Restocking the Swamp

“When we look back on this sad, pathetic period in American history we will ask the questions all who have slid into despotism ask. Why were we asleep? How did we allow this to happen? Why didn’t we see it coming? Why didn’t we resist?” Chris Hedges

You knew, didn’t you, that Trump would surround himself with odious characters, hacks, and ciphers hostile to the very idea of government, privatizers who see government as a cash register? Trump campaigned on a vague promise to drain the DC swamp -- and now he is busy restocking it.

For what it’s worth, Trump lost the popular vote by a wide margin, so the carnival barker can’t claim a popular mandate -- not that he isn’t doing just that -- the fool went on an ill-fated “victory” tour, after all, the kind of empty spectacle he excels at, but if it wasn’t for our undemocratic, 18th century system, Trump wouldn’t be president-elect.

I mused on this blog a few months ago that maybe America deserved Donald Trump, that Trump was the logical result of our corrupt democracy and our equally corrupt institutions. Accountability is dead. Our leaders can invade other nations on false pretenses, torture prisoners, murder people, even American citizens, without charging them with crimes or affording them a shred of due process. We wage war on the poor and vulnerable. We try to do the impossible and make oligarchy and democracy work. We falsely believe that the hurt we put on others will never come back to haunt us. But is has, or will.

The oligarchs live in a parallel universe and play by a different set of rules. Laws that apply to you and me don’t apply to them. The man that rips-off taxpayers to the tune of millions walks away while the poor person who steals a loaf of bread experiences the full weight and power of the State.

Hard not to despair, harder still to accept that the highest office in our land, an office held by George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt, will very soon be occupied by Donald Trump. How we have declined.

I heard Chris Hedges say the other day in an interview that the last US president to fear the people was Richard Nixon; perhaps this is why some of Nixon’s policy positions sit to the left of Barack Obama. How far we have moved to the right.

Remember this about the American system: no matter who occupies the White House, Goldman Sachs always wins. Always.

Individually, we are toast; it is only when we act together that we have any agency.

Don’t go near the swamp after sundown.