Have you had enough? Enough lying? Enough stealing? Enough hypocrisy? Enough polluting? Enough pandering to extremists instead of governing? Enough media that’s devolved into a permanent right wing infomercial? Enough Department of Justice that won’t prosecute obvious crimes? Enough Supreme Court that’s turned our elections into auctions?
I have had ENOUGH. Here’s what I am going to do about it.
-ENOUGH-
I’m done playing nice. No more happy, hopeful planning for renewable energy, or green houses, or rail electrification. No more travel diaries. And definitely no more cute cat pictures.
America is breaking down. I accept that, it’s what old empires do. We have a rotten banking sector, a rotten media sector, a rotten judiciary, and a rotten little fake populist movement gumming up our Congress.
The American middle class has faced what amounts to thirty years of sanctions – we were beaten down and hollowed out, just like we do to a smaller sovereign state that displeases us, like Iraq after Desert Storm.
The last eight years of those sanctions were coupled with two draft dodgers in charge of our government, dragging us into unfunded wars of choice and failing to plan for our future. We needed real, genuine development and we got the mother of all real estate bubbles.
None of this will get any better until we get the aggressive housecleaning we voted for in 2008. We rose as an empire by being hard working most of the time, ruthless on occasion, and we obeyed the rule of the law.
If we are indeed creatures of the law we should obey the law. That means everyone, not just the little people who can’t afford lawyers, not just the small businesses that can’t keep their profits and socialize their losses by manipulating corrupt politicians. I mean everyone.
We have to start cleaning somewhere. Which would you pick?
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, a liar and a tax cheat, a man who was purportedly funded by the same group that later pushed Citizens United on us? America has no explicit procedure for removing a corrupt Supreme Court Justice. Did our forefathers forget to include this process, or did they quietly talk among themselves and, recalling the lessons of the fall of Rome, determine that if we couldn’t put sound legal minds into those seats we probably needed another revolution?
Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, and every other social parasite that infests the southern tip of Manhattan? You go to prison if you print a $20 on your inkjet at home. They printed trillions in funny money in the form of derivatives, a disaster an order of magnitude larger than the S&L crisis of the 1980s. Over a thousand people went to prison for that. Who is going prison over this? crickets
The people say “Get us out of Afghanistan!” The contractors, they say “Let’s stir up some shit by shooting civilians, that’ll keep our profits rolling.” We’ve got multiple instances where Xe(formerly Blackwater) contractors have engaged in violence that would have netted a U.S. soldier a life sentence in Leavenworth prison. Our policy there isn’t made by Congress and it’s not even made by our President. Extremists in positions of authority, both privately and within our military, have chosen a corporate jihad against Muslims and for oil, and we have no say in this matter.
The media. We finally see the beginning of the end for Glenn Beck, sixteen years after Fox News undertook the poisoning of our fourth estate. Indecent little trolls like Andrew Breitbart dismantle our institutions with trickery and lies. Convicted drug addict and probable sex tourist Rush Limbaugh leads a thousand bellowing buffoons on the AM dial, hating blacks, Mexicans, gays, Muslims, women, and any straight white male that dares disagree with his world views. That’s about 80% of America, and yet Congress has not crushed this pack of hate-talkers.
So, is this clear enough? We should lock up corrupt tax cheats. Even if they’re Supreme Court Justices. We should lock up people who steal. Even if they’re wealthy. We should lock up people who are functionally making war against the American people at home and abroad. Even if they’re wealthy. And regulation of our corporate media is long overdue.
So, Mr. President, Attorney General Eric Holder, and Senator Patrick Leahy, head of the Senate Judiciary Committee – what are you waiting for? The facts are clear and the results of inaction are clear and inescapable. The loss of our empire already occurred on Bush’s watch. Pretending otherwise will result in the loss of our nation as well.
Get used to this. It's going to be a daily occurrence until we stop acting like a banana republic and start showing some courage and dignity again as a nation.