I admit to using Facebook, but mostly as a tool for messaging and networking, especially to promote events. I generally succeed in avoiding pissing matches, and regret that many people on my side of the aisle make that forum their primary or exclusive channel of political “participation”.
Today, however, I did respond to a friend who called Devin Nunes the #3 threat to American democracy, after Cadet Bone Spurs and Moscow Mitch. Now Nunes is certainly an odious person worthy of our contempt, but he wouldn’t make my Top 25 as a threat to American institutions and to life on Earth, especially while relegated to the minority.
But this exchange got me thinking. Who are our principal adversaries in the struggle for a free America and a livable planet? Here is my current ranking, subject to change any moment.
1. Rupert Murdoch. His media empire, and especially Faux “News”, have done far more than Putin’s minions ever could to turn a significant share of the voting public into brainwashed automatons.
2. Mitch McConnell. His zero-sum approach to American politics, his destruction of Senate norms, and his subversion of an independent judiciary will be even more difficult to overcome than the ravages of Individual One.
3. Vladimir Putin. His hegemonic dreams are illusions. He misgoverns a kleptocratic petrostate with a dismal future as climate change advances. But he’s succeeding so far in dragging us down with him.
4. Donald Trump. I list the Manchurian candidate #4 because he is could never have arisen without the three villains above him, and because listing him only fourth would really, really annoy him.
5. William Barr. A wicked and cunning opponent of the Constitution he is sworn to defend. Jeff Sessions promoted an extremist and racist agenda, but Barr seeks no less than turning the Department of Justice into an instrument of theocratic and authoritarian rule.
6 through 9. Supreme Court “Justices” Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh. Despoilers of the Constitution. To call them hacks is to give them too much credit. Their verdicts are only unpredictable in those rare instances where the interests of the Republican Party and of robber baron capitalism fail to coincide. Chief Justice Roberts stays off the list for the moment, since he seems to have pretensions of character, but that may change by the end of the current session.
10. Robert Mercer. Since I had to include one representative of the odious big money malefactors unleashed by Citizens United, his funding of Cambridge Analytica gives him a villainous edge over the other politicized fat cats like Koch and Adelson.
There should be a corporate executive on this list, since the fossil fuel, pharmaceutical, armaments and banking industries are waging relentless war on our people and on our only habitable planet. But I couldn’t single out any one person. Unlike the moneyed fat cats, the CEO’s prefer to perform their misdeeds in the dark.
OK. Here’s my Top Ten. Enemies of the US Constitution. Enemies of Sentient Life. I don’t expect anyone to defend these wicked ones. But you might persuade me that I’ve got the order wrong, or have slighted an even greater threat.
(Photo credit: Business Insider)