The Awakening?

What difference a few days make, eh?  Suddenly the airways are full of full-throated Americans who are pissed off at what is happening.  (It must have been my blog that rattled their cages and made them awaken!)

I admit I watch a lot of MSNBC to try to make all of this a bit more palatable, but I am seeing a kind of unexpected jubilation on the faces of the MSNBC commentators as they seem to be surprised by the unexpected virulence of the town hall reactions that the current Congressmen are getting from their constituents.  Frankly it does give one an inkling of hope.....

The crowds that are jamming the town meetings are a mixture of Dems and Repubs, without the absolute need to identify themselves.  They suddenly seem to be just Americans who are looking at the state of our government and saying to themselves, Holy Shit, what is going on??  Finally, the patient shows signs of life!

It is unclear what happens from  here, because of course the Trumpians and all the suck-upian Republicans are blaming all this demonstration on the 'liberal activists'.  But our newly awakened citizens know better.  There are lots of reports of many new people who are considering running for office.  As I have said for years, that is the only way there will be real change in our country.  We all need to get involved from the ground up....from school boards to county commissions, to state legislatures.  It is time to grab a hold of our democracy and shake all the leeches off it, douse them with lighter fluid and get rid of them with a match!  Maybe that is what will happen.

This new renaissance of spirit in the body politic is encouraging.  It is almost possible to imagine the feeling of the colonists as they gathered in secretive groups to talk and plan on how to rid the land of the hated English monarchists in 1776.  Can you imagine what that scenario would have been like if everyone had an Iphone and Twitter?

Of course it is way too early to have real hope that we will be able to rid ourselves of the Republican political scourge that has blighted America for the last 40 years, but if we nourish these voices and continue to expose the hypocrisy and self serving arrogance of people like Jason Chaffetz, Mitch McConnell and all the too many parasites that find those kind of people acceptable, perhaps there is a light at the end of the tunnel of despair we are trying to escape.

Dawning Awareness......

This is the first blog in almost 4 years.  For those of you who have read me in the past, I decried what I saw as the slow and steady corruption of our American system.  I repeatedly, with hope and belief, saw an opportunity to 'turn it around'.  Today, not so much......

I am a patriotic American.  I believe in, and revere the Constitution and honor the long road we have traveled as an experiment in democracy for 241 years.  And so I am trying to find an accommodation for what we seem to have become as a republic.

I can’t find my way.  And that is mostly because I have become acutely aware that the country I thought I belonged to has a large group of citizens who are not educated, are not critical thinkers and who are afflicted with herd mentality.  Their values are not the same as mine.  I am a man of integrity and honesty.  I believe in telling the truth; of accepting facts in the pursuit of reason and intelligent decision making. 

That is not the way the citizens I am describing view their world.  These citizens simply don’t want to accept facts that are proven.  They are happy to accept hearsay falsehoods and facebook as the true source of the truth.  They do not have  inquisitive minds.  They are oblivious to the actual fact that they are rabidly supportive of a movement led by an anti-intellectual who has no interest in their needs.

All one has to do is watch the news reports of the ‘rallies’ being held and see the assortment of citizens who stand in endless lines to attend these gatherings where they feel like their anger is being justified and assuaged.  These are not intelligent people who read and consider actions and their consequences.  These are followers; sheep; lemmings following a pied piper who is rude, crass, and narcissistic.

The true tragedy is the ‘party they belong to’.  Witness a collection of purportedly intelligent people who unfortunately do not understand liberty and whose priorities, in this order, are: power, money, re-election, party, the people, and finally the country.  Democracy is not a concept they truly understand, and so they are ambivalently happy to see it trampled, desecrated, and ignored.

The current USA is not what I thought it was.  It is a country without purpose anymore.  It is being led by people whose mission is to acquire power and make as much money as they can no matter the damage to the republic, the world , the climate, the environment, consumer protection, health care, jobs, etc. etc. etc.

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But the reality is that it may be too late to redeem these citizens.  They have sacrificed their independence on the altar of expedience.  They are humanoids who have lost the ability to be human.  That is the tragedy of the United States of America in 2017.  I am afraid.