Where is America's Immune System?

 

     We all know what happens when you get a splinter in your finger. Your immune system recognizes a foreign body and mobilizes until it pushes out that splinter.

     Nations are like that, too, up to a point. As an invader invades the country or the body politic, especially if it's harmful, nations, often the grassroots, the vox populi, will mobilize to at least put up a good fight if not outright expel the invader. We saw this during the Arab Spring and, more recently, in Syria last month (although it could be said the overthrow of the Assad regime was just one terrorist organization replacing another).

     Yet in a political and social way, nations have an immune system of their own. And, often, when a head of state leads the nation to rack and ruin, corrective action is taken. Look at WWII Italy and 1989 Romania, for example.

     However, what we've been seeing over the last week and a half is a naked kleptocracy and kakistocracy successfully masquerading as a functional and functioning government. And yet, we're seeing little more than token resistance on the part of lawmakers, other nations, Big Business, the media and, most shockingly, the American people.

     Many of you reading this will easily remember the protests that clogged the streets of France years ago when the government even just suggested raising the retirement age. We've seen this all over the world since time immemorial- When governments enact incredibly unpopular policies or even suggest them, the people often show up to protest in the millions. Even in repressive Russia early in the Ukraine war, when Putin started forcibly rounding up Russian men in a ramped up conscription campaign, the people protested in over 160 Russian towns and cities, including Moscow.

     Yet, historically, we never see this here in America. Is it complacence, is it laziness, is it the losing end of a war of attrition? It could be all of those things or none of them.

     And this brings me to social media.

     Virtually every nation on earth has access to social media. Gigantic entities like Facebook, Tiktok, Twitter and the rising Bluesky are used in most nations or, as in the case of China, alternatives such as Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter (although it's, of course, tightly controlled by the Chinese Communist Party). People in other countries use social media as a means to an end. They use it to coordinate and mobilize when they feel a mass protest is called for.

     The United States is virtually unique in that we see social media as an end, not a mere means. We've supplanted protest with impotently screaming in the wilderness on social media because we've been led to believe that social media is a legitimate and efficacious outlet to redress our grievances. It's little better than handing people an Etch-a-Sketch and telling them they're iPads through which they can reach the rest of the world.

     Yet right wing tech bro billionaires like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, oligarchs with right wing agendas, have been lying to you all these years. Chances are your voice will not be heard beyond a small coterie of followers because they employ repressive algorithms that artificially suppress content that conflicts with the political agenda of the 1% who own these social media entities. On Twitter, it's called shadow banning.

     The closest we've seen to any organized protests in the US was the Occupy Wall Street movement nearly 14 years ago before that, too, was systematically and brutally repressed by police departments all over the country. Yes, we used social media to coordinate and mobilize back then. But then, the outrage over Wall Street's excesses, which have hardly abated since then, dissolved under police truncheons and backhoes.

     If you take away enough things that they need for basic survival (The French Revolution in the 1780s, it could be said, was touched off by high bread prices, something we ought to keep in mind here and now), they will rebel and, in some cases, will overthrow a regime, a government or a monarchy. The French Revolution was so transformative, they haven't had a monarchy since and the same could be said for the American Revolution.

     And yet, since January 20th, we do have a king, one we'd installed, a despot right out of the Middle Ages. In some ways, Donald Trump is a stereotypical lying politician who has no problem breaking campaign promises. Yet, in other ways, he's unique in human history, or at least in American political history. In just a week and a half, with the pernicious assistance of stooges and fascist apparatchiks, Trump's second administration is already the worst ever, even discounting his first term that saw 400,000 dead Americans during the pandemic.

     He's gutted entire departments through Executive Orders, basically by royal fiat. Less than two days after the worst air disaster since 2009, we're just waking up to the fact that Trump could've teed up that disaster by gutting the FAA just two days into his term.

 

 

     We're not entitled to be surprised and be shocked, shocked, that there's gambling going on in this establishment because on January 22nd, the White House announced on its website that they were doing just that and even crowing they were ending "DEI madness".

      And, just a few days before that, the day before the inaugural, Trump announced his own cryptocurrency, the $Trump coin. With all the challenges facing the government and this nation, Trump's biggest concern, it seems, was cashing in on another grift. This coin, 80% of which is owned and controlled by the Trump Organization, quickly ballooned in value, eventually reaching an artificial valuation of $32 billion. If he hasn't already, you can count on Trump to dump his shares in a classic Pump and Dump Ponzi scheme that'll leave smaller investors holding the bag as the coin (as opposed to an NFT) plunges down to nothing in value.

     Trump is trying to fire the entire Civil Service so he can replace it with 300,000 more of his stooges and is just now realizing he's not legally empowered to do that. That precipitated the letter he'd sent to government employees offering them a buyout hereby they were promised seven months severance pay and benefits. But, knowing Trump's track record for keeping promises, stiffing people and pulling the rug out from under people, the Civil Service employees are smart enough not to take his "offer" and are even staying at their jobs out of spite.

     Like a true dictator, Trump's going after those who'd investigated or even just criticized him. He pulled Secret Service details from Mike Pompeo, John Bolton and Dr. Anthony Fauci. He's preparing to fire at least 12 DoJ attorneys who'd worked for Jack Smith and assisted in his two investigations. He's already fired over a dozen Inspectors General whose job it was to investigate waste and corruption.

     Plus, let's not forget the purge at the FAA 48 hours into his administration.

     And, after largely running on inflation, the economy and lowering prices, his economic and foreign policy antics are resulting in higher prices for Americans. Presidents can't unilaterally lower prices but they can certainly make them go up through horrible and misguided decisions. National and international economics are always a tricky balancing act that ought to be handled by those who know what they're doing. Trump simply lacks the intellect, the temperament and subtlety to even grasp all that.

     In short, Trump has turned the government into a shambles that, up until a week and a half ago, was a real, respectable government. It's like what would happen if you rented out your beautiful B&B in a toney neighborhood to the Hell's Angels.

     So, where's the outrage? Haven't we seen enough? Just the threat of raising the retirement age was enough choke the streets of Paris with outraged citizens. Caracas, Venezuela recently staged mass protests over the perception their recent election wasn't legitimate. 

     Where's our immune system?

     And what will it take to finally get us off our couches, Laz-E-Boys and computer chairs and use that first amendment right to assemble? Or are we content to be a nation of 330,000,000 frogs in a pot of boiling water?

     I cannot think of any analog in US history in which our nation, our very government, was under threat and a state of siege. And we keep forgetting those chilling words by George Santayana when he wrote, "Those who do not heed the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it." We've forgotten that fighting for and securing rights is only half the battle won, the much shorter half. Because each generation produces evil people like Trump and his enablers who will constantly seek to abridge or obliterate those rights entirely. The wolves have taken up permanent residence at the gate. Democracies weren't kept with complacence, compliance and obedience. They're maintained by constant vigilance and, when necessary rebellion.

     We need to remember that and act accordingly. Because, to quote Ben Franklin, we have a republic... if we can keep it.