“One small step for America, one giant leap for Idiocracy.”
Yes, that’s a reference to the Mike Judge movie. #Republicans and the #MasterPlanners (see @levernews.com) have taken us most of the way to Idiocracy. When Private Equity and the Churches complete their takeover of the health care industrial complex, then we will make it the rest of the way there. They will be marketing Brawndo (TM) for all of our health and crop needs. Life imitates art. (Which way does that go?)
We were taught to think that there are “guardrails” for democracy. Checks and balances. Co-equal branches of government. So, how can the Man of Orange ignore all of that, turn loose the eGOD (DOGE spelled backwards; Elon the God) and his Big Balls, and get away with it?
We have a man making a mockery of the federal government. Given a choice between buffoons from the entertainment industrial complex and truly malevolent elites bent on utter despair, Orange says, hell, why not both?
Then there’s The People. Voters who’s choices are so random that we get elections that are “too close to call” and other evidence of a lack of perception. (If I was forced to believe that people really are paying attention, making comprehensive assessments and judicious choices, then I would have to commit myself to an institution.)
It’s enough to almost want an Aristotelian elite to be entrusted with the right to vote! Sure, let’s turn it over to the educated elites, such as scientists. Oh, wait, they’re being replaced by AI. Sure, an AI trained on all the bullshit that humanity has thought of surely can do better than all the bullshit people who thought of it. We can hope! That must be enough of a reason to drop a trill(ion) on it. What else are we going to spend the money on? Sports betting? Hey, I’ve heard about great investment potential in real estate on Mars!
Over the last eight years or so we’ve been inured to constitutional crisis like it’s the Union of Concerned Scientists’ doomsday clock. Oh, it turns out that a constitutional crisis is more like the fly that lands on your hamburger? Sure, people are that mad about it!
Apparently, the Constitution isn’t running on all cylinders. The co-equal branch concept, like other fundamentals in the Constitution, is about as solid as a roll of paper towels thrown to you in a hurricane.
You gotta admit that this is all about human nature and how they do in a society. I’m not optimistic. I’ve had a pretty good life, but a hell of a lot of humans have lived in Hell on Earth instead of the wondrous, beautiful, amazing life that we could have on this incredible planet.
We’re not highly evolved. Give us another million years or so. If it doesn’t end up like Planet of the Apes, then I think we might make it out of this.
Bottom line: sorry, the American Experiment is over. Republicans want a government that they can drown in a bathtub, right? Let ’em have it! It’s time to break up the USA into the AU. That’s the American Union. Invite Canada and Mexico to be part of it!