“Understandably, enslaved Africans were a major target for taxation since they were one of the most significant repositories of wealth…” Dr. Gerald Horne, The Counter-Revolution of 1776
The drip, drip, drip of Covid time. No end in sight. Since the early days of March I believed that the suffering would get worse in the months ahead, there was an inevitability about it. Once it was clear that Trump couldn’t BS, lie, bully or threaten Covid-19, that the virus didn’t give a shit about his cowardice, narcissism, or reputation as a tough guy, when Trump threw the white towel and claimed victory, that’s when it was clear to me that there’s no basement for the Trump Gang. The elevator goes down, down, down, never stopping. Daughter Ivanka, as clueless as Marie Antoinette, is placed in charge of some BS jobs program -- this bitch of absolute privilege who has never searched for a job in her life -- and the best slogan she pitches is “Find Something New.” Clueless and tone deaf.
Meanwhile, behind the big podium, Trump’s mouthpiece, Kayleigh McEnany, calls the administration’s response to the pandemic “historic.” Historic response she squeaks over and over, as if Americans from coast-to-coast cannot see, feel, and sometimes touch, the colossal fuck-up that belongs to Donald J. Trump and his GOP Death Cult. Trump’s stunning incompetence was supercharged by the moral cowardice and hypocrisy of his party. All those mute sycophants. Then add Kayleigh, who wets herself every time she lies for Donald Trump. My God in whom I don’t really believe, not that it matters, how far into the Bible must we reach before we explain the shit we’re seeing today, in the United States, supposedly the greatest nation, ever? Remind me where I can find something biblical about perversity.
We’re living the logical outcome of the last 50 years of American politics. The dominant ideology of those 50 years was unfettered capitalism, private ownership (you’re gonna pay) and control over public ownership (open to all and funded by our taxes), “small” government, tax cuts as Policy Job No. 1 in all circumstances, a dismantling of the New Deal social safety net, and the destruction of organized labor. The conservatives veered far right of Dwight Eisenhower, and then even further under Reagan, as they fanned the flames of social issues along racial, religious, and abortion lines that drove a wedge between the electorate. Two working-class people might agree on basic economic issues, but when it came to the social stuff, the tribal stuff, the twain didn’t always meet.
Historic response she squeaks over and over, as if Americans from coast-to-coast cannot see, feel, and sometimes touch, the colossal fuck-up that belongs to Donald J. Trump and his GOP Death Cult.
When Bill Clinton came along with his New Democrat, third way claptrap, the Democrats ditched blue-collar Cleveland and Youngstown for the white-collar canyons of Wall Street and the easy luxury of the Hamptons, for good. Clinton sold us out smart and proper, and that silver-tongued satyr made us feel good about it. Clinton was a true politician: I will sodomize you and make you think it was your idea.
That’s a simplistic, thumbnail version. We must add decades of preposterous military spending. The great peace dividend of 1992 never happened. The Soviet Union collapsed but all that taxpayer money we were going to devote to other things never materialized. George H.W. Bush gave us the first Gulf War against an extremely useful bogeyman -- Saddam Hussein -- our former ally against Iran, America’s nemesis since 1979. We were knee-deep in the Middle East now, standing with Israel no matter how Israel degraded the Palestinians, courting a new enemy that sailed under the banner of Islamic Extremism. Then came the greatest gift the right wing ever received -- the post 9/11 hysteria that had Americans removing their shoes in airports, subjecting themselves to full-body scans by the TSA (part of the creepily named Department of Homeland Security), and shrugging their shoulders when the government gave itself sweeping powers of mass surveillance. That’s when the takeover accelerated. Good times for the Pentagon and the Security-Intelligence industry. Then Afghanistan, followed not long after by the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, the greatest strategic blunder in American history. Here’s where Saddam Hussein proved his value as a threat to civilization. Uncle Dick Cheney whispered voodoo in W’s frightened ear and off the US went. Holy war. Shock & Awe made for spectacular television images, like a fireworks display, but of the innocent human beings who perished, nary a mention. We didn’t even bother to tally the Iraqi dead. That’s when our Imperial Hubris became terminal.
No surprise then that we are on this dead-end road in the dark of the American night. The ghost of Mr. Darwin riding shotgun, survival of the fittest, which in America means survival of the richest and fuck the rest. The headlights pick out the ruts and potholes, barbed-wire fencing, telephone poles, bare trees, mailboxes, abandoned cars, burned-out semi-trucks. A trail of destruction. There will be no presidential pardon for us, no commutation of our sentence. The GOP will snap the whip on wage-earning Americans by resisting the extension of unemployment benefits and rent and mortgage eviction moratoriums until they are pressed to the wall, and even then, Trump is so insane that he might veto such a bill, just because he can, solid sadist that our president is.
No hope unless and until we oust Trump and his gang of incompetents, and even then the road will be dark and bumpy. I know what’s going to happen, can hear the speech now, Joe Biden telling the nation it’s time to look forward, not back, therefore he doesn’t think it serves any purpose to investigate and prosecute Trump and key members of his crime family...instead, let us toil in vain to build a new house on a rickety foundation. That will be the first mistake of the Biden presidency. At his age and mental capacity, he’s a one term president so he’s got nothing to lose by spending some of his political capital on serious, deep investigations into the entire Trump Era. We must, must, must, spend the money and resources to uncouple the government from Trumpism, which to me means serious reform of the Justice Department, an actual rooting out of Trump loyalists, and a solid firewall between the Attorney General and the President so that the former doesn’t become the servant of the latter. We cannot allow the powerful to hide behind the law is what it comes down to.
Almost 138,000 dead. Nothing to see here says the Trump Gang. We must open the schools. Historic response. The reason we have so many cases is because of our great and magnificent testing. Historic response. Let’s talk about protecting monuments to the traitors of the Confederacy. Let’s hold campaign rallies on the White House lawn, sell canned beans from the Oval Office. If we can’t take the family circus on the road, let’s bring people to the circus, right here at the White House.
No surprise that we are on this dead-end road in the dark of night. Alone with the ghost of Mr. Darwin riding shotgun, survival of the fittest, which in America means survival of the richest and fuck the rest.
Lack of testing, delays in getting results, which render a test practically useless, death rate poised to climb, hospitals saturated with the sick, morgues bursting. No coordinated, all-out, war footing federal response. 50 American states on their own, competing against each other for PPE and test kits, free market Frankenstein on the loose, black bodies still falling at the hands of the state, Post Office being strangled to death by Trump loyalists. The fucking United States Postal Service, a national treasure, an icon of ingenuity and organization. The American institution that connected us one to another for so long. Historic response. Fuck you, Kayleigh.
All that is historic about the Trump Administration is its incompetence, cruelty, and corruption.
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