The Cherry on Top

“Right now, the triumph of market logic, with its ethos of domination and fierce competition, is paralyzing almost all serious efforts to respond to climate change.” Naomi Klein

You know how it feels when something you believed in -- a person, a company, a social institution -- turns out to be an elaborate sham. Like when you learn that dear Father O’Brien, your first grade teacher at Saint Augustine, buggered thousands of boys; like when you finally grasp the brutal reality of American capitalism; like when you realize that the “democracy”  American leaders are always crowing about is a steaming pile of goat shit.

Millions of Americans are horrified by Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s ultra-right wing, reactionary Supreme Court nominee, but he will be confirmed no matter how horrified we become. We don’t matter. This game is being played on another level -- the process is rigged, the dice loaded, the cards marked. Carefully scripted theater. You don’t believe this farce, do you? Kavanaugh, a highly suspect jurist, who was probably the biggest dick in his college fraternity, will join four other men who will determine the direction of our legal system for the next 30 years. Kavanaugh is a corporate toady, against human beings in decision after decision, against the environment, against holding police officers accountable when they lose their minds and pump 20 rounds from a 9MM into the back of a suspect. This pasty fucker is against workers, gays, women, transgender folk, African-Americans, protesters of any color or creed, union members, and any style of sex beyond the missionary position.

How did we get to this sad fork in the road? Well, that’s the question isn’t it, how in hell we got ourselves in this bleak (unless you’re rich) capitalist wasteland. It was 1971 when the Powell Memo was issued, that blueprint for a corporate counterattack against the America the flower children were attempting to midwife into being. Sex, drugs, rock and roll, socialism, and real respect for the planet. Man, the white elite, the wealthy, the corporate honchos, the Christian zealots, freaked out, shook from head to toe, shit their pants, and got themselves organized, poured major money into think-tanks and university endowments, into the campaign coffers of capitalist zealots, and in the space of 40 years, transformed America into an oligarchy. Bought state houses. Bought congresspeople. Bought judges. Capitalism will, they pledged, be the basis for the law of the land, for every decision we make, for the value of human life. The pillars undergirding this assault are: privatization, deregulation, and reduced taxes for corporations and the wealthy.

Mission accomplished. Kavanaugh is the cherry on top, the last piece of a solid 5-4 radical right majority.

They’ll kill the right to a safe abortion. They’ll make Christian prayer mandatory in public schools. They’ll allow corporations to pollute our air, water, and land in the name of profit. They’ll allow guns in schools. They’ll force workers to toil in unsafe conditions. They’ll make voting harder for people of color.