As I write, bunkered here in my so-called "first world nation," near the heart of one of the world's greatest cities, I cannot be sure my words will ever reach the outside world. You see, we here in southern New York state are experiencing a tiny, minor, spate of bad weather. A mild ice storm that is predicted to cover us with , HORRORS!, almost 0.1 inches (0.254 cm) of mushy ice. And our magnificent, exceptional nation, our shining beacon of technological marvels, under these harrowing circumstances, can't manage to keep the power on.
Seriously?
What the hell has happened to us?
I remember the great blackout of 1965, and again in 2003. I was here for hurricane Sandy. But I was also here for Floyd in 1999 and Irene in 2111 (no significant loss of power, either time). It's only recently that we can't seem to keep the power flowing under even the most minor stresses to the system.
What the hell has happened to us?
Oh, right 35 years of GOP "tax reform" and "budget sequesters," and government shutdowns and slow strangulations. And let's not leave the feckless democrats blameless.
Our nation is not falling apart. It has FALLEN APART. We are just trapped in the crumbling wreckage.
Like those once-wealthy towns across the US that you can drive through on any given day, where every other huge house is overgrown, with a bad roof, peeling paint, and, an aging Volvo or two in the driveway; towns where the money has run out, but the people still live there trying to make ends meet in a collapsed economy; America is crumbling before our eyes.
In our leaders' rush to shove as much public money as possible into the pockets of the one percent, we have have left our nation vulnerable, unable to compete or even keep the lights on. How pathetic is that?
And now the GOP wants to give away billions of dollars of public and private value to the oil industry in the form of the Keystone XL pipeline, which will inevitably cost American taxpayers more billions in the inevitable cleanups, loss of property value, more tax breaks for big oil, and on and on.
Instead of rebuilding America after the massive damage done by moronic policies of the GOP and their feckless democrat lickspittles, we are going to flush more money down the drain instead of fixing America.
Conservative policy is a clear and present danger to America. When are we going to wake up and kick the conservatives to the curb?