“For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.” (~ Hosea 8:7)
It is not surprising that Trump’s best friends are Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu ~ they are all birds of a feather. For a long time, I was mystified at how the genocide in Palestine, which has been so thoroughly documented ten times over ad nauseam, literally, could be tolerated in this country and by most of this country’s “allies,” let alone being majorly funded by the United States government. When I was a child in the 50s, we were taught that the Americans were “the good guys.” It is hard to get used to the fact that the Americans have descended so far down into the ranks of the rogue states. Oh, I should clarify that it is not the American people who have suffered this precipitous moral decline ~ it is the government of the United States. (Well, all too many of the American people seem to be ready to follow their government down.)
With every passing day, we see this country falling ever more deeply into a pit, largely brought on by its inescapable economic decline, being inexorably eclipsed by China, and soon by India, Europe, Taiwan, and South Korea. As I detailed in my last essay (The Creeping Bankruptcy of the United States), of its many economic follies, the main one is the unsustainable path of militarism on which country has been embarked for generations. It reminds me of the definition of a yacht ~ “a hole in the ocean into which one pours money.” You can’t go on spending more than a country’s Gross Domestic Product for decade after decade without encountering the limits of that path (especially when that spending produces nothing of value). The only way out of that incipient bankruptcy is to go to war. Put the last resources of the bankrupt country into preparations for war, and then go rampaging along, raping and pillaging as you go down, after the manner of Vladimir Putin in his Special Military Operation in Ukraine, or the new Brownshirts in Minneapolis. “They who live by the sword will perish by the sword.” (~ Matthew 26:52)
There is no good to come of any of this. A Change has got to come, “the easy way or the hard way.” As I have been saying for over fifty years now, what was a wonderful innovation in 1776 is no longer tenable in the 21st century. For most Americans, the Constitution is revered as Holy Writ, and any suggestion of making any changes, in whole or in part, is viewed with horror. But it is not just the American Constitution that has outlived its usefulness ~ the religious reverence for Democracy itself needs to be reconsidered. The present morass in the United States is what comes of unbridled Democracy.
Democracy works great in the small, but it fails in the large. For a school board or a city state like Periclean Athens, democracy makes a lot of sense. But to run a large country, it breaks down. We see the consequences every day ~ what has happened is the Thomas Jefferson Effect in the extreme (The longer a regime remains in power, the greater the divergence between the wealthy few at the top and the impoverished many at the bottom; e.g., the Ancien Regime in France). The United States is increasingly run by the wealthy, who give themselves tax breaks, and pay for them by reducing services to the poorer classes (everybody else). We see the encroaching fascism, which is an increasing tendency of sharpening, widening the gap between rich and poor, the favored few and the marginalized many.
But, if not democracy, then what ? That is too large a question for the present essay, but basically we need to establish an institution that can serve as a Trustee for the country (or the planet), so that decisions are no longer made by the Robber Barons, but by an institution designed to safeguard the rights of everyone against those very titans of wealth and power that are destroying this country so that the few on top can revel in their wealth and privilege.
Most Americans are too much in shock to realize what is going on, and they have no idea of how to oppose it. The obstacles appear to be insurmountable. What ? Are we to anticipate a Revolution in the streets like the French Revolution ? Actually, the parallels are chillingly close. Is it time to be putting barricades in the streets in Minneapolis, and calling for all patriots to come to the aid of their country ? Well ~ that is one very possible continuation from here. Another option is much harder ~ to effect an evolutionary change which will allow the “American Experiment” to roll on to a new phase, in which the wealthy are taxed instead of the poor. The role of government should be to rein in the relentless power of the wealthy, and to support the common people in their effort to stay alive.
It is horrible to witness Donald Trump gutting all efforts at a greener energy future. There he is, extolling the virtues of “beautiful” coal and oil, while shutting down all efforts to set up wind farms, all in order to repay the oil companies who put up money for Trump’s reelection campaign. This was done nakedly ~ Trump said, in so many words, “Give me a billion dollars, and I will make it worth your while !” Now he is dutifully rewarding those who gave him money by letting them recoup their investment many times over.
So, where do we go from here ? It starts by waking up out of our slumber and gearing up for a major effort at reconstruction. The first order of business appears to be well in hand ~ the Midterms. Come November, the Donald will finally see the writing on the wall ~ the avalanche which routs the Republicans out of their comfortable beds in confusion will be too large for Trump to pretend that it is all fraud. With the loss of both the House and Senate, Trump’s impeachment should follow on in very short order. Then, the horrible lame duck Presidency of the odious J.D. Vance will just have to be endured, opposed at every turn, until finally the elections of 2028 will give this country a chance to get back on its feet again.
And the first order of business must be to restore some fiscal sense. “When you’ve got money, you’ve got lots of friends, but when the money’s gone, they won’t be around no more . . .” No; they make deals with China, instead. Tax the rich; invest in wind farms; invest in electric vehicles; invest in education and health care; back pedal from all this limitless militarism, and return to diplomacy as the vehicle for resolving disputes rather than war. Let Americans get back to work doing anything constructive instead of putting all of their economic eggs in the military basket. Then, with determination and hard work, this country may come out of its doldrums in as little as a hundred years, about the time it takes for all those trees we are going to be planting to come into maturity. The raving idiots talk about “carbon capture and storage,” which the Bankers will be happy to finance, I’m sure, rubbing their hands with glee and salivating with eager anticipation, but have they ever heard of the Tree, Nature’s own original carbon capture and storage system?
“A good English walnut tree will yield 150 pounds of nuts a year, with more food value than 150 pounds live weight of sheep, the total produce of a whole acre of good pasture; and an acre would easily support ten such trees.” ~ Henry Bailey Stevens, The Recovery of Culture, 1949. (And the ratio of tree nuts to beef cattle is even greater ~ more than 15 to 1.) So let’s plant trees and feed the hungry, while sequestering carbon and interrupting the cycle of floods and drought.
The Tree ~ John Constable
Curriculum Vitae ~ links about the Author and his work.
