Republicans: Abusing Power Every Day

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In the councils of government we must guard against the acquisition of power, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties and democratic processes.” President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Republican

We really have lost our way in America.

I know it’s beyond cliché to say things used to be better, that the business of the nation was more honorably transparent way back in whenever-the-hell. The grass is always greener, not just on the other side, but back across our nation’s history to our remembered mythologized “summers” of progress. It’s all greener if you look at just the right spots, the places where we got things right, after the wars, after the economic collapses when, for moments in time, the government put the people first.

But when we’ve gone from a president at mid century warning his people, -not his subjects, or his citizens but his people, his fellows, his brothers and sisters as unflinchingly as Eisenhower did; -to a place in our constitutional and civic evolution where the Supreme Court can defend the overreaching abuse of corporations and classify them as if they were individuals, and 21st century Presidents talk about fiscal responsibility without once mentioning the defense industry’s parasitic relationship to our out of control deficit, we are adrift my friends and we are as far away from the intentions and hopes of the framers as the English monarchy they seceded from in the 18th century.

We refuse to face the central problems of inequity and unfairness because the elites in charge have made themselves synonymous with the nation itself. The wealthiest of elites have bought our entire news media; the very thing Americans use to communicate factual reality to themselves is owned by somebody.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the elected officials in government calling themselves Republicans today are not conservatives nor are they in the strictest sense of the word representative of the Right’s philosophy as it is historically understood. They are not even Republicans in the truest sense of the term. What we have in the persons of Mitch McConnell, Eric Cantor, John Boehner, Dick Cheney and many others are Rich elites who will do anything to protect the Establishment, its money and its power.

It’s not easy to say you oppose the Establishment. In some ways it indicates you think there is something wrong with the country at its core. But we all know there is something wrong with our country don’t we? We all know there is something wrong with us.

What is pretending to be a rebel and a dissident, (as the Tea Baggers continue to do,) going to accomplish? -Selectively getting angry at your political enemies for problems you unarguably know their elected predecessors are responsible for, only ensures that the politicians you mistakenly supported take power again in short order.

There was a time when a lie was called a lie, and there was no confusion about an opinion, or a belief or a fact. Any attempt at intentionally interchanging the terms was to invite something heavier than the weight of any law or regulation; it inspired distrust in the people.

Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News was voted the most trusted news source in America a couple of years ago. We are a nation seeking entertainment at a time when we should still be asking honest questions and not letting the fears, concerns and goals of the Establishment become our own.

Today, too many of us believe what someone else tells us is in our best interests to believe. Americans now disbelieve anything that upsets them or that interferes with the order manufactured by everything we buy into when we let someone else tell us what it means to be a good American.

Today, Eisenhower’s prescient farewell warning would be first labeled; then ascribed a political motivation, then assigned a political party and roundly dismissed as “biased.”

I ask you my friends, just where the hell are we right now?

Edited from the original published on January 28, 2010.

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About Post Author

SJ

I hail from a political blog called "Random Thoughts" on the Ham Sandwich Network. I also write for "the Random Robot." I'm here at the invitation of Mad Mike and I post on politics in general. I am, for the most part, a Progressive and a Liberal who votes for Democratic Party candidates most of the time.
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baker's dozen
11 years ago

You never know what’s going to happen next in America. I can’t see how any middle class person could vote for an elitist prig like Mitt Romney. You should face it: lots of what happens in the U.S. against Obama is because of his race.

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