Those of you who are long-time readers of blogs will remember The Mound of Sound. The Mound wrote prodigiously and deeply, offering keen analyses of world and national issues. The Mound retired his blog some years back, but I was delighted to hear from him in. a recent comment on my blog.
In case you missed it, here are the Mound's thoughts on the current American political system:
To change the subject ever so slightly I've been trying to make sense of the Democrats' glee over the upcoming mid-terms. It strikes me that their "wildest dreams" outcome will ensure almost nothing that the United States so urgently needs as time runs out. I sent the following missive to 3 American friends urging them to really ponder what's at stake.
I keep returning to America's system of checks & balances as the key to restoring democracy to the United States.
Frankly, no matter what happens in the November mid-term elections, if you cannot or will not rehabilitate the notion of 3 co-equal branches of government, America is screwed.
This has been building for almost half a century. Trump took a constitutionally enfeebled government and crushed the remnants of democracy in America.
Understand this. The notion of 3, co-equal branches of government - the legislature, the judiciary and the executive (the presidency) - was not some sort of afterthought.
These are embodied in the first 3 articles of the US Constitution, Thomas Jefferson's Constitution. They're not amendments to be squabbled over. They are the heart and soul of America's constitutional firmament. Without them you eventually wind up with thugs like Donald Trump and he won't be the last.
The legislative branch is working against you. The judiciary is working against you. The presidency is working against you. So there, what are you going to do about it?
Your kids' future has already been indentured. A $40 trillion and growing federal debt will see to that.
Even the RAND Corporation ran the numbers and concluded that in the half century since the Reagan era, 79 trillion dollars of wealth has been siphoned out of your pocket - whether you're blue or white collar - and into the pockets of today's oligarchs - Musk, Bezos, Theil etc., etc.
Nobel laureate economist Joe Stiglitz has shown that today's worsening inequality is neither merit nor market-based. It is almost entirely a legislated outcome by politicians who work not for the country, not for the American people, but for America's emerging oligarchy.
Study after study confirm that America is no longer a democracy, a democratic republic. It's now downgraded to an electoral oligarchy. You still get to vote - for now - but that vote carries increasingly less political clout. American democracy now has a shelf-life measured in days.
Now they're getting bolder. They're putting the military out onto American streets. They've created a secret police that spirits people, some of them American citizens, away to hell hole prisons in Central America.
This all comes back to those first three articles of the Constitution of the United States of America. The same fellow who wrote that Constitution warned you this day would come. It has. It's here.
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