Blog#13- 1/22/20
AN ADVANCED STATE OF DECAY
By Richard Davis
The American form of government is in an advanced state of decay. An argument might even be made that we are witnessing the final gasps of a failed centuries-long experiment. On the other hand, one might say that what we now have is just a logical evolution of a country created by slaveowners and an elite corps of wealthy white men. There are always many ways to look at events.
When the majority of people in a society are being used as pawns by a privileged few then I believe that the government has failed to uphold basic human values. If we want to nurture a democracy then we have to promote what is best for most of us.
According to the Federal Reserve, in 1989 ten percent of Americans controlled 67% of wealth. In 2016 ten percent of Americans controlled 77% of wealth. That means that the wealth of the bottom 50% of Americans in 2016, or 63 million families, accounts for 1% of total U.S. household wealth.
The wealth gaps among Americans is wider than it has ever been and that means that most Americans have almost no control over matters such as health care, commerce, the legal system and just about every area of society.
There have been mass protests in the past few years but they have been able to be marginalized by a government that has institutionalized lying by dedicating itself to the mantra that, “If you repeat a lie often enough, people will come to believe it is true.”
Even though the mainstream media has finally become bold enough to call out lies, the current governing regime in Washington has been able to distort reality so much that their followers now are convinced that the media is lying when it labels Trump’s words lies.
These Trump supporters are many of the same people who recently rallied in Virginia as they carried their weapons of mass destruction across their chests and puffed themselves up with their self-righteous and misguided rhetoric proclaiming that the right to own guns is a god given right.
What’s next? Will we see a rally where they burn all of the books they don’t like or where they burn effigies of politicians who want to ruin their lives because they support gun control?
And just when it seems things could not be much worse when it comes to inequality and divisiveness we are witness to a political process of impeachment that makes it clear we are no longer a nation of laws. We have become a nation that bends the law to suit the interests of those in power.
Impeachment is one of the ways we have to try to make major corrections when a President does not act in the best interests of the country. Yet, in 2020, that process has become tainted and that is a reflection of the decay of the republic.
If a fair and impartial impeachment process cannot play out then we no longer have a functioning democracy.
