The Fork In The Road

“Throughout the Western world the financial system has become an exploiter of the people and a deadweight loss on economies.” Paul Craig Roberts

Looks like we owe the Feds money again, but may get a refund from Jerry Brown, which means our tax dance for 2015 might be a wash. Had we owed both Federal and State I might have had a nervous breakdown. Our daughter is flunking Physics -- no surprise -- she hates the subject and doesn’t apply herself, and sooner or later will understand the relationship between effort and results. Mom and dad have to go meet with her teacher. The work we do for the money we need to sustain our life is often a soul-sucking grind, and like many Americans in the low-low middle class, though we claw we never seem to get ahead; one calamity and we’re toast. Maybe our lot will improve when Donald Trump becomes president. He’s a winner, or so he tells us at every opportunity, and when he wins, we win.

Forget I said that, I’m joking, of course. Trump, Clinton, Cruz, Rubio, nothing is going to change, no matter which of these people is elected. The American economy is a scam, a house of cards, operated by an oligarchy for the benefit of the oligarchy. As John Jay said when this nation was founded, “The people who own the country run it.”

The mass of people who work for wages understand this, and, at some level, they realize that it is the “system” that causes their struggles, not some fault of their own; not laziness or lack of will or initiative, but a system designed to make them, or keep them, poor. Trump spews plenty of garbage, but when he talks about how trade deals like NAFTA (thanks, Bill Clinton) have decimated the American working class, he’s right, and I think this is why he sounds like a savior to some people.

What about Bernie Sanders? Yes, if Sanders somehow overcomes the Clinton death grip on the Democratic Party and all its machinery, he might shake a few crumbs from the system, but his ability to do so will entirely depend on the makeup of Congress, and this is fraught with uncertainty because so many Democrats are now Republicans, ideologically speaking; Sanders might have difficulty pushing his agenda with Democrats in control of the House and Senate. Of course if those bodies remain in Republican control, Sanders would be stymied at every turn.

Both parties are corrupt, as is the entire electoral system. Voters are offered two unpalatable choices -- isn’t democracy grand! It’s like going to the dentist and being told that your cracked molar can be pulled with needle nose pliers or vice grips, which do you prefer? Politicians, at least at the national level, no longer trouble themselves representing the interests of the voters who elect them. Instead, they represent the corporations and wealthy donors who own them. This guarantees that the critical issues facing the nation will not be addressed, except at the most superficial level. And when it comes to an issue like climate change, superficial measures are a recipe for disaster and death.

Getting back to Trump and his traveling circus for a minute. What is his economic policy? Just win, baby? Knock the Chinese over the head with a two-by-four? Invade Mexico? Any voter -- white, black, brown, or rainbow colored -- who believes that Trump will improve their lot economically is flat nuts.  “I will make great deals,” is not a policy. Running an empire, even one bordering on collapse, is not the same as starring in a make-believe TV show. Blithely declaring that one will “strengthen” America’s military, when 54% of the discretionary budget is already being spent on America’s sprawling military apparatus is not only stupid, it’s suicidal. But that’s Trump. Buffoon, blowhard, egomaniac.

And as of today, the GOP frontrunner.

I’m too tired to think about a Hillary Clinton presidency. I despise the woman; she is mendacious and mediocre and malignant. In my mind, Hillary’s almost as frightening as Trump. Most of her experience is covered with a thick coat of failure, and she has blood beneath her fingernails.

How did America come to this pathetic fork in the road?