The Amnesia of Power

“It is time that we stopped our blithe lip service to the guarantees of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. These fine sentiments are embodied in the Declaration of Independence, but that document was always a declaration of intent rather than of reality. There were slaves when it was written; there were still slaves when it was adopted.” Martin Luther King, Jr.

“I can’t recall. I don’t remember. I don’t have a specific recollection. In fact, I don’t even have a vague recollection.”

The white Attorney General of the United States of America can get away with this two-bit BS’ing of Congress. Imagine an African-American defendant trying these lame responses on an all-white jury. How quickly do you think the jurors would return a guilty verdict?

When the rule of law becomes a farce and a carnival show, and one class of people set themselves above the law, all is pretty much lost. The poor routinely experience the full weight of the law on their necks, even for relatively minor crimes, while the wealthy and well-connected plead amnesia and pillage with impunity.

Like a Greek tragedy, these are dark and perilous times. Trump returns from his jaunt to Asia and declares that American prestige and honor has been restored, and that the fecklessness of his predecessors has been vanquished. With the exception of the murderous president of the Philippines, most Asian leaders would disagree. What did Trump achieve? Next to nothing.

Why isn’t the disaster in Yemen in the mainstream American news? Saudi Arabia, with considerable assistance from the United States, is perpetrating genocide on millions of human beings, with death from the sky and cholera and famine on the ground, but we can’t be bothered to pay a minute of attention.

The detestable Roy Moore, candidate for United States Senate from Alabama, hides behind his Bible while he defends himself against accusations of sexual predation lodged by multiple women; but, hey, no problem, because according to Moore, the girls he creeped gave their consent. Grown men marry and fuck teenage girls in other nations, so why not in America? What’s wrong with a 32-year-old pervert stalking 14-year-old-girls in a shopping mall? Sounds like the perfect training ground for a United States Senator in this Age of Trump, himself a serial groper.

Hundreds of people, including journalists, who protested the inauguration of Donald Trump, are on trial and face decades in prison for engaging in one of the most fundamental acts a citizen in a democracy can engage in: dissent. Once dissent is criminalized we are finished as a democratic republic. You can shut out the lights and close the door and declare the American experiment over.

Russia, Russia, Russia. Talk about a distraction. I must be stupid because I still fail to see how Russia tipped the electoral college for Trump.

Trump embodies everything that is vile and loathsome in the American character, the ugly American writ large, loud, bombastic, ignorant, and dangerous.

Sitting here in California, waiting for the other combat boot to drop, feeling sick to my stomach every time I see Donald Trump on the TV screen, or hear his voice. While I know that it probably never will, I’m old enough to want my country to live up to its exalted ideals, not bow to its basest and most venal instincts. The veneer of participatory democracy has been ripped away like a tin roof in a hurricane, and now all can see the tyranny of the wealthy minority over the struggling majority. This is the new feudalism. I am a serf, no doubt about it, landless and without title. Look at the massive tax giveaway the GOP-controlled House of Representatives just approved for the wealthiest individuals and corporations. Never mind the cruelty of this bill, what of the utter hypocrisy? Any time Barack Obama proposed to spend money, every GOP representative squealed about the budget deficit and accused Obama of saddling future generations with ruinous debt. Remember the Tea Party?

We have the worst government money can buy, of the rich, by the rich, for the rich.  Those of us who live out here in the real economy of rents and medical bills and student loan payments and every other expense it takes to survive, are going to bear the burden if the United States Senate follows the House. Best prepare to bend over. And make no mistake -- this will hurt.