Index

Whose Fault?

On this fourth of July, we celebrate the United States’ independence from England and from the rulers, both titular and economic, that were keeping these colonies from progressing economically.  We do this with lots of “patriotic” displays of military might and lots of flag waving, not to mention massive gluttony and drunkenness.

Thinking about the real meaning of our type of government and the participation that it requires of us isn’t generally part of the celebration, but there are still some of us that take this business of self-government seriously enough to think and talk about that important stuff, especially in view of the current ongoing “Presidential” hurricane that is destroying the last vestiges of that government in Washington, DC.

I was part of a discussion about how this pseudo-President came to be, and the discussion came around to who to blame.  I guess I was working a little ahead, because I realized I knew the answer to that - the biggest responsibility for this insane travesty of a president belongs not to the voters, or to the leaders, or to the press, but to the people who couldn’t be bothered.

Sure, some blame belongs with the ones that bought the Cheeto’s bullshit, rather than using their brains. Some goes to the angry voters that voted with their tempers. Same with the people who are so scared of mental activity that they choose as their leader one who had no intellect. The racists that thought they had found a fellow traveler, and did, but in the end they were conned as much as anyone.

Some were excluded from voting by hook or crook, mostly poor or minority voters who were excluded by republican-ruled states because they generally vote democratic. That exclusion makes a mockery of the whole system, but it still was only a little bit of icing around the top of a cake of raw sewage.

The true blame belongs to those who couldn’t be bothered, who were too lazy to think about the race at all, or too “busy”, or too repelled by the choices to decide, or…whatever. It was the truly silent majority of the possible voters that let noise, ignorance and money control the outcome of the election - they were, and are, the real problems.

This group had also been talking about how much destruction the clown was causing, and someone asked the question about whether there is anything that we can hope to salvage out of this disaster.  My comment at the time was that if the ongoing destruction was enough to wake up the voters and make them think, then it would be well worth it, and the damage would get fixed sooner besides.

All the same, the pseudo-President is there, and it is the “abstain” vote that really put him there.  By failing to participate in the process, they are the primary cause of the health insurance death toll, along with all of the other damage that this pseudo-president and his minions in Congress have done, are doing, and are going to do.  The next time someone claims they didn’t/don’t/won’t vote, remind them of the responsibility that each and every one of us bears - that of participating in this democracy.  The alternative is upon us, and we are watching the fascists drag our almost dead democracy and its freedoms away to be burned as they dance around the fire like so many of Shakespeare’s witches.