We Need to Prepare for a Reckoning

 

     Over the last 26 days since Trump has been fraudulently shoehorned back in the Oval Office, there has literally been not one day without some horrible news. Tens of thousands of civil servants have either been summarily fired or were stupid enough to voluntarily quit after being seduced by a buyout that likely will never materialize. 

     An unelected, self-interested sociopath whose name isn't Donald Trump has brought in a gang of juvenile delinquents into our most important and vital institutions and have been acting like conquering Vikings, getting their hands on our private data and threatening those who resist them with arrest by the US Marshal's Service.

     Immigrants and American citizens alike are being rounded up by masked ICE agents as if it's Orwell's 1984 and many are getting sent to Cuba.

     Aid organizations, including USAID, our biggest agency that disburses aid to over 60,000,000 needy people all over the world, has seen its workforce slashed from 10,000 to fewer than 300. Trump is threatening needless trade wars with allies that will result in an economic crash that will make 2008 look like a slight blip.

     He's given away all his bargaining chips regarding Ukraine before negotiations even start. NATO is now fast tracking Ukraine's membership, meaning, with the Russian occupation, all the other 33 member nations will be forced by Article 5 to jump into the fray against a nuclear nation run by a madman. Essentially, Trump is teeing up WW III.

     Nations are turning on us left and right and imposing retaliatory tariffs on us. Many of them are preparing to help lead a planet without a United States. It's only a matter of time before Trump pulls us out of NATO, which would seriously damage if not outright destroy NATO.

     Virtually all mentions of female and minority contributions have been erased and craven corporations like Google have been following suit, even to the point of renaming the Gulf of Mexico  the Gulf of America. Others have axed DEI programs. Obey in advance, or else.

     The government is built to withstand change but incremental change through lawful executive action and deliberately ponderous legislation. It was not built for sudden, reckless change for its own sake. The government, our democratic republic, is being treated like a passenger in a car crash and whip-lashed into paralysis. It's only a matter of time before our nation course-corrects or breaks down entirely. One or the other will happen. It's only a matter of time. The only question is what the final outcome will be.

     And most people in this country, particularly what passes for our free press, seem unable or unwilling to grasp the fact that a major Reckoning is coming and may even be overdue. Whether it's brought about through violent, bloody Civil War or impeachments and trials remains to be seen. But we all share a hideous debt for what we'd allowed and every debt has a reckoning, a due date.

     What remains to be seen is how exactly we confront that debt, that reckoning.

     The rule of law, thanks to right wing activist judges and justices and corrupt officials who'd appointed and confirmed them, has been turned into a bitter joke. It seemed we had the most corrupt one of them all on the ropes. Jack Smith was going after him on two fronts, for inciting a riot at the Capitol that ended nine lives and for stealing classified files.

     Now. all those prosecutors, investigators and law clerks are on the run as if being chased by a pack of rabid hounds.

     So, it doesn't look as if we'll be getting any relief or justice from our federal criminal justice system any time soon.

     We are all responsible for this chaos whether we contributed to it or not. Saying, "I didn't vote for him" then turning away is not an option. What is an option (actually, it's a patriotic duty) is rebellion and disobedience by any means necessary.

     The nation was not founded 251 years ago by obedient men ready to bend a knee to a tyrant. Granted, roughly half the Continental Congress were Loyalists who still thought of themselves as British subjects and were shaken by the idea of armed conflict against the Crown. In fact, it was so dangerous to be in the Congress at that no time were all the members together. In 1774, at least in the eyes of the British government, the members of the first Congress were little better than dissidents and traitors. In fact, many were unsure if there would be a second Congress.

     The rest is history. What started with attempts at reconciliation with the British eventually turned into blockades then outright revolution. The Founding Fathers hardly knew what they were doing because they were trying to build a democracy like the world had never seen, a republic modeled after others that, without exception, had already fallen to the wayside. (Remember what Ben Franklin said: "We have a republic... if we can keep it.") They quarreled, they debated yet somehow found compromise, consensus over what should be done.

     To anyone who knows even the rudiments of our nation's history, such a rape on our institutions, spitting in the faces of our oldest allies, should be intolerable. My God, people, isn't it? Aren't you horrified by what you see?

     How comfortable are you that the greatest experiment in democracy that the world has ever seen is in danger of ending because of one aging, demented sociopath who can't even hold a glass with one hand?