Up in the great Polling Place in the Sky, cherubim and seraphim are flitting to and fro, unfazed by the seething demons sent to "watch," delivering supplications from below, angels tallying the results: "3 million more for permanent lung damage," and "43 more for full recovery." Nobody prays for another person's death. Do they?

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As we pass the second hundred thousand dead without discernible official action to slow the spread, the head of state survives infection for about a week (so far), and declares himself "cured" and "immune" while more and more White House staff, Rose Garden attendees and lawmakers fall ill. More super-spreader rallies are scheduled. No. 45 thinks he has beaten China.

Up in the great Polling Place in the Sky, cherubim and seraphim are flitting to and fro, unfazed by the seething demons sent to "watch," delivering supplications from below, angels tallying the results: "3 million more for permanent lung damage," and "43 more for full recovery." Nobody prays for another person's death. Do they?

Fantasy is no help.

In my village, significant numbers of people still refuse masks, and occasionally even subject those who do to public mockery and derision. This is the impact of opportunistic terrorism from the top. So far we've held the line better than most places. But we're no Taiwan (five dead in Taiwan. Five. They made 23 million masks, and put them on. Simple.)

The history is not controversial. The admin dismantled every program and policy that had long been in place to deal with the next pandemic, including the scientific projects that had been anticipating, studying and warning the world about the present plague as it began to unfold. They hijacked shipments of medical equipment and PPE, since Jared was in charge of FEMA, and jacked up the prices to Governors.

While we watched.

The ongoing torture of desperate people fleeing the terrible conditions America has imposed on their ancestral homelands only has precedent in Nazi Germany: pulling infants from their mothers' arms and locking them away in distant cities -- where do you even hire somebody so damaged that they will take that job? But then we supposedly elected No. 45.

And we watched.

The president's knowledge and attitude was eventually documented by Bob Woodward, among others, although Mr. Woodward sat on this tidbit until a little late in the game. The facts were already plain as the nose behind your N-95. But good for him, for getting his hands on the tapes once again.

And we're still watching.

The clear conclusion any reasonable person must draw after this benumbing four years of accelerating horror, is that the president willfully and knowingly opened the nation to a deadly pandemic, and with malice aforethought exposed categories of people he dislikes to disproportionately higher death rates. This was reflected in word and deed, such as when a program to distribute PPE was scrapped for the expressed purpose of making Democrat-run cities suffer more.

Official denial of long-settled science and standard medical practice. Overtly eugenicist pronouncements and open incitements to violence (followed by actual murders of anti-racist protesters as police watched). Flagrant government violations of civil rights, subversion of democratic processes and institutions, and flouting of the law of the land. All led and cheered on unabashedly by the president.

"If you see something, say something."

All of this egregious dereliction of duty on the part of the Chief Executive should be more than enough to get him thrown out of the office. Behind the cloud of frivolous lawsuits and Draconian edicts calculated to pitchpole the ship of state, is a stupendous violation of laws, norms, values and simple decency that must not go unpunished. It amounts to high treason: a clear attempt to overthrow the government by force and violence.

And we're watching. Aren't we?

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.

Authors Website: https://attentionage.com

Authors Bio:

I'm an old Pogo fan. For some unknown reason I persist in outrage at Feudalism, as if human beings can do much better than this. Our old ways of life are obsolete and are killing us. Will the human race wake up in time? Stay tuned...