In Decline and Failing


In Decline and Failing

The United States is not only in decline, but failing.

The Republican Party did nothing to stop an unqualified, four-time bankrupt “businessman” from getting the nomination, when they could have.

The Electoral College did nothing to stop this racist birther with the single thing they were created to do.

The GOP Congress has done nothing to stop such an out of control, corrupt and lawless executive, even with daily reminders of how unfit he is.

Governmental institutions as a whole are doing nothing, but have lined up, eager for servitude, and are willing to sacrifice their own to appease this lawless administration (see “FBI: Strzok, Peter”).

This is all a failure of—dare I say it—biblical proportions that for a country that likes signs and portents more than actual science, is far more worse than any of you care to admit. That burning bush isn’t reserved for just one special person: there are hundreds of them that you keep deliberately ignoring. Difficult to imagine that the “home of the brave” is terrified of a minority 27 to 30 percent of unrepentant idiots fearfully referred to as “the base.” Hard to comprehend that you are so cowed by a cadre of this administration’s liars that your solution is to...invite them on your cable news shows repeatedly. Now I know why the phrase “don’t normalize this!” is no longer cried out, as well as the meaning of “learned helplessness.”

America is in decline and failing. A honest acknowledgement of the scope of the poison emanating from the Oval Office is a little like climate change: you say that you know it’s real and that it’s dangerous, but the reality is, you’ve taken no serious steps to combat it now. You’re holding your arm, fully extended, saying to yourself, “there’s still time to fix this. There’s still an opportunity to reverse this and combat it.” No, there isn’t. Like climate change, it’s already too late. The damage has been done and there is no reversal of it. America has a malevolent (if incompetent) soi-disant president who has inadvertently exposed the central weakness of the entire structure. It’s all hollow, and there is nothing around to fix it. It’s propped up, barely, by luck and the fantasies of an entire population that wants to believe otherwise. But it will inevitably succumb to gravity and collapse.

America is in decline and failing because there’s a lack of moral clarity that runs directly counter to Americans always claiming to be a moral people. But Americans are in denial. You do not need a special counsel to clue you in about abuse of power and corruption. It’s right there. You do not need a special counsel to write a lengthy report that the stack of dead bodies he found on Fifth Avenue was caused by a guy with gun who remained on the scene and made no effort to hide or conceal his crime. This might very well be the first time in world history that a people has depended on the report of a government functionary to determine for them what should have been obvious. If you don’t have the moral clarity to act on what is patently wrong now, why should anyone believe you will when a final report is issued?

The answer is, of course, you won’t. Every day, Americans have a plate of steaming excrement set on the table and the response is an uncomfortable shifting but also a resignation that it’s happened again and best to try to ignore it. Or worse, a silent vow that really, the *next* time this happens, you’re going to do something. Honestly, truly, you will, because it’s an outrage. Then it happens again. You are morally repulsed and you know this needs to be stopped, but you keep sitting there. Likewise, the fact that even a Senate with a Democratic majority might not be able to muster 67 votes for a conviction on impeachment is a testament to America’s moral failing and lack of will do anything serious about that plate of crap.

The Washington Post has a made a stock phrase of “democracy dies in darkness,” but that message is wrong. Democracy is dead at the noon hour, for all to see. That twitching you observe isn’t a sign of imminent revival. It’s just the last involuntary spasms before final expiration.