= new reply since forum marked as read
.......
I think many of us have been living in serious denial. The first really rotten stuff out of Republicans I can recall is Spiro Agnew spreading hatred around the South in the late 60s during my late college years (I was a bit too young to pay much attention to Goldwater). We all passed it off at the time as a fringe thing, but then the next thing we knew, large portions of the South went red.
These truly are sneaky, dishonest and psychopathic people that lie to and deceive the most vulnerable of our populace - just to get votes to achieve power and then stab those folks in the back. Their co-opting of religious groups was the final corrupt act for me and at that time, I felt they probably could never achieve moral reconciliation. I now suspect the Republican party will have to totally collapse of its own weight and hubris to survive - and probably should just start from scratch. The only thing keeping it glued together now is support of plutocrats and bands of far-right tear-it-all-down radicals.
Perhaps we could just re-label the Republican Party a commercial enterprise with a very bad track record.
BTW, I had my mouth washed out a few times as a kid and as I recall (by today's standards) for the most innocent language. I was raised by fairly strict Depression-era Southern Baptists - all of whom are tossing around in their graves over this prosperity gospel bullshit. They really were great folks and I still appreciate them every day.
..........
PS: I follow Rick Wilson too, but sometimes tire from all the snark. He does seem very sharp and resourceful.
At the highest levels of government and business.
Karma that we now own!!!!
included chemical and bacteriological warfare. Hernando de Soto and his fellow conquistadors were savage, bloodthirsty and inhumane but they have parks and forests named after them. Few American citizens lamented what happened with the Trail of Tears and the architects of that misery were hailed as heroes. One was elected as the seventh POTUS and still adorns the nation's currency in homage.
African-Americans have been enslaved, murdered and terrorized. We practiced a form of apartheid nearly until the nation's 200th anniversary. 206 years after African-American Boston Massacre victim Crispus Attucks became canonized as the first to die in the lead to American independence, white Bostonians were captured trying impale a black businessman on an broken flag pole bearing the American flag.
The cause of unrest? School integration.
America's Gilded Age was marked by vast gulfs of income disparity. Bigotry and sexism were de rigeur.
In the first third of the 20th century, we sent American servicemen to die throughout Latin America to preserve petty commercial interests.
We watched a 1925 march of the Ku Klux Klan through our nation's capital. An estimated 25,000 – 400,000 Klansmen marched in white robes and hoods but faces exposed, down Pennsylvania Avenue.
American business barons conspired to depose the duly elected POTUS because he sided with impoverished citizens in the midst of the Great Depression. Were it not for one USMC general's divulgence of their schemes, they could have succeeded.
We stripped American citizens of their estates and imprisoned them because their ancestors originated in a land that later took up arms against the United States. We irradiated servicemen and prisoners at whim. We gave placebo treatments to diseased African-Americans all just to study the effects. We fed radioactive material to mentally disabled children. We administered radioactive iron to impoverished pregnant women.
We turned our heads to the cultivation of ghettos throughout the nation.
Our history of illegal wars, assassinations, imprisonments and torture has pockmarked the last 60 years of world history.
So where was this moral perch from which we fell?
Quite a hall of shame we've built....and we're still building. Trump will add an entire new wing.
......
A few rays of light along the way but much too much darkness.
Good reminder. Don't give up.
I am ashamed to be an American these days.
This is but a symptom of the rot, as we allow our tax dollars to implement suffering around the globe. The indiscriminate bombing of innocents in too many places to name here (Yemen, Syria, etc.), allowing children to starve in numerous areas, no control of our corporations in their overseas operations (e.g, oil and mineral extractions), weak diplomatic interest in the movement of refugees in many troubled areas...the list goes on and on.
We've somehow built a society that can conveniently stay blind to these things, as we stay warm and safe in our homes and stay occupied with trivialities on social media and TV.
I sometimes wonder how bad the ultimate paybacks will be, after climate change and new wars rearrange all the deck chairs.
...........
........
I'm beyond outrage and well into the territory of grief.
