So what's the exit ramp? You have a feckless/complicit Congress, an untethered King and the 'man' in the street is so mired in their own struggles that they don't have time for anything else.
They stole the 2A right out from under your feet and I didn't hear a peep out of the NRA. So it all looks like performative buffoonery.
So all that aside, what's the play?
What's America in a decade?
How bad does it have to get until someone takes the wheel?
The aspect of this that is so maddening is the Janus-like nature of all of the things those now perpetrating this violence against constitutional order. The constitutional protections, the rights so sacred to our conception of nationhood, are important only when the Other Guys are in power. When MAGA took power, those things--Due Process, free speech, freedom of assembly, no quartering of a standing army, protections from unpredicated search and seizure, etc etc.--became unimportant. Annoyances.
Congress funds ICE and CBP with $170 BILLION dollars and none of it goes toward building out immigration courts. So when the new, feral ICE and CBP agents go on wilding sprees rounding up people, they argue that it would just take too long to give them trials and due process because there aren't enough judges to handle it.
When Alex Pretti is executed on the street, the Director of the FBI is out there saying that you can't just show up where federal agents are armed! Of course you're going to get shot! Silly liberal, guns are for MAGA.
I'm just ranting now. Anyway. It won't get better (if it gets better) until some bad shit happens. I don't have faith in my fellow citizens to wake up to the threat until they are sufficiently under the boot. We've had it too good for too long and don't remember how we got to this place of privilege.
I had a whole big comment written out but then deleted it. Because I know that you know that ordinary people don’t care about any of this. They don’t care about what the Constitution says, as long as it is helpful to them in the moment. And if it’s not, they either look for a workaround or blatantly ignore it. The only reason most people know the Founding Fathers you’ve named is because they caught the show when it came through town (or watched the special on TV).
So instead I’m going to focus on a point you made that could easily get overlooked here. And that is that all this didn’t just happen overnight. You trace it back fifty years. I could argue it goes back hundreds of years, if not tens and hundreds of thousands of years.
For most of recorded history humanity has focused on conquest, expansion, aggression, and power. We have raped and pillaged the planet and its resources for our personal benefit. We have raped and pillaged each other for the same thing. We have created religions and beliefs systems around some people being better and more deserving than others. We have lost touch with our connection to nature and our intuition. We have pushed forward with technology and “advancement” without considering the impact on everything else around us. The path was set long ago, but it has been accelerated within the last few generations.
The result is the chaos we see before us. After all, the external world is a reflection of our collective internal world. This is what happens when the rubber band gets stretched to its limit. It snaps back.
*I had a wonderful gif to go with this comment. But alas, Substack doesn't allow images as comments to posts, only to Notes.
Correlation and causation; as the tide rises of constitutional violence, the raping and pillaging of women ups and ups around the world in all nations complicit with current actions by their inaction; by their fear of a trifecta of bullies who out-arm all others.
The weakest of men use brute force - always.
What flicks into my mind is the embroidered motto of the founders of my all-female Cambridge University college, Newnham, at times like this: ‘better words of wisdom than weapons of war’.
If the world was run by mothers, who fear for sons sent to war and upon whom violence is meted disproportionately, we just wouldn’t be here and yet, women sit in silence in Congress, too
I like to remind people that when we send in the infantry, we are telling on ourselves: sending in babies to the slaughter.
One of the things that bothers me most about this current cultural moment is that I am going to have to raise a son in an age when Trump and his pansy-ass bully mob are held up as role models. It will take a lot of work to counterprogram.
Don't get me started with Congress; they need to quit social media and stop making every move for fundraising. Can we move away from small donations and back to smoke-filled rooms? But that's because of stupid people. That's my real fear, that we aren't smart enough as a people to figure this out. A democratic republic only works if we have three branches doing their part, as the founding papas laid it out. We have to have a free press, and the internet screwed that all the way up. Don't click on s#it people!
We have managed to land in a confluence of perfect storms. Money in politics post Citizens United/FEC fecklessness. Congress’s abdication of power to become shitty influencers. The hollowing out of journalism and the epistemic rot of our society. A sociopathic POTUS who smells weakness and seizes power gleefully. A populace that has lost sign of what being a citizen means.
So what's the exit ramp? You have a feckless/complicit Congress, an untethered King and the 'man' in the street is so mired in their own struggles that they don't have time for anything else.
They stole the 2A right out from under your feet and I didn't hear a peep out of the NRA. So it all looks like performative buffoonery.
So all that aside, what's the play?
What's America in a decade?
How bad does it have to get until someone takes the wheel?
Is there anyone left who can or will?
I don't know, Paul.
The aspect of this that is so maddening is the Janus-like nature of all of the things those now perpetrating this violence against constitutional order. The constitutional protections, the rights so sacred to our conception of nationhood, are important only when the Other Guys are in power. When MAGA took power, those things--Due Process, free speech, freedom of assembly, no quartering of a standing army, protections from unpredicated search and seizure, etc etc.--became unimportant. Annoyances.
Congress funds ICE and CBP with $170 BILLION dollars and none of it goes toward building out immigration courts. So when the new, feral ICE and CBP agents go on wilding sprees rounding up people, they argue that it would just take too long to give them trials and due process because there aren't enough judges to handle it.
When Alex Pretti is executed on the street, the Director of the FBI is out there saying that you can't just show up where federal agents are armed! Of course you're going to get shot! Silly liberal, guns are for MAGA.
I'm just ranting now. Anyway. It won't get better (if it gets better) until some bad shit happens. I don't have faith in my fellow citizens to wake up to the threat until they are sufficiently under the boot. We've had it too good for too long and don't remember how we got to this place of privilege.
I had a whole big comment written out but then deleted it. Because I know that you know that ordinary people don’t care about any of this. They don’t care about what the Constitution says, as long as it is helpful to them in the moment. And if it’s not, they either look for a workaround or blatantly ignore it. The only reason most people know the Founding Fathers you’ve named is because they caught the show when it came through town (or watched the special on TV).
So instead I’m going to focus on a point you made that could easily get overlooked here. And that is that all this didn’t just happen overnight. You trace it back fifty years. I could argue it goes back hundreds of years, if not tens and hundreds of thousands of years.
For most of recorded history humanity has focused on conquest, expansion, aggression, and power. We have raped and pillaged the planet and its resources for our personal benefit. We have raped and pillaged each other for the same thing. We have created religions and beliefs systems around some people being better and more deserving than others. We have lost touch with our connection to nature and our intuition. We have pushed forward with technology and “advancement” without considering the impact on everything else around us. The path was set long ago, but it has been accelerated within the last few generations.
The result is the chaos we see before us. After all, the external world is a reflection of our collective internal world. This is what happens when the rubber band gets stretched to its limit. It snaps back.
*I had a wonderful gif to go with this comment. But alas, Substack doesn't allow images as comments to posts, only to Notes.
Joke's on us for attempting to create a system of government that would tame these primal spirits, huh? The center will not hold.
Anything created by humans is still susceptible to the primal spirits of humans.
Correlation and causation; as the tide rises of constitutional violence, the raping and pillaging of women ups and ups around the world in all nations complicit with current actions by their inaction; by their fear of a trifecta of bullies who out-arm all others.
The weakest of men use brute force - always.
What flicks into my mind is the embroidered motto of the founders of my all-female Cambridge University college, Newnham, at times like this: ‘better words of wisdom than weapons of war’.
If the world was run by mothers, who fear for sons sent to war and upon whom violence is meted disproportionately, we just wouldn’t be here and yet, women sit in silence in Congress, too
I like to remind people that when we send in the infantry, we are telling on ourselves: sending in babies to the slaughter.
One of the things that bothers me most about this current cultural moment is that I am going to have to raise a son in an age when Trump and his pansy-ass bully mob are held up as role models. It will take a lot of work to counterprogram.
And thanks for starting the darkness down, dude
Don't get me started with Congress; they need to quit social media and stop making every move for fundraising. Can we move away from small donations and back to smoke-filled rooms? But that's because of stupid people. That's my real fear, that we aren't smart enough as a people to figure this out. A democratic republic only works if we have three branches doing their part, as the founding papas laid it out. We have to have a free press, and the internet screwed that all the way up. Don't click on s#it people!
We have managed to land in a confluence of perfect storms. Money in politics post Citizens United/FEC fecklessness. Congress’s abdication of power to become shitty influencers. The hollowing out of journalism and the epistemic rot of our society. A sociopathic POTUS who smells weakness and seizes power gleefully. A populace that has lost sign of what being a citizen means.
Bad news bears.