Brian Keane's post on FB
America is not being represented, it’s being conned by its government. We are in the last stages of doing away with democracy, in favor of an auction. In an auction, the highest bidder wins. In this auction, the rich get richer at everyone else’s expense (because the bidding is on tax revenue that you provided, which you are getting nothing back for). To think that the American Revolution’s battle cry was “taxation without representation” seems bitterly ironic now.
Power begets power, and laws are corrupted to permit abuses that were not permitted before. Opportunity, democracy (and with it, meaningful opposition), erodes and disappears. The press is demonized. Truth becomes an almost illegal commodity, or the product of an imaginary “deep state”. "Alternative" realities now pervade social media, the radio, and cable news programs. Our government, which once did the mundane work of distributing Social Security checks and fixing roads, has devolved into an enormously costly reality TV show of absurd proportions.
People slowly begin to accept their new reality of indentured servitude, (left in the residue of a long eroding standard of living that they distantly remember - at least the white neighborhoods part), but they are miserable, angry, and they want to lash out.
In this state, it is easy for the powerful, and their media propaganda, to take advantage of people’s frustrations, naivety, and wishful longing for change, by placing blame for the misery, that most people are experiencing, on something other than where it belongs. Propaganda, that promises, (what it will never deliver), can work the naive into a fever of delusion, where imaginary fairy tales override the reality of their own theft, like an inspiring, but crooked evangelist, taking advantage of what people want to believe (while taking them to the cleaners in reality)!
To be fair, another type of propaganda is the fatherly, soft sell, the nothing to get excited by type, the "we can’t just change everything all at once" kind (though, at least a civil dialogue can exist in the Biden - Romney middle range, and even just that seems almost enviable at this point). In this middling mode, oligarchy takes a smaller, but still out-sized cut for themselves. They negotiate a temporarily acceptable breaking point of bare minimum acceptability (or even survivability), with American citizens, and this often brings mediocre economic results with little change.
This hasn’t been historically enough for most, however. Especially considering how much standard of living that most Americans lose in a radical oligarchic administration like a Reagan or Bush where debt quadruples and life savings are cut by more than half. “Obama-care” for example, incited fever delusions of opposition among conservatives, but ultimately proved to be a mild improvement that fell well short of the "Medicare for all” - (which is currently functioning. at half the per capita cost, with superior health results, in most civilized countries). People may not remember clearly, but Obama-care was originally, a "public option” idea that got watered down. Conservatives, who claimed that competition was the best way to lower prices, also claimed that they couldn’t compete with a public option. Clearly, their corruption made them lobby for a crummier deal for Americans (and clearly, their followers didn't realize it in their fervor for misdirection and emotional fantasies).
No, Americans have been trained through propaganda, to lash out at each other, instead of at the thieves who have infested their government.
Let me be blunt, your wages and lifestyle’s suck because American citizens have no power to be in a better bargaining position. Conservatives want to keep it that way.
Democracy, and laws are the levers of power that American citizen's have to negotiate with, and most of the country has been conned into giving that power away. Statistically, the rich have been getting richer, and the rest of the country has been getting both poorer, and less powerful, since 1980.
Americans are fighting each other over the crumbs left to them by a “trickle down” reality (that they really haven’t been electing democratically).
Now, we have gotten nearly to the point where democracy and laws don’t matter at all any more. Sadly, the impeachment itself probably won’t make much difference, because it will devolve into partisan lies, procedural abuse, and obedience to monied interests. Few votes, if any, will be cast on the basis of principles, the tax payers, America, or the law.
Maybe the impending impeachment can at least shine a light on this sad state of affairs, about what has become of our once very effective democratic government, (and the reality that we all are actually making the payments for our current government to use as extortion, or leverage, in self serving bribery scams at this point).
Who knows, maybe the evidence can actually make the truth much more apparent to even some of the seemingly, hopelessly naive and information resistant? (Not getting my hopes up real high there). However, maybe the realities that get exposed in the impeachment proceedings will at least inspire enough Americans to vote to begin getting rid of such corruption in their government (while they still can)? One can only hope.
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