“Be it ancient Rome or modern-day America, you’re either citizen or slave. Lion or Jew. Guilty or innocent. Comfortable or uncomfortable.” Paul Beatty
Another day, another mass shooting by a disturbed white man with a history of domestic violence. As always, the NRA and its political enablers wring their bloody hands, offer thoughts and prayers, or like Vice President Pence, vow to stand against evil, whatever that empty statement means, and then proceed to go about their deadly business. The problem isn’t the prevalence of firearms, they always say, in fact, what we need are more people armed with guns...
How much more proof is needed that this is a sick society? Plagued by an excess of rage and animosity, fueled by people like Donald Trump. Mass shootings won’t stop any more than the oligarchs and plutocrats will stop parking their loot offshore to avoid paying US tax. There are myriad forms of violence at work in America, Inc, against the poor, people of color, the working poor, and the environment. We live by Hellfire missile abroad and the AR-15 at home. The rage bubbles like a pot of stew on the stove. But do we stop and consider the systemic causes of our maladies, the impact of savage capitalism on flesh and blood human beings? Rarely. Getting to root causes takes time, effort, reflection, and critical thinking. The party that wields political power over the country disdains intellectual activity, ridicules anyone who searches for truth or questions prevailing orthodoxy, who points out the hypocrisy of our leaders. It’s much more comfortable to believe in myth and fairy tales, the Garden of Eden and the Yellow Brick Road, magic beans, the Lone Ranger, Superman, and the Big Myth -- American Exceptionalism.
King Donald I is in Asia hawking American-made weapons. Big, beautiful, shiny, weapons. South Korean protesters tell Trump to shut up and go home.
Meanwhile, Trump stooges like Steve Mnuchin and Paul Ryan are spewing lies about the GOP tax plan, the latest blatant giveaway to our wealthiest and least deserving citizens, by alleging that slashing taxes for the wealthy will create jobs for everyone else. This is the tried and true and discredited, let-me-trickle-my-piss-down-your-leg idea that only leaves wage workers standing in a noxious puddle.
A year since the anti-democratic Electoral College went for Trump. The Orange Menace, who lost the popular vote, let’s not forget, and has no mandate, has flailed and failed on all fronts, his approval rating is in the toilet, historically low for a president in the first year of his first term. Of course, in Trump’s alternative universe, he is winning like no president before, his ratings are fantastic, the stock market is soaring, and America is on course to be great again. The hacks, sycophants, incompetents, and criminals who surround Trump scheme day and night to rob the treasury and make millions of Americans absolutely miserable.
As Jeremy Scahill says, history and context matter. The Orange Menace didn’t rise from a vacuum -- he was vomited up by a system of predatory capitalism, racism, and militarism.
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