Today, I looked through my diaries and found this. When I read it, I found it jarring; I looked at the date: 2013.
I read it again. I’m gobsmacked...it sounds like I’m talking about *NOW*: just add Trump, masks, and Black Lives Matter...but I wrote it during the 2013 GOP shutdown of Congress. Maybe it’s just my ears, but I think it echoes; I thought it seemed worth putting out again.
For perspective.
I wrote the following just now on Facebook, in response to comments by a friend of mine in England, on the topic of the current shutdown. Said friend is of the seriously brilliant sort, medical researcher, who was moaning about the impact of the maneuver on the efficacy of PubMed:
This is not about cutting spending, it's about terraforming the US political system into a client government and a client economy, both run for the benefit of entrenched family wealth who own controlling interests in Wall Street institutions and the corporations that operate on that playing field, and who ALSO hold _de facto_ ownership of elected Senators and Representatives (viz. Sheldon Adelson, to name only one bad example). There's been an effort in this country for more than a century to make the US less representative, and more responsive to "needs" of the wealthiest figures in industry and commerce and banking (viz, Teddy Roosevelt, the Robber Barons, gunboat diplomacy).
The rest is below the fold.
Post-WW2 USA saw the rise of both the Klan, and the 'anti-Communist' John Birch Society, in response to the growing activism among black veterans returned to the Jim Crow south; if they weren’t bound together in blood then, they were by the time of Kennedy’s assassination and the push-back against both those groups came from the civil-rights movement, the anti-war movement, the women's movement, and a great deal of what we know as "The Sixties". The resulting friction between disadvantaged whites and disadvantaged blacks, coupled with the manufacture of the "Democrat == liberal == socialist" misconstruction, have been nurtured by fundamentalist religion, and the best professional wordsmiths and actors available (people in the USA have forgotten WHY we originally rejected actors in politics), whipped to a froth by the rise of "right-wing' talk-radio and late-night TV ghosts from Joe Payne to El Rushbo, and disgorged into Congress and statehouses around the country as the "Tea Party".
In the current drama, these provocateurs are attempting to wrest control of the government by political shenanigans, extortion, and good, old-fashioned bullying. If the President and the Senate Democrats hold the line, this attempt to take the nation hostage will likely fail; sadly, in such an event, I fear armed insurrection in 2016: we are truly in a crisis of catastrophic character - the ability of the nation to function in accordance with all those Constitutional principles and the rule-of-law and it has NOTHING to do with spending. YES, it is in fact treason: these people should be stripped of offices, pay and pensions, and tried for crimes against the US Government, but they have spent 40 years and a great deal of money and effort digesting the conservative-leaning voters of this country and isolating them any viewpoint that makes more sense than Beck, Limbaugh, Jones, etc. I know they will argue with that point, but republitarian voters of today NEVER expose themselves to opposing opinions or alternative interpretations of events except in a sports-hooligan sort of way, full of trash-talk, insult and abuse...now that they're out on this limb with their well-paid political heroes, they will double down, demanding the government capitulate to their millionaire overlords.
A sad situation; even pathetic. I have been warning against this for more than 40 years, but got no audience on the right (thanks, racial 'divide and conquer' strategy!). SO MANY people claim to love this country and be all about protecting it...but they look constantly over their *LEFT* shoulder….but they NEVER LOOK OVER THE OTHER SHOULDER. They NEVER ask themselves, "What if I'm wrong? What if I'm TOO willing to take X's word on things? What if we're being snuck up on from an unexpected direction, without ever looking to see? Could we live with ourselves if we gave away the store like that?"
And thus, with good men and women doing nothing to protect the nation ON "PRINCIPLE", Burke's prophecy grinds toward the worst possible end with seeming inevitability. I pray my fellow citizens will grasp a page or two of reality before it is truly too late.