Out of Patience

[Interestingly, after 25 years of telling essentially the same story, some wingnut snowflake "flagged" this rant as violating some Blogger nebulous "community standard."  I'm supposed to magically know what offended the fascist snowflake, but I am clueless. I this this might be the motivation I need to move my last blog from Google to Wordpress.]

When I was a kid, in the 50’s, Eisenhower was President and Nixon was Vice-President (heavy on the “vice”). For a brief moment, John Kennedy was elected president in 1960, when I was twelve and assassinated when I was fifteen. A marginal Democrat, Lyndon Johnson, followed that until he was chased from office (by actual Democrats) over his expansion of the Vietnam War. Nixon and his band of merry assholes and war criminals followed. After six and a half years and even more expansion of the war, Republicans stuck the country with Gerald Ford and Nelson Rockefeller after Nixon and his VP, Spiro Agnew, were chased from office for corruption and various crimes against the nation. Ford was the 1974 version of Paul Ryan, with about the same lack of patriotism, with the same collection of corrupt corporate and 1% owners, and the same disdain for justice and honor that has been typical of Republicans for my whole lifetime.

For an incredibly brief 4 years, a competent businessman, experienced engineer, a reasonable politician, and decent person, Jimmy Carter, was president. Carter made the politically fatal mistake of attempting to explain the situation Americans had placed themselves in with those years of  expansionist war, Republican, and near-Republican misnamangement (Remember the “malaise speech?”). Reminiscent of the more recent words of Bernie Sanders, Carter told us, "In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does but by what one owns." He called American lack of faith in the country’s future, “a crisis of confidence.” The truth may set you free, but in Carter’s case it cost him the 1980 election to a Republican con man and a collection of right wing crooks and traitors who haven’t yet left the stage. Carter was right, though, the post-Reagan USA became one “defined by . . . what one owns.”

So, with our heads in the sand or up our asses we elected Ronald Reagan, followed by George Bush Sr., and the country drove itself off a cliff of international debt and some kind of weird celebration of anti-intellectualism and greed that resulted in a habitual deficit spending and a vicious love of imperialism and militarism. Twelve years of regressive, corrupt, and incompetent Hollywood executive and mediocracy—inspired congressional idiocy followed. Somehow, brainless and lazy Americans decided to convey political sainthood on Reagan instead of admitting that they’d been conned and the country had been robbed by the B-movie actor and failed California politician.

Bill Clinton could have been a Democrat, but he chose to be an “Eisenhower Republican” and he only moderated the government’s incompetence during his eight years in office. Even Republicans don’t like Republicans pretending to be Democrats and the last four years of Clinton’s administration was taken up with “did he or didn’t he” bullshit about Clinton’s blowjobs. Republicans tried to conjure up real impeachable crimes, but being Republicans their success was limited by their lack of competence and their own massive corruption issues. Clinton might have been an easy target if Republicans still had an intellectual base, but by 1992 every intelligent Republican had left the building and their space was filled by the uneducated, racist, tools of the Koch brothers we suffer today.

Then eight years of G.W. Bush and a bunch of Reagan and Nixon cronies finally led us to the Great Recession. Obviously, the Party of Borrow and Spend borrowed and spent to the tune of increasing the deficit every year while the 1%, the conservative media talking heads, and the Marching Morons pretended that was a rational alternative to Democratic “tax and spend” policies that at least attempt to pay for their policies. 2008 through 2010 were budget years where the federal government attempted to spend its way out of what looked like the Second Great Depression. I guess it sort of worked, but prosecuting the financial criminals, recovering their booty to repay the trillions they cost the country and world, and taxing the 1% would have worked far better. Barak Obama was more of a Democrat than the Clintons, but not enough more to convince the Marching Morons that democracy is better than idiocy or mediocrity.

Trump, of course, will be the worst of Reagan and the Bush’s combined. He had no skill as a “businessman” and his mental instability has led to a collection of right wing idiots in the executive branch who are guaranteed to make life miserable for working people. The best we can hope for now is that Republicans and the inbred 1% will be stupid enough to crash the country and the resulting chaos will break up the oversized and overarmed US military and not cause the insane religious right, who now dominate US politics, to fire off their own perverted version of Armageddon. Today, the world’s most pressing problem is surviving the end of the empire known as the United States of America.

So, I went through the Vietnam War years, watching my friends die, be mentally or physically disabled, and being alienated from my family and community because I wouldn’t “get onboard” with an immoral war. Again, I was on the opposite side of the majority during Reagan and Bush I’s reign of world terror and imperialism and again with Bush II. After spending most of my 69 years suffering with the incompetence of Republicans and the stupidity of Republican voters, I’m tired of it. I have no more energy or motivation to put up with 4 or 8 years of a pack of Trump morons than I have with chemotherapy and a long “fight” with cancer. In fact, the moral character of my country feels disgustingly like a cancer infection/infestation.