The Murder of a Beautiful Theory by a Gang of Brutal Facts

Donald Trump will win the 2020 election for President of the United States. While the Blue Wave carried the House of Representatives to Democratic control, it is an emasculated legislative body. And the Blue Wave is an imperfect harbinger of prospects for the 2020 election.

Republican voters fit onto their heads a MAGA hat in spirit of their cherished tribe and union sacrée as a gesture of optimism, and hope for reaffirmed destiny. But they have been fooled into supporting those who most deeply betray them. I don’t presume to blame it all on the Republicans who have been the chief sponsors of policy that screws the average American. Money handily buys Democrats with equal finality.

Our country, our Democracy, our nation of constitutional law has been taken over by the ultra-rich, the “military-industrial complex” that Eisenhower warned about. The once great American middle class has been betrayed; those we have elected to represent us have not been serving us… they’ve been serving their rich industrial masters. They feast on the carcass of the American middle class.

I could make a long list of how the American middle-class has been betrayed by our Republican leadership. But let me share one little bit with you.

Ronald Reagan changed the accounting rules for retirement funds. He removed the exemption for corporate retirement plan to be safe from liquidation in bankruptcy. So, when the bankruptcy trustee obtains control over all of the business’s assets and: liquidates these assets to pay creditors the Retirement Plan is no longer guaranteed to the employees who worked their whole lives for that promise.

Taking it another step… a Pharmaceutical company in Connecticut decides to move their manufacturing to China. Corporate lawyers split the corporate entity into different buckets. The profitable bucket goes over to China (who, by the way, demands ownership of the technology); the unprofitable bit, owning the corporate Retirement Plan, goes bankrupt… and screws all of their former employees out of their retirements.

The Argument for Trump Winning

Argument 1 ~ It’s the economy, stupid! A chief indicator of who will win Presidential election has reliably been the effectiveness of the economy. It is true that we have nearly record employment. The sad truth is that of every 10 jobs created in the past two years, six of them do not yield a living wage (less than $30K/year). And two of them yield a salary of $90K+, which is the province of the highly educated and stilled worker. That leaves a narrow sliver for “middle class”.

Argument 2 ~ Dark money in politics will provide overwhelming advantage to the politicians that serve their ultra-rich masters. The Supreme Court has ruled that “Corporations are People Too”; which ensures that the ultra-rich can buy the representation that attends to their needs.

Argument 3 ~ Propaganda will provide broad misinformation and misdirection. When Ronald Reagan overturned the “Fairness Doctrine” he threw open the doors to partisan-political propaganda. He made possible Fox News. The most apt description of Fox was made by Colonel Peters, a longtime analyst for Fox News who left the network, saying that he could not “in good conscience” remain with an organization that, he argued, “is now wittingly harming our system of government for profit. In my view, Fox has degenerated from providing a legitimate and much-needed outlet for conservative voices to a mere propaganda machine for a destructive and ethically ruinous administration”

Argument 4 ~ Our constitution is broken. The Executive and the Judicial branches and half of the Legislative of our government have been taken over by the Republican party, servants of the ultra-rich. They will continue to subvert any legal or legislative measure to protect American people and hold accountable criminal acts against American Democracy.

Argument 5 ~ Subversion of voting rights is a powerful and ongoing problem. Gerrymandered voting districts, purging of voter registrations, removing voting resources, disenfranchisement laws, physical intimidation at voting sites are all tools that are being used by the Republicans. Legal challenges are being subverted by a Judiciary that has been populated by so-called conservative judges. (“so-called” because, they aren’t “conservative” at all. They too serve their corporate masters.)

Argument 6 ~ Meddling by foreign powers will continue. The Russian attack on our Democracy that was so effective in 2016 will continue with great vigor and enthusiasm. Other players like China and South Korea will get in the act. Our President has refused to bring Putin to task for his masterminding the social media attack on our country. Indeed, Trump has done everything he can to subvert our capability to prevent the same from happening in 2020.

Argument 7 ~ The Electoral College will over-ride the popular vote. In 2016 Trump won the Presidential election but lost the popular vote by significant margin. The Electoral College was established by our crafty forefathers who anticipated that the landed gentry might lose control of the country to the rabble.

A Fat Chance for the Optimist

Donald Trump has so been so completely incompetent and destructive to American institutions that a new generation of leadership has emerged; almost exclusively in the Democratic party. These people, a curious mix of young and old, promote a radical departure from the “business as usual” politics that has dominated government in this country at least since the days of pappy Bush.

Almost everything this radical new generation promotes will be decried as “Socialism” by the Republican party, in service to the ultra-rich who now own our country. For example: affordable health care, investment in education, equal pay for equal work, improving infrastructure, getting dark money out of politics, making everyone pay their share of taxes, and protecting our environment. These policies will be stalwartly opposed by the Republicans.

Our rich masters intend to pay for nothing. They are the masters of the universe.

The only hope for Democracy is for us to take back control of our country by the exercise of our right to vote.

Quoth

PUBLIC OPINION (1921)
BY WALTER LIPPMANN

THE WORLD OUTSIDE AND THE PICTURES IN OUR HEADS

“.. we can best understand the furies of war and politics by remembering that almost the whole of each party believes absolutely in its picture of the opposition, that it takes as fact, not what is, but what it supposes to be the fact.

 

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