In Defense of an Idiot

Never ever is there any excuse for someone to act violently against anyone, let alone our elected officials. To act against our elected representatives, no matter what office is an insult to your fellow Americans, Citizens, and civil society. Basically, your saying that your fellow citizens have made a bad decision, and voted for a person who is unacceptable to society and that person must be removed from office immediately. Violence of any kind is a rejection of civil society, but violence against elected representatives is an attack on our system of governance and civilization itself. Civility is what we need now more than ever.

However, I don’t think the anger James T. Hodgkinson felt was misplaced. As a politically active liberal, who sees the conservative party as corrupt and self-centered, this last election was very frustrating. It’s understandable, no, predictable, that someone felt the need to take matters into his own hands. I don’t know the mental health history of Mr. Hodgkinson, or for that matter his mental state on Wednesday.  Clearly, he was angry. I just think Mr. Hodgkinson felt as I do, that if the country doesn’t start taking care of it’s citizens soon, people will become desperate.

I don’t want to start a rant against Republicans here, because what the country needs is more political unity. However, from my perspective, it seems that when they win elections they take full advantage of their position without concern or respect for the opposite party, or more importantly their voters, or for that matter the spirit of the constitution, or again the welfare of the country. They do everything in their power to win the next election through redrawing legislative districts and restricting the rights of voters to name a few. All the while proposing and sometimes passing legislation that is no more than huge handouts for the wealthiest among us at the expense of the safety net below the rest of us.

As far as we know today Mr. Hodgkinson wasn’t mentally ill, he was a politically active citizen who was at the end of his rope. He wanted better things for his children and grandchildren and saw those advantages for working people being sucked into the giant vacuum of tax cuts and special benefits being collected by the .01%. What Republicans, conservatives, and the uber wealthy need to understand is that as more and more people, regardless of political persuasion, begin to reach the end of their own ropes, more people will need to try to take matters into their own hands. If things keep going the way they are, the rate of citizens coming to this conclusion could reach a critical mass.

What we need is less “winner take all” politics and more accommodation for the rights of both parties. For both parties to respect each other and their voters. To respect the traditions of the Congress and the bureaucrats who work in it. Of course this won’t happen unless the partisans and the press don’t begin to show some restraint.

To prevent this outcome we need two functional political parties who represent actual people in this country. I think the Democrats do represent real people. I’m biased. I do not think the Republicans do, nor do I think they are functional. This summer will be the test. If they cannot pass a major bill or budget, they will be proven to be able to win elections through stacking the deck and massive amounts of money from their corporate overlords, but not able to govern. I also believe they don’t represent the people who voted for them. Many Republican voters who are un-moneyed, are likely to be hurt by much of the legislation proposed by this Republican majority. Surly these people didn’t consciously vote for laws that will hurt them. No.

I can hear people thinking “poor snowflake, can’t win the election and get his way. Try winning an election then you can rig the election to your advantage, not like you wouldn’t.” It’s true, when Democrats were in power in years when the districts are constitutionally mandated to be redrawn, we do draw the districts in our favor. But not with such blatant precision has the other party has over the last 20 years. Republicans have even redrawn statewide legislative maps in years when the task was not mandated. Nor have we tried to prevent likely Republican voters from voting through legislation or amendment. That wouldn’t be right or fair.

The truth is, the Republican party has been taken over by the .01%. The Koch, Mercer, DeVos, Adelson, and a very few other families pretty much run the party. Moderate Republicans have been primaried out of existence. Any Republican who dares to talk about climate change for example, or propose solutions to it, are immediately given notice that they will have a primary, usually from someone far more to the right. If the have any courage a moderate will stick to the issue and do their best to convince the voters that it’s the right thing to do, but too many times they reverse themselves to avoid the primary challenge.

These families who run the Republican party are the type of people who expect their wishes to be obeyed. That’s how they’ve been treated all their lives. Most of these people are trust fund babies. Most if not all of their wealth was inherited, so they’ve been pampered since childhood. 

The politics of the families is far to the right of most Americans. Many are former John Birchers, some whose parents were sympathetic to fascists, and some are direct decedents of the robber barons of the 1920s. Are these the people who should be in charge of a major political party? Let alone the country? This is why there is such income inequality. This is why so many fathers and mothers have to work 2 jobs for a subsistence living for their children. These people fight against a living wage, health care, transportation, and infrastructure, anything they can do so the government will tax them less.

These families have the resources to create think tanks, university programs, and covert organizations to control media and government agencies, and have used them to influence legislation, influence the press, (they own most of it), and in the end influence voters. They influence all the federal elections, State elections in most states and selected local elections such as school board and city council.

Some of their successes are turning the working class against organized labor, making us believe that wealthy people are somehow better human beings simply because they are wealthy, making people in rural America believe that urban dwellers and minorities are to blame for all their suffering, and the biggest fallacy of all, that lower taxes create jobs. These are long term projects to try to create an American mindset that agrees with they’re point of view. All of it is specious at best.

All this effort, all these structures, all these people, are used mainly to consolidate more money and power. As if more of what they already have will make them better somehow. Is it some kind of perverse contest?

It turns out Mr. Hodgkinson was an idiot with a bad temper. He had no right to do what he did. I just wish more Americans were angrier about our country being taken from them. I wish more Republicans were angrier about the hijacking of their party. I wish the oligarchs understood that harming the American people in the long run is detrimental to everything they may (or may not) have worked for, a prosperous, dynamic country, where a person with hard work and a good idea can become successful. Not a place where only the winners survive, and all the little people can be squashed.

Dysfunction, incompetence, and inconsistent.

The President had a good week.

He has gotten his Supreme court nominee onto the court, at great cost to the republic, but he got it done. The sacrificing of the filibuster, a long-held tradition of the United States Senate, and any hope of a less polarized congress was the casualty. He doesn’t care too much. That has been his dysfunction, he doesn’t care about much.

On Monday, he said he didn’t care about whether Assad stayed in power in Syria or not, Friday he wages war against Assad and possibly Russia. We could call it inconsistent, you might give him a pass on that since I might have changed my mind considering the atrocity unleashed by Assad, but I wonder if he thought the whole thing through. It doesn’t look like it.

The real inconsistency is his work on his health care plan, he said “everyone covered for less money, go to any doctor you want,” to negotiating with the “Freedom” caucus to take away health insurance from possibly more people than had gained it under the Affordable Care Act, with the likelihood of higher premiums with less coverage. All he wants is a win.

As of today, of the 553 key positions that must be approved by the Senate Trump has only nominated 24. There are 28 more who have been announced but not yet sent to the Senate for approval. This is only part of the 1200 positions that require Senate approval. There are another 3800 or so total political appointees that have not been sourced. The reason for this is some kind of loyalty test that many potential candidates have failed. What about qualifications for the job? Is he willing to substitute competence for loyalty? Just that he hasn’t made the appointments is incompetent.

With the failure of their health care bill and any compromise on the horizon. Any tax bill looks to be just another fight among the Republicans, I don’t hold out much hope that the Republicans will be able to govern at all for the next 2 years. They’ll get some small things done. Repeal any climate saving rules for the oil and coal industries that were imposed by President Obama, make some rich people richer by making it easier for banksters to siphon off money from our retirement accounts. But they won’t be able to pull off the big transfer of power and wealth to the already obscenely rich and obscurely powerful.

I feel that If Mr. Trump survives his first term, and we have not had a nuclear event, a major war, or a financial meltdown, I am expecting one or more of these. I will consider his presidency a success. The United States will have dodged a bullet.

The best part for me, of this dumpster fire of an administration, is that we may never again have to hear “why don’t we let a business man run the government” Clearly that is a bad idea.