 |
| credit: RJ Matson |
We are undoubtedly living in one of the darkest times in American history: confronting a public health crisis of biblical proportions that precipitated an economic contraction rivaled only by the Great Depression. Our government is disrupted by a death-denying executive who achieves perverse satisfaction from deceit, provocation and outrage. Several commentators have observed that this nadir is a predictable outcome of a decades long decay of political institutions, militarism, and desertion of social democratic policies.
To mention just one contributing failing: the over-reaction to the attacks of 2011, which caused the concentration in one sprawling agency of federal police power without sufficient restraints against abuse. The consequences of that are now apparent in the brutality meted out to citizens exercising their First Amendment rights by anonymous paramilitaries. Citizens have been stripped of privacy rights in the name of fighting terror by the Patriot Act. They have no protection from arbitrary arrest and detention one hundred miles from either coast and both borders, a de facto suspension of habeas corpus that abrogates a civil right going back to Magna Carta (Article XXXIX).
To see this unchecked power wielded by a Chief Apprentice who has no loyalty to democratic rule of law, and whose motivation is primarily personal gain, is terrifying. The attacks that precipitated this lurch towards authoritarianism occurred ten years ago, without corrective action being taken by a craven Congress. Only 'Mericans can save themselves and the remnants of republican government from the creeping fascism overtaking the nation.
 | ||||
| credit: R. Margulies |
 | |||
| "It must be my personality...." |
US COVID DEATHS (est.): 221,500