Why Aren't We More Alarmed?

     As my 67th birthday approaches in four days, I'm among that baby boomer generation that remembers what America used to be, what it used to represent, or purported to. I came of age in the late 70s, where a kid making minimum wage (In 1978, $3.05 per hour) could at least get himself a room in a rooming house and spend just 25% of his income on rent. We were told that, in the decades to come, your Social Security benefits would be there waiting for you.

    We were told if we lived within our means, we'd be OK. Having a credit card was optional.and what the hell were credit ratings? If you got a job with the right company, you could retire in 20 years with a pension to supplement your Social Security. The late 70s was the turning point in US history when a sole breadwinner could support the family. 

     We were told in the twilight of that compact between Big Business and labor that if you worked hard and applied yourself, you'd be able to afford a mortgage, put a kid or two through college, maybe buy a new car every few years. Leave it to Beaver went off the air a long time ago, but many of us still bought into that bullshit even as it was being undermined.

     Then Reagan came along and everything started going to shit.

     Fast forward nearly half a century later and we baby boomers don't recognize our own country anymore, or at least what used to be our country.

    Thanks to corrupt Republicans, everything is owned by corporations and they're essentially allowed to do whatever they wish to us. What few of us have or had pensions saw them evaporate on Wall Street (Remember Enron?). And when those necktied psychopaths caused a crash on Wall Street, the government acted swiftly, alright- 

     It rammed through Congress a bailout package rewarding said psychopaths with $700,000,000,000 of our money for their horrible behavior while their victims were left to twist in the wind. (Iceland, on the other hand, after their brief flirtation with banking deregulation, did the exact opposite: They jailed the bankers and baled out their people).

     Then, nearly 21 years after Reagan got elected, our nation was attacked on three fronts. Nearly 2900 humans perished and we rallied together as a nation. Other nations ran to our side. Less than 20 years after that, we railed against nonexistent vaccine mandates, refused to socially distance or wear "diapers" on our faces. Rather than take safe vaccines, we put poison into our bodies. The people that gladly turned over their liberties to a corrupt moron were enraged over non legally-binding guidelines from health professionals.

      All that was, of course, caused by one man, if the word can accurately describe him. Ever since he came down that gaudy gold escalator, the United States' worst elements have come scrambling out of the woodwork. Suddenly, racism and neo Nazism were cool again. Nativism became de rigueur. We once again found our inner sadists because we got validation from one man in the Oval Office. Thousands of them attacked the Capitol and police officers and, a year ago, they were almost all pardoned by the guy who'd started the riot.

     In the last year, we've played witness to a level of cruelty and corruption that has become literally cartoonish, as has what now passes for our foreign policy and military postures. In contravention of seemingly every international law, treaty and alliance, that man has already invaded a sovereign nation and kidnapped its head of state.

     He's now rattling his saber at Iran, Cuba, Greenland. World leaders, including Denmark's Prime Minister and other geopolitical experts are saying that if Trump takes over Greenland, it'll be the end of NATO and they're right. Of course, that will be exactly what Putin wants because the NATO alliance and its Article 5 is the only thing keeping Putin from invading Western Europe.

     But we're nominally led by a clown who's in unceasing service to Putin, a guy who'd also invaded a sovereign nation, a turn of events that would've seemed impossible just a decade ago.

     Our government is now murdering unarmed mothers and threatening to do so again. Our fraudulent vice president is even now threatening door-to-door searches by immigration authorities that are straight out of the Gestapo and Orwell's 1984. Anyone with skin as brown as a paper bag are getting arrested at their jobs, in parking lots, picking their kids up from school. The government is doing their best to revoke citizenships in violation of the 14th amendment and visas.

     When did this become normal, much less legal?

     Why should it be?

     Mass protests in the wake of murders of people like George Floyd and Renee Good are all good and well but they have a very poor track record for efficacy. We'd like to emulate that of the Arab Spring but our system isn't cut out for overthrowing dictators and tyrants like the one afflicting us now.

     We keep comforting ourselves that this November's midterms will fix everything, that we'll throw the bums out. But the fact is, while Congress is saddled with approval ratings in the low double digits, every two years we wind up re-electing 85% of Congress. And what realistic hope is there for effecting change when Congress has already abdicated its Article One powers and autonomy to a rancid branch of government and its perverted Article Two powers?

     I have no solutions, no influence, no power. I'm just another voice howling distantly in the wilderness. But there is something very, very wrong with this country that's acting more and more with each day like a bloated banana republic with nukes.

     I realize that the late 70s aren't coming back. I realize that change is inevitable. But it's become utterly impossible to see how any of the changes we've seen just in the last year are making us great again.