Recent external polls cited here on this site have currently declared that a race between Trump and Biden is either a dead heat or that Trump would prevail. These selfsame pollsters attribute this to “independents” who they claim are blaming inflation and fuel prices on Biden, and pacifists who fear the wars in Europe could spread into another world war with nuclear consequences here. The usual pacifist centrists among us continue to wring their hands, living in mortal fear of “going low when we should’a gone high” as fascism burrows into the public conscience. In spite of the obvious direct threat to the country and laws that endow civilization to us, pacifists do what they do because they value the esoteric over the practical, and they continue to concern themselves with imposing genteel order and reason directed at the vulgar and profane, up to and beyond the point where they are stood up against a wall, their wrists are bound, they’re offered a blindfold and a cigarette and the firing squad clicks off the safeties on their rifles.
(The earlier pacifists before them did that in Poland and Austria in 1938, along with Denmark, France and every other western European country except Great Britain… and the history books indicate that it didn’t go particularly well for any of them. There just might be a lesson in that...)
The reality of human nature is that there are certain situations where the preservation of that civility to which pacifists ascribe demands the very occasional implementation of a militant “call to arms” as it were in the form of unrestricted ideological warfare in order to preserve the things that the body public hold sacrosanct. Contrary to the centrist pacifist’s belief, when fighting against fascism, there can never be evolutionary change — with all the examples of why that’s been consistently true throughout the history of human government, believing that modern circumstances would produce different results is a fool’s errand. Those who were put in charge of minding this country for the last 40 years have been far more interested in implementing ideology contrary to our intended fundamental social structure as Constitutionally mandated, and even in the rare times when Democrats have been at the helm, it’s been the same failed series of attempts at compromise over compromise over compromise with the fascists who have never, not now, nor will they ever entertain the notion of compromise for a second - on anything. The modern American fascist agenda was cast in steel during the Roosevelt years of the 1930s and hasn’t changed at all in 90 years; Marine Corps General Smedley Butler — recipient of TWO United States Medal Of Honor citations — tried to stop a fascist oligarch putsch by American corporate interests in 1935, and later, Vice President Henry Wallace wrote a comprehensive dissertation on the subject in the New York Times in 1944.
The current state of affairs has put our country on the razor edge of the precipice: the federal government dodged a near-fatal bullet from the January 6th incident, and many of the perpetrators are still out there, almost 3 years later hanging onto every word that spews out of the anal-like orifice below Trump’s nose. He’s still out there, spewing his psychotic ramblings and aggressive threats in spite of very specific warnings from the judges handling his indictments - and yet nothing of consequence is being done about it, except to pronounce a toothless “gag order” on Trump that will likely never be enforced. So what does that do for the idealistic phrase chiseled into the pediment of the supreme court building : “Equal Justice Under Law”? If that were actually true, Trump would currently be spending his third month behind bars by now. That by itself should be a “red alert” warning to the Democratic Party power brokers that this upcoming election season isn’t merely another usual “election cycle”, but a time of final reckoning for the party and whether or not it’s sufficiently committed to legislate and campaign according to it’s stated principles, or it’s just a façade for more corporate oligarchy at the expense of the American People’s quality of life and the dispensation of actual justice.
Once again, we stare down the barrel today of yet another republican government shutdown — that time-worn way of republicans publicly admitting that they’re still incapable of managing government and holding Federal positions of responsibility over people’s lives. So rather than attempt to perform their oath of office and serve the American People (and discovering that Grover Norquist’s bathtub is too small), they shut the government down altogether, take their taxpayer-provided salaries and go home to their respective electorates so they can blame Democrats for blocking their fascist agendas.
So... America - here’s a news bulletin for you: YOU DID THIS. This is the dyslexic, toxic, putrid state of affairs you’ve cultivated and nurtured with reckless abandon in the voting booth over the decades. Here is the result of your apathy, willful ignorance, complete lack of discernment and provincial bigotry toward the very laws you claim to respect, voting for those who have no intentions whatsoever to comply with them or support the betterment of America’s quality of life. As but one example among many others, one cannot shout at the top of their lungs, “KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF MY SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE!” then enthusiastically support the party that has been doing everything they can think of to dismantle those programs by defunding them years after their lawful inception. Doing so demonstrates an especially blatant form of patently toxic ignorance of the law and the fundamental mechanism of our Constitutional government. Logic and the natural order of things dictate that opposites cannot exist in the same plane without conflict and paralysis. Put in simpler terms, if people want benefits, assistance, solutions against climate change and health care, then they need to aggressively appoint political leadership that will give them benefits, assistance, solutions against climate change and health care… who won’t endlessly debate the merits thereof, who won’t weaken, subvert or attach “poison pill” riders and earmarks to the legislation that enables them.
Many have claimed that our contemporary government does not represent the electorate, but instead represents regressive corporate interests. In an abstract sense, that is not true: the electorate long ago handed its representation over to corporate interests via their support for conservative gunsels (from BOTH parties) at the ballot box, and by consequential proxy they got exactly what they voted for… not necessarily what they wanted or needed, but what they voted for. And now no judge, jury, legislative mandate or special counsel has the authority or capacity to clean up the mess. The only permanent solution remains in the hands of the voters themselves - by looking at the government they’ve created with their eyes wide open and realizing how they’ve been played for fools for decades. However, given the influences of poisonous social media together with right wing broadcast propaganda on radio and television by corporate media ownerships - together with the usual gullible centrist decision making process in the voting booth, it’s depressing to realize how likely that epiphany will happen.