program as "Communist" unless it is privately owned. Thus their goal is to privatize public schools, not only to shamefully exploit children for profit, but to mold the curriculum to their way of thinking. They read selected portions of the Old and New Testaments, cherry-picking the few issues such as abortion and gay marriage that they can use to raise huge political contributions from their oligarchs and wring political support from their unsuspecting victims. They ignore the passages about supporting the poor and "rendering unto Caesar what is his" as well as the admonition to welcome strangers and refugees with hospitality.
We have a political party and its autocratic leader whose expressed goal seems to involve the muzzling of the free press, stacking of the federal courts with as many inexperienced far-right extremist corporate-biased judges as possible and disparaging the race, religion or ethnicity of any judge with whom he disagrees. We have a political party that seems dedicated, thus far, to the virtual erasure of any regulation involving protection of consumers or the rights of any citizen in conflict with a corporation or anything that interferes with that corporation's ability to turn a profit. Under the party's evolving totalitarian world vision, the very existence of a government agency dedicated to the protection of consumers is, somehow, "un-American!"
And what does this once-great political party have? It seems to have a desperate base following an autocratic leader, a "pied piper" over a cliff and into the sea. Feeling that they are barely treading water, they may see the meager threads offered by their party's "savior" as the closest thing to a lifeline that they have to grab onto. But is there an alternative?
"Of course there is!" says the opposition party, with major achievements in increasing employment, in universal healthcare, saviors of the stock market, banks, and automobile companies in their last president's first term! All that political capital accumulated to be spent in the next term on infrastructure, fumigation of massive graft in Medicare and defense contracts, right? Well, not exactly.... gay marriage, as opposed to civil unions, unrestricted late-term abortion, honoring W's foolhardy agreement to withdraw troops from Iraq at the behest of an abusive Iranian-sponsored government (to the utter delight of ISIS) and letting the U.S. Navy go to hell were all more important. All the while the party whined incessantly, blaming virtually all their blunders on the lack of cooperation from the opposing party, an echo that seems to reverberate through the halls of Congress no matter which incompetent mob is in charge of the heinous pendulum swing.
Nothing's really changed. It's still the same ball game, pausing for the seventh-inning stretch with the "Democratic Party of Stupid" trailing the "Republican Party of Evil" by a run in a game with no umpires and no rules against pitchers throwing spitballs or players taking bribes or even betting against their own team. It's the game of "politics" where the wealthy donors of both parties steal the profits after they have paid their Congressional players out of money fleeced from their phenomenally ignorant fans.
Al Finkelstein, 12/8/17
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