Everyone’s favorite irascible, nihilistic, profane, egotistical, self-centered, nasty and delusional U.S. Senator, Jim Bunning of Kentucky, may be onto something. The conservative Republican has used archaic and anti-democratic Senate rules to stop Federal legislation with respect to extending unemployment benefits, repealing the 21% reduction in Medicare Reimbursements to physicians, and halting basic federal payroll expenditures and federal transportation contract supervision. If he and the other nihilists in the Senate, who surreptitiously support him, keep up these procedural moves, the entire Federal government could be shut down.
Call me a “liberal elitist” who gets carried away with insulting adjectives. I view most of my fellow Americans as pleasant simpletons. I consider many on the political and economic “Right” to be sanctimonious hypocrites and unwitting rubes of wealthy corporate interests who act contrary to the best interests of most Americans. The majority of “Tea-partiers” are delusional imbeciles who are opposed to all government. I also believe too many Democrats are clueless, corrupt, un-principled, out of touch with reality, and unable to articulate the best long-term interests of the nation. In such a national state of intentional ignorance, lack of basic education, complete demonization of opponents and a general inability to form coherent thoughts, Americans may need to learn something concrete about reality – and the hard way.
Nearly falling off the financial and economic cliff in 2008 to be brought back from the precipice in 2009 by some astute actions and policies of the Obama Administration is not something many people can adequately fathom. Too many people are unable to grasp the simple understanding that our bi-partisan and strongly conservative policies of the past 30 years lead up to the financial and economic mess of 2 years ago. Everything we are facing in 2010 is a direct result of too many past bad decisions for which no one is willing to accept obvious responsibility, particularly Republicans.
Too many Americans are suffering from the neurological results of ingesting over many years, way too many prescription drugs and illegal drugs, far too much legal alcohol and tobacco, and being unwittingly subjected to various man-made poisons delivered through our food supply, water, air and residences, that we can no longer function on any sane intellectual basis. We now live in a national insane asylum where the inmates are in charge. All members of the U.S. electorate and the governments we have elected, are collectively at fault.
Many Americans are also too stubborn, arrogant, ideological, and ignorant to learn anything unless they are hit on the head or kicked in the butts hard enough and for as many times as necessary for the basic information to finally sink in. Too many Americans really need and deserve to be shoved over the proverbial “cliff” to rest in complete political, financial, economic, social and moral collapse as only the abyss can provide. This is where Senator Bunning, the Republican party of perpetual “No,” and many clueless Democrats come in.
Many Americans have been disappointed to learn that our country has evolved into a complete oligarchy, where we only practice corrupt crony capitalism for sole benefit of large and wealthy corporations and individuals. 90% of American individuals, households and small businesses just don’t matter to anyone in our Oligarchy and Washington DC. Most of our citizens, residents and institutions are completely superfluous within our political and economic systems. We are simply replaceable members of an audience that exist solely to worship, serve and faun over the lives of a limited number of our celebrities and well-connected leaders.
Most telling about today’s Washington DC was the recent decision by the House Ethics Committee absolving numerous members on charges of unethical behavior. The committee stated that members making direct spending and legislative preferences to large campaign contributors was just fine and violated no laws. Basic human ethics and morality no longer exist in our nation’s capital when such obvious proof of complete political corruption is tolerated and encouraged by our public institutions and leaders.
Perhaps by completely shutting down the Federal government, including all discretionary domestic spending, and all fixed mandatory programs, we may finally learn something about ourselves and reality. This would also entail ending all funding for social security, public health programs, judiciary, EPA, and all those Federal departments, agencies, commissions and public entities, including the Federal Reserve, Fannie and Freddy Mae, the SEC, and the entire Departments of Defense and Homeland Security. The American people need to start over on everything and that means starting with absolutely nothing. For 30 years, many on the “Right” have perpetually called for the dismantling of these programs, so why not go all the way?
All of Congress and their staffs, the President and his entire administration and the entire Supreme Court and our Federal Judicial system would simply go unpaid and their offices would be closed. No more federal taxes would be collected or spent. We would finally reach the Nirvana the many far right Republicans, Conservatives, Libertarians, and “tea-baggers” have dreamt about – complete national anarchy and dissolution of the Federal government. All governmental powers would devolve to the 50 states and the only question would remain whether and how we would continue to protect and maintain our nuclear arsenal.
We could let our consummately powerful, well-connected and greedy financial institutions sell off all our national assets, including public highways, seaports, airports, Amtrak, National Parks, defense bases, and nuclear weapons to the highest global bidders. Didn’t the “Right” profess its complete confidence in the Market over the “hated” and “failed” Government?
The more than $11 trillion in Federal debt owed to all our creditors would be reduced to mere confetti unless the sale of national assets and defense materials could cover that debt. Of course the “best and brightest” of our financial sector would not pay off any national debts with the sale of public assets. Instead they would give themselves even larger monetary bonuses as a reward.
I suspect well before the Chinese Government seizes the American West Coast, we’ll see our own Military launch a complete political coup to respond to the complete shut-down of our Federal system. These 1.5 million volunteer patriots generally have their priorities straight and they have acted in the most unselfish ways. Many in our armed forces would do anything to preserve, protect and defend our country – even without compensation for a few months.
There are some among the top brass who are corrupt and busy planning their lucrative consulting careers after they retire at full pay, but most enlistees are ready to undertake any proposed mission to protect our country. There may be a ton of waste and fraud when the Military deals with private contractors and large Congressional campaign contributors, but if we need to trust a group of people with our nation’s future, our volunteer armed forces probably are far better bets than our elected officials.
The Military might even impose some reasonable gun regulations upon the general public to preserve domestic order. Eventually every Military needs to raise taxes to preserve its continued existence. If our Congress has devolved into complete paralysis and gridlock, unable to make any decisions about national policies, then rational and saner minds will eventually prevail.
Whether we will return to a Federal government as we had in the past under a new Military dictatorship is anyone’s guess. But it may be preferable for our country’s best long-term interests if we junked our archaic Constitution and our entire current crop of ineffectual, partisan and corrupt leaders, administrators and especially legislators in Washington.
Instead of letting Congress endlessly debate and then block anything and everything, including paltry unemployment benefits, our Military might simply draft all 30 million unemployed and under-employed Americans in order to start rebuilding the entire country in a sane, comprehensive, non-partisan, and non-ideological manner. We might find that the general public would strongly support such a national organizational and directional change.
We will soon face a choice whether we want to continue on our current selfish, narcissistic, nihilistic, ignorant, and short-sighted separate ideological and partisan paths, or will we find a shared common national purpose and specific public policies worth preserving. It may be better to push that day of reckoning to the present time when we still have the resources, collective spirit, and common sanity and humanity to eventually succeed. If we push that date off further into the future, we may be so completely dysfunctional, angry, rigid and wholly incapable of working together that it will be impossible to save our nation from utter collapse.
Posted by Marc Pascal, happily ranting from Phoenix, AZ and a proud native-born American. I’m not going anywhere even if some domestic bigots might demand I move overseas because they view my opinions as critically “un-American.” Deeply caring, debating, and rationally thinking about our nation’s present and future are the essential duties of every patriot – and so is getting involved in the public process so it is not dominated by imbeciles and ideologues.