While the Democrats form a circular firing squad, and the Supreme Court decides presidents are kings and immune from the law, we stand on the precipice of another July 4th holiday here in the US, a day to celebrate our independence and freedom. The irony is not lost on me…
Politics has become a team sport of celebrities and personalities and blind team loyalty. This isn’t the Yankees vs. The Red Sox here, this is about our very lives and existence.
I wish the debate last week hadn’t happened at all. That show exposed our failure to the world. It wasn’t a good look for us. Joe looked tired and Trump just spewed his lies and looked like Trump.
Watching the debate I did realize the one thing Trump has accomplished in any way for the greater good is he has removed the veneer.
Not by gently sanding and stripping it off, freeing up the thin layer from the glue that binds it to the surface material. Not carefully protecting the underlying structure. No, Trump and his yes-men and goons and billionaires ripped it away with chisels and rasps, ripping off the thin layer of decorative material, the stuff we’ve believed in and been sold all our lives, from the subsurface and leaving the underlying structure with deep gouges and scars and holes that can never be repaired. Trump has exposed the lie and left it to rot.
All of my life I’ve lived with and been amazed by the general knowledge and belief that politicians in general, the collective of people employed in politics and leadership were no goddamn good. But we vote for the lesser of two evils and walk away with some bizarre sense of pride and accomplishment. We’ve done our jobs, we voted. We participated in our democracy. We are absolved of any complicity until the next time.
The military would spend $400 on a hammer or a thousand dollars on a toilet seat and that was all laughable and somehow ok. A defense contractor would be awarded enough money to feed a nation of hungry people for a decade and the contractor would not deliver on the contract and that’s just the way it is. “That’s government fer ya’!” And the late-night talk show hosts would laugh and we’d laugh. We laughed and laughed and laughed…
A senator gets busted with a hooker and a bag full of money and some Armenian coke all over his face and we dismiss it as nothing out of the ordinary, we absorb the news, in my case feel bad for the hooker and move on to the next sound bite.
Men like Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer leave lucrative law practices, thirty years ago “to serve the people,” on salaries in today’s money of $175,000 and somehow in those thirty-some-odd years amass fortunes in the hundreds of millions, and we say, that’s just how it works.
Then one day some bumbling con artist steps in shit and like a bull in a China shop exposes this entire smelly mess for exactly what it is and we all run to our favorite entertainment channel masquerading as news, wrap ourselves in the words of the pundits like a security blanket, and we sit and bite our nails and piss our pants over the end of our democracy. Oddly, it seems both sides of the fence can take the same events and somehow draw the conclusion that we are at the end of all we hold dear.
Our democratic republic was an illusion from the jump. At times, a nice and comfy illusion with mom and apple pie and baseball. There have been moments where we were the light of the world, like FDR bellowing of “days that will live in infamy…” and the Greatest Generation with balls the size of grapefruits running hell-bent into machine gun fire, and Saint Ronnie Reagan of San Clemente telling Gorbachev to “tear down that wall…” while telling the rest of us that wealth trickles down from the obscenely rich to the working class, and we bought it. And with Neil and Buzz bouncing up and down on the moon we filled up on American pride. But these were shining moments of exception to the illusion, a veneer none the less.
Trump strips that all away. He’ll leave little to nothing we recognize in his wake when his reign has ended. But maybe in a hundred years or so when we are long dead, our descendants will learn from our failures… maybe, but I doubt it.
What if we’d spent a bit more time in honest assessment and demanding better and more from those we allow to lead us and little less time standing and saluting flags at ball games and looking down on people like me who often choose not to stand, because I’ve held in my gut seemingly since I could walk saluting flags and swearing allegiance are acts that should only be performed after much thought and soul searching. Maybe if we’d applied a bit more thought to these bold acts we could have avoided some of this rapidly unfolding disaster. Maybe if we had listened to the message of the guys who took a knee against the common enemy instead of making the guy down on the ground the bad guy we could have somehow educated ourselves and we’d not be at this very painful July 4th juncture.
All of the great empires have fallen into ruin and what little of them that have survived live on as a frail shadow. All these fallen empires were ruled by people who saw themselves as kings and gods who lived above the mundane rules that govern and control the proletariat, the people who pulled the levers, dug the ditches, and turned the wrenches, often while walking in ropes and chains.
The common theme throughout human history and the singular thing that will endure forever is a small group of men and women somehow amass vast wealth and fortunes and come to believe this wealth gives them dominion over other men and women. And sadly, we often, almost always hand over our personal sovereignty to these wealthy people and work in the muck and trenches to make them richer. With each swing of the pickaxe, we ponder and curse the shitty luck that made us and come to believe we are somehow less than the men of power. There is a line that has been crossed where these men of power are now worshipped like little gods. The sacred allegiance is no longer to God and country but to tremendously rich men who owe their wealth and their allegiance to other rich men.
Maybe we’ve all been too busy feeding kids and paying bills and watching TikTok videos to pay attention, maybe I over think all this stuff, but I don’t think I do…
Maya Angelou said it best, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them…”
Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for this week. Here are some books to check out.
Stay safe, it’s getting weird out there!
Bill
Very good article Sir.