Urban Myths
“ The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion.” —Emerson (Self-Reliance)
The Wizards of Washington and Wall Street
Moscow Mitch v. Witch Nancy
Masked v. the Unmasked
T’was Ever Thus
Today, the Bald Eagle has been replaced by the lemming, a suicidal rodent.
Congressional hysterics on both sides of the aisle are giving hypocrisy a bad name in the brouhaha over SCOTUS. The conventions associated with governing have not changed but the so-called norms have been revealed as an urban myth when a mere “power grab.” Conventional beliefs have been upended by reality as the animal spirits respond to avarice and the lust for power in plain sight. Politicians on both sides of the aisles and their supporters in the media appear hysterical or unduly superstitious in their attempt to portray themselves as civilized. I am reminded of the sign on my favorite Septic truck: one man’s shit is another man’s treasure.
Similarly, Wall Street traders claim they operate according to the “free market,” another urban myth. Check out the prices on America’s legendary “oil and gas” industry at your corner gas station and see how efficiently the free market works. The cost of yesterday’s oil at the pump rises today based on a rumor of tomorrow’s future costs. While the rest of us pay the freight, Corporate America gets a check from the Federal Reserve and bankers erase debits on one side of the ledger and pencil in assets on the other side: issuing IOUs to themselves and their cronies.
Meanwhile when it comes to the responsibility of the governing class, elected and appointed, for enforcing the rules of the social contract, regarding the health, safety, and welfare of the populace, the current regime, all three branches and both parties, have failed miserably during the last thirty years.
Bureaucratic homicide and bad laws, or unenforced safety regulations have decimated at home and abroad, the population: fake wars with violent results, fake interpretations of the second amendment put school children in the sights of serial killers, unregulated industry emits poisons and creates climate change, see fires, floods, and withering storms.
The tension involving SCOTUS today is not about Roe v. Wade but about deleting the dirty socialists’ Obamacare. The governing class (SCOTUS) is beholden to the Captains of Industry and Wall St. Wall St. which wants the income allocated to the public sector for affordable health care. (Requests for abortion has been declining steadily for years.)
Science has been marginalized by the President: he lied and 200,000 have died since Valentine’s Day. Still his matchless minions, including party regulars, embrace their dear leader like lemmings. Following Emerson above, I remember when Aretha Franklin burst into song at the Blues Brothers’ diner in Chicago, thundering, “Think, Think, Think.”
We can vote. We can pack the court. We can withdraw support from the institutions that deliver death instead of health. We can simply withdraw to fight another day. BTW: We are not alone: Jefferson, Lincoln, and FDR criticized the doings of the Court and their Courtesans.