Chris Collins, a Republican Congressman worth $66 million -- one of trump's earliest backers who led the argument that trump should not have to release his taxes -- was just indicted for insider trading. The evidence against him is so strong that even that morally spineless weakling, Paul Ryan, has kicked him off House committees.
WHY do voters keep electing RICH people to office??? Most of them appear to mainly be concerned about using the office to look out for their OWN interests, financial and otherwise. Of course many of the poorer people elected to Congress look to use the office to GET rich, but at least they have SOME understanding of what it is like to BE poor or middle-class and what some of the concerns of those constituents might be!!
We become more and more a banana republic where the rulers don't even have to PRETEND to care about the people -- ONLY about stealing their country's resources for themselves and their friends and family members!! The Supreme Court is making this ever more possible by ruling that dark money -- even FOREIGN dark money -- can be used to finance election campaigns. Meaning that increasingly our "representatives" are bought and paid for by the very rich and corporate money.
Because of this sort of thing, former President Jimmy Carter -- a man who does not worship money, but who "goes about doing good" says the United States is no longer a functioning Democracy, but an oligarchy with "unlimited political bribery." A government whose representatives care NOTHING about the needs of any but the very rich who bought them their offices.
The country we all loved SAVED the world from Fascism and CARED about helping people in need in our country and elsewhere. We sacrificed to help a war-ravaged world rebuild through the Marshall Plan! Though far from perfect, we were the shining example of Democracy and freedom to all other people in the rest of the world!
NOW we are kidnapping children from their parents, allowing poisons, including asbestos, back into our environment for the sake of the Almighty Corporate Buck, abandoning every vestige of decency we formerly held dear. Lies and hate speech pitting Americans against each other are the norm, greed and adultery are now not only excused but celebrated. Under Trump, whose business, personal and political dishonesty is staggering, and who has surrounded himself with "the best people," to run the government -- the majority of whose values are as morally bankrupt as his own -- the country we all used to love so much is very close to being DEAD!!
When G. W. Bush was president, writer E. L. Doctorow wrote an essay titled "Our Unfeeling President" in which he described the world-wide protests against the United States launching a pre-emptive war with Iraq,
"But the cry of protest was the appalled understanding of millions of people that America was ceding its role as the last best hope of mankind. It was their perception that the classic archetype of democracy was morphing into a rogue nation. The greatest democratic republic in history was turning its back on the future..."
He also wrote,
"The president we get is the country we get. With each president the nation is conformed spiritually. He is the artificer of our malleable national soul. He proposes not only the laws but the kinds of lawlessness that govern our lives and invoke our responses. The people he appoints are cast in his image. The trouble they get into and get us into, is his characteristic trouble....He becomes the face of our sky, the conditions that prevail.... the monarchal economics of this president? He...is a figure of such moral vacancy as to make us mourn for ourselves."
Doctorow died a few years ago, but I am sure he would agree that his and the world's condemnation of America under Bush is much more applicable to what the United States has become under trump!!
If it is not already too late, the elections in 2018 are our LAST chance to save the country we loved so much!! The ideals of which made us what used to be the most admired country in the world!!
1
