Sleaze and More

The levels of sleaze, greed, hypocrisy, ignorance, stupidity, bribery, dishonesty, corruption, exploitation, and inequality have now reached such unprecedented heights in the U.S. I have virtually lost all hope for our future. You might say I have at last pretty much “given up.” I don’t like to admit that and even now I cling to some tiny ray of hope, but it is all fading fast. I think it fair to say the U.S. is completely messed up from top to bottom: domestic and foreign policy, and everything in-between. The one small ray of hope is that somehow most of the morons in the House of Representatives might be voted out of office in 2014. Don’t bet on it. If they are not, and if Hillary does become Madam President, there will be another four or more years of hate, inactivity, partisanship, lies, smears, rumors, and whatever else the small minds of Republicans can dream up. I doubt the country can survive any more years of deliberate government sabotage.

Ennui is not a strong enough term to describe my present state of mind regarding the state of the state. There is no doubt that President Obama has made some serious mistakes, particularly in foreign policy. But how could he not, given that our foreign policy in the Middle East is drafted and commanded by Israel for their own misperceived welfare, and Congress delights in throwing money and support to them no matter how horrific racist, and criminal their policies and behavior. Bibi continues his campaign of lies and slander against Iran while Congress just accepts whatever outrageous claims he makes. Their and our hypocrisy has been exposed for the sham it is, “democracy” means to both of us merely what it is we want to happen and has nothing to do with reality.

On the domestic front Republicans have carried out their single-minded attempt to make Obama a failed President by opposing him at every turn, blocking any of his attempts to create jobs, improve health care, wages, and whatever. I can see it all now, Obama will be blamed for everything that has gone wrong, that will prove to them their self-fulfilling prophecy that a Black man just wasn’t up to the job, even though they themselves engineered his failures, and they will continue to sing the praises of Saint Ronnie, arguably the worst President ever.

Meanwhile the country that used to be at least “sort of” Democratic, continues its relentless effort to become a true Fascist nation (fascism being the merger of government and corporations as Mussolini defined it for us). The evidence for this is widespread, what with the militarization of our police, the incessant spying on everyone, the complete disregard of the public by Congress (on gun control, wars, jobs, infrastructure, etc.). Basically, our country is now controlled by a few billionaires and a few gigantic corporations that bribe Congress and others in government to do their bidding.

In my 80 plus years of life I have never seen corruption, exploitation, and inequality this bad. I guess it is a result of “cognitive capitalism” (a weird term I came across the other day) that is apparently going to eventually privatize our schools as well as our prisons and I guess most everything else. Remarkable, I never knew the goal of education was to make a profit, nor did I know that was the goal of a prison system. Virtually unbelievably in the last few days of discussions we have been hearing about overcrowded prisons, changing laws, and so on, no one even mentioned the problem of privatized prisons. It seems obvious that if prisons are to make a profit they need as many inmates as possible, and they need to treat them as cheaply as possible, and make sure they have an endless supply of them. Immigration lends itself nicely to such a system, as does poverty, poor education, and unfair laws. Is it really any surprise that we have far more people incarcerated than anywhere else on earth?

    If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.

Lao Tzu