Our population has been gaslit over the last three-quarters of a century by, well, not just Republicans but by Democrats as well. And by for-profit media. By well-meaning and deceptive clergy alike. By multinational banks and corporations who, frankly, only care about exploiting “emerging markets” for profit.
Perhaps America’s time has come. The karmic chickens come home to roost.
The United States spent most of the last 70 years destabilizing nations with elected governments that didn’t toe the line we dictated. Those governments were replaced with corrupt right-wing strongmen who routinely murdered, raped and “disappeared” any voices of dissent. The President and Congress didn’t care, as long as the money flowed to the right pockets.
And we all let it happen. You, me, our parents and grandparents, every American. Every. American.
We aided and abetted these actions by buying into the corrosive myths of “American exceptionalism” and “spreading democracy.” And by calling ourselves “the free world,” and actually believing it! Meantime, our government–composed of people we were led to “choose” by the notion of “the lesser of two evils”–shined us on.
Our government, and the people and corporations who paid for it, used the Soviet Union as the ultimate boogeyman to scare the shit out of us, and let them do whatever was needed to “stop the Commie menace.” Of course, that “menace” was basically anything that got in the way of American business.
To fight this “foe,” they paid and armed religious extremists to terrorize and hound the Soviets out of Afghanistan. In the process, creating the Taliban. And Al Qaeda. And, thanks to our meth-like addiction to fossil fuels, ISIL.
They used Christ and the church to sell the idea that Unfettered Free-Market Capitalism was not just a good thing, but that it was right before god. And that Jesus stands with us against “godless Communism.” And they counted on our ignorance and laziness to forget what the New Testament actually said and to just listen to the prevarications from the pulpit.
They dropped billions of dollars of our money on useless and dangerous weapons to scare the Soviets into an arms race which caused them to implode. Which also meant that the Soviet arsenal was now available to the highest bidder.
And so, here we are, surrounded by enemies we created and empowered. Our electoral process tampered with in much the same way as the CIA used to do it under Dulles.
This past November, half the electorate (just enough to game the Electoral College at least), goaded by inchoate, incoherent rage at “lost privilege” and “politics as usual” and the myth of a “Liberal elite” stirred up by a right-wing echo chamber, elected a creature of the for-profit media to be President. A spray-tanned, weave-wearing, short-fingered, thin-skinned fool who epitomizes a quintessentially American vulgarity and narcissism. His dad was a slumlord, his grand-dad a pimp.
He will be sworn in on Friday as the 45th President of the United States.
He is a walking Constitutional Crisis. He, or his minions, may actually be traitors according to that same Constitution.
The grifters and sociopaths that make up the Republican Congress will let this Useful Idiot Twitter his tiny fingers to a nub. Meanwhile, in the background yet in front of our faces, they will continue to destroy the few good things, the few bits of real progress, made since the end of World War II.
We had it coming.