"Every day I ask myself the same question: How can this be happening in America? How can people like these be in charge of our country? If I didn't see it with my own eyes, I'd think I was having a hallucination."-Philip Roth, novelist
© Quickmere
It is easy to be distracted right now by the circus politics that have dominated the news headlines for the past year, but don't be distracted.
Don't be fooled, not even a little, no matter how tempting it seems to just take a peek.
We're being subjected to the oldest con game in the books, the magician's sleight of hand that keeps you focused on the shell game in front of you while your wallet is being picked clean by ruffians in your midst.
This is how tyranny rises and freedom falls.
What characterizes American government today is not so much dysfunctional politics as it is ruthlessly contrived governance carried out behind the entertaining, distracting and disingenuous curtain of political theater. And what political theater it is, diabolically Shakespearean at times, full of sound and fury, yet in the end, signifying nothing.
We are being ruled by a government of scoundrels, spies, thugs, thieves, gangsters, ruffians, rapists, extortionists, bounty hunters, battle-ready warriors and cold-blooded killers who communicate using a language of force and oppression.
Our nation of sheep has, as was foretold, given rise to a
government of wolves.
The U.S. government now poses the greatest threat to our freedoms.More than terrorism, more than domestic extremism, more than gun violence and organized crime, even more than the perceived threat posed by any single politician, the U.S. government remains a greater menace to the life, liberty and property of its citizens than any of the so-called dangers from which the government claims to protect us.
This has been true of virtually every occupant of the White House in recent years.
Unfortunately, nothing has changed for the better since Donald Trump ascended to the Oval Office.
Indeed, Trump may be the smartest move yet by the powers-that-be to keep the citizenry divided and at each other's throats, because as long as we're busy fighting each other, we'll never manage to present a unified front against tyranny in any form.As American satirist H.L. Mencken predicted almost a century ago:
"All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre - the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."
In other words, nothing has changed, folks. The facts speak for themselves.
Comment: Another attempt to erase Ukraine's true, very disreputable history.