In view of the legislative charade in this week’s Senate session on amending the U.S. Constitution to overturn Citizens United, I shudder at the travesty of its fanfare and abject failure.
This is so deeply distressing I feel physically sickened.
(1) Our whole political life plays musical chairs on deck of the SS Leviathan, which seems headed toward the same fate as the Titanic. Our power players are too deeply engaged with deck chairs to take action on our most dangerous issue and vitally encompassing problem. They are, so to speak, the iceberg raking our hull. The public seems bemused or hypnotized by the game on deck. Again, we’re short of lifeboats.
(2) Democracy is doomed. Populism is a romantic delusion. Wealth in corporate board-rooms will dominate our lives. Vast numbers of people will bow to circumstance and accept reduction to a proletarian peasantry with few rights and no real power. Many will object and protest. Massive peaceful demonstrations will be defined by civil authority as rebellion or anarchy and suppressed by force. Sporadic revolt by small groups and individuals that turn to bloodshed by killing Republican officials and business-people will be put down by militarized police who have been armed & primed precisely for this.
(3) Too few humans are large-minded enough to face planetary reality and look past personal horizons and social appearances.
(4) One person recently posting wants to start killing venal people at the top of finance and power food-chains. A “Guillotine Party” he recommends will be swatted down quicker than its blade can fall. It is no use looking to Congress for deep correction. It is already in pawn to wealth, so talk of ending the Fed or Citizens United is futile.
The trouble with people at the top is that entrenched interest has narrowed their vision. It governs their attention. They ignore little people’s opinions as worthless and unreal. I’m glad I won’t live to see the horrors impending on us poor Americans and the natural world we have lived in.
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