While I find myself repeatedly incredulous over the ongoing Looney Toons Show running in the White House, I see this latest episode as transitioning into absolute absurdity. And what is even more absurd is the fact that this kind of madness is greeted with seriousness by the press. No one is willing to say that Gramps has had yet another episode in his descent into full-blown dementia.
However, Canadian exemplar Charlie Angus has quite another take on it, underscoring its sinister implications. See what you think.
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.
ReplyDeleteI 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.
Hi Mound. Great to hear from you. I certainly agree with your analysis; democracy now seems more illusory than real in America. The fiction that the Democrats can fix things would have a chance of becoming reality only if they really wanted change. While they may be outraged at Trump's brazenness and the ease with which their system of government has been systematically dismantled, I'm not sure they have the vision or moral clarity to reverse that. Their resistance to progressives suggests to me that the status quo isn't really anathema to them, except for who is currently in charge - the Republicans.
ReplyDeleteHope all is well with you. If you don't mind, I'd like to feature your comments in my next post.
Sure but the 2nd one is a duplicate of the first. Until recently I paid scant attention to the American Constitution. I finally broke down and bought a copy. To provide context I then went to the writings of Jefferson, Adams and Ben Franklin. Jefferson wrote of the need to nourish the Tree of Liberty from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. Franklin was asked if America and truly become a democratic republic and replied "Yes, if you can keep it."
ReplyDeleteThey knew it would be attacked, relentlessly, and would have to be defended from time to time against those who would replace it with an alternate order to their personal enrichment.
I have removed the duplicate post.
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Introduction
I understand Mound's point but I think it is far to late. The USA needs to do a few much more drastic things.
First it needs to deep six the existing US constitution, convene a constitutional congress and draught a new one that meets the needs of a large, heavily urbanized, country with 50 states and assorted territories and colonies rather than a country with 13 mainly rural, agricultural, states joined in a loose association in a day when news travelled at the speed of a fast horse.
Somehow a constitution with 6 sections, written in the 18th century, with 27 amendments gives the impression of something held together by baling twine and duck tape. Even Red Green might be daunted if asked to keep it together. An old colleague who specialized in the USA while doing a poli-sci degree here in Canada once remarked to me that he had the opinion that the US Constitution was designed not to work.
In any case, needs to make the inhabitants of its various colonies such as Guam, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia full citizens, able to vote in Federal elections and have voting representatives in the Senate and Congress.
Concomitantly, the Republican and Democratic parties need to lose their official status and the political field needs to be open to competing parties. For heavens sake, US states keep official lists of professed party affiliation at the moment.
The USA needs to drastically reform its political financing model so that it is much more difficult to buy senators and representatives or for senators and representatives to profit from influence and inside knowledge.
It needs to tame things such as AIPAC, and likely other nationally oriented pressure groups, by recognizing them as agents of a foreign party.
I could go on, probably for several thousand words.
Thanks for your comments, Anon. it is clear that there is much work to be done in the U.S. The question is whether or not they have the will and desire.
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