Having spent the last week on a cruise, I had the occasion to meet and speak with various people from other countries. When they found out that I was an American, the first thing they would say, down to a one, is “What’s up with your current president?” or something to that effect. Always they meant it in a disparaging way, as if to say, “What the hell is wrong with America that it would elect such an abject idiot?”
Hearing the question, "Why did America choose this?" asked over and over again made me think deeply not only about all of the reasons for our current government shutdown, but far more importantly, why our country itself seems caught in a meltdown, standing at an immovable crossroads, searching for a way out, without a clue of which way to turn. To state a simple fact, almost any government on the planet at this moment functioning better than the American government; at least they are open for business. From a foreigner’s perspective—and from the perspective of the vast majority of Americans—our current president is entirely responsible for causing the government shutdown, which has now become the longest shutdown in American history. Foreigners know that our president made a deal to keep the government open prior to Christmas, and that the Republican-led Senate voted for the deal unanimously, but that once the president experienced the first bit of criticism from his far right bases, he changed his mind. They know that our idiotic president has seen fit to hold Americans hostage while making his petulant demands for money to build his ridiculous wall—a wall that he ridiculously promised over and over again that Mexico would pay for. They get it. They see our current president’s incompetence; after all, it is he himself who chose to put his abject incompetence on display to the entire world. Far from Making America Great Again, he has only succeeded in Making Himself and America Look Stupid.
Worse still, it is not merely our government that is shutdown at the moment, but our moral compass and our bearings as a nation. What, if anything, do we still stand for? We have lost our way. We are like a ship without a rudder, stuck in the middle of the ocean, without a captain or a crew.
When I look at our present situation and also look back at all of the carnage that the OM (“the Orange Monster”) has wrought on most of our institutions of government from his first two years in office, while crashing through all of the guardrails of the public trust and any standard of ethics that all other presidents agreed to abide by, it seems appropriate to ask: Why did America choose this?
A proven and pathological liar, the OM clearly is not the cause of all of America’s problems, but merely a symptom of the disease that America has been suffering from for decades. The clear help of Russian and American criminals working together in a conspiracy explain only some of the clear and present danger we find ourselves in currently as a nation. Nor can the Russian-American conspiracy explain why so many Americans—albeit not a majority—voted for such an incompetent fool.
After giving this subject matter a great deal of thought, I have come up with some most unpleasant answers as to why America chose this.
First of all, we chose a fool because we have become foolish. Our citizens are still not as involved in our democracy as they need to be; most still don't vote. That is foolish indeed.
Second, the OM personifies greed gone berserk, without guardrails. In that, he is the perfect leader for a country whose greed and avarice have also gone off the rails.
America had a date with the OM, and he with us.
Never has our political system been so poisoned by huge infusions of cash and corruption, and it becomes increasingly clear that much of this money is pouring in from foreign and adversarial sources. The whole American system of governance reeks of greed. The pursuit of money has become all that we believe in, whether we are willing to admit it or not. Why else would we have such a greedy king sitting like the perfect cherry at the very top of a crime-ridden dessert of corruption that has become his presidency?
We chose him for our leader because this is what we’ve allowed our government to become. We aren’t a nation of laws any longer, but a government of the buck, for the buck and by the buck. And our chosen leader represents this view of things magnificently. He is, quite literally, what we deserve.
Is it any wonder that the government is shutdown? If our government has become so corrupted by big money that it can be bought and paid for by the Kremlin, and by other countries (Saudi Arabia, for instance), why not simply fly the Russian flag as well as the Saudi Arabian flag from each and every flag post throughout our country. And why stop there? Let’s add all the flags of all the countries we have sold our souls to. For that matter, let’s start flying the flags of all of the corporations and international banks who have bought the very best American government that they can buy. Let’s put a For Sale sign on the White House and on the Capitol and take only the highest bidder from all of the biggest Oligarchs.
I suspect that the Mueller report, when it comes out, will be a scandalous and horrifying story of the long history of hidden money laundering that kept a disreputable and incompetent idiot like the Orange Monster in business for decades, and that during the 2016 campaign dirty Russian money flowed through the NRA to many parts of our government and to the Republican Party and almost every Republican candidate for the House and Senate.
Clearly the OM became our president because America needed to find out what country it wants to be.
Will we be a nation of laws or a nation based on greed?
Hearing the question, "Why did America choose this?" asked over and over again made me think deeply not only about all of the reasons for our current government shutdown, but far more importantly, why our country itself seems caught in a meltdown, standing at an immovable crossroads, searching for a way out, without a clue of which way to turn. To state a simple fact, almost any government on the planet at this moment functioning better than the American government; at least they are open for business. From a foreigner’s perspective—and from the perspective of the vast majority of Americans—our current president is entirely responsible for causing the government shutdown, which has now become the longest shutdown in American history. Foreigners know that our president made a deal to keep the government open prior to Christmas, and that the Republican-led Senate voted for the deal unanimously, but that once the president experienced the first bit of criticism from his far right bases, he changed his mind. They know that our idiotic president has seen fit to hold Americans hostage while making his petulant demands for money to build his ridiculous wall—a wall that he ridiculously promised over and over again that Mexico would pay for. They get it. They see our current president’s incompetence; after all, it is he himself who chose to put his abject incompetence on display to the entire world. Far from Making America Great Again, he has only succeeded in Making Himself and America Look Stupid.
Worse still, it is not merely our government that is shutdown at the moment, but our moral compass and our bearings as a nation. What, if anything, do we still stand for? We have lost our way. We are like a ship without a rudder, stuck in the middle of the ocean, without a captain or a crew.
When I look at our present situation and also look back at all of the carnage that the OM (“the Orange Monster”) has wrought on most of our institutions of government from his first two years in office, while crashing through all of the guardrails of the public trust and any standard of ethics that all other presidents agreed to abide by, it seems appropriate to ask: Why did America choose this?
A proven and pathological liar, the OM clearly is not the cause of all of America’s problems, but merely a symptom of the disease that America has been suffering from for decades. The clear help of Russian and American criminals working together in a conspiracy explain only some of the clear and present danger we find ourselves in currently as a nation. Nor can the Russian-American conspiracy explain why so many Americans—albeit not a majority—voted for such an incompetent fool.
After giving this subject matter a great deal of thought, I have come up with some most unpleasant answers as to why America chose this.
First of all, we chose a fool because we have become foolish. Our citizens are still not as involved in our democracy as they need to be; most still don't vote. That is foolish indeed.
Second, the OM personifies greed gone berserk, without guardrails. In that, he is the perfect leader for a country whose greed and avarice have also gone off the rails.
America had a date with the OM, and he with us.
Never has our political system been so poisoned by huge infusions of cash and corruption, and it becomes increasingly clear that much of this money is pouring in from foreign and adversarial sources. The whole American system of governance reeks of greed. The pursuit of money has become all that we believe in, whether we are willing to admit it or not. Why else would we have such a greedy king sitting like the perfect cherry at the very top of a crime-ridden dessert of corruption that has become his presidency?
We chose him for our leader because this is what we’ve allowed our government to become. We aren’t a nation of laws any longer, but a government of the buck, for the buck and by the buck. And our chosen leader represents this view of things magnificently. He is, quite literally, what we deserve.
Is it any wonder that the government is shutdown? If our government has become so corrupted by big money that it can be bought and paid for by the Kremlin, and by other countries (Saudi Arabia, for instance), why not simply fly the Russian flag as well as the Saudi Arabian flag from each and every flag post throughout our country. And why stop there? Let’s add all the flags of all the countries we have sold our souls to. For that matter, let’s start flying the flags of all of the corporations and international banks who have bought the very best American government that they can buy. Let’s put a For Sale sign on the White House and on the Capitol and take only the highest bidder from all of the biggest Oligarchs.
I suspect that the Mueller report, when it comes out, will be a scandalous and horrifying story of the long history of hidden money laundering that kept a disreputable and incompetent idiot like the Orange Monster in business for decades, and that during the 2016 campaign dirty Russian money flowed through the NRA to many parts of our government and to the Republican Party and almost every Republican candidate for the House and Senate.
Clearly the OM became our president because America needed to find out what country it wants to be.
Will we be a nation of laws or a nation based on greed?
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