America the Beautiful

It’s easy to be fed up, with That Asshole, and the vast criminal web beneath him of sucklings, vandals, brainless ideologues, fuckups and outright felons, all of them working so hard to destroy anything that’s sensible in the federal books, you’d think they were Blue Meanies, screaming in agony whenever anyone says the word yes.

But, as the election is upon us, I’m fed up with so much more. I’m generalizing, as I am wont to do, but taken entirely this country is a menace and a blight. Almost all of it, or at least too much of it. It’s hard to crack that presumption we’re taught as children, that America is an agent of goodness and justice, that, even despite the Holy Shit run of global disasters and evil interventions, we – the people, if not the government at any given moment – are golden of heart, and if not for us, global society would’ve devolved into feral chaos long ago.

But That Asshole has made it happen, as a symptom of our desires, as I hear far too much of and about voters who “love” the current kleptocracy, wade through fields of campaign flags (a popular one says, no kidding, “No More Bullshit,” which is stupefying in at least three very different ways), and face the fact that in a sane and educated country the last four years would have net poll ratings in the negative numbers, but instead this chunk of America is giving the yellow dog on the Democratic ticket a dead-heat race in some states.

Maybe enough of America likes That Asshole because he is us: a dumb, loud-mouthed, cruel and careless shithead. Despite what we keep hearing, there is no moral crisis in America – we don’t have enough of a moral baseline to justify a crisis. This country is a death cult, and the government is a whorehouse. We bleed and kill and lock up dark-skinned people in numbers that stagger African countries. We invade and bomb other sovereign nations more than the next ten hostile countries combined. We let millions die for lack of health care, because the insurance companies need to profit. We spend 52 cents of every tax dollar on a military we barely need, just to feed corporate coffers, and, if need be, invade resource-rich companies so American corporations can plunge in.

And we pay for it, every cent straight out of our pockets. Anyone even rudimentarily familiar with this country’s last 120 years of headlong imperial criminality (non-stop invasions, bombings, occupations, assassinations, covert and overt subversions, and so on, to the tune of at least 26 million surplus deaths) should be mortified to evoke any kind of national moral character. Should be, in a real country with real principles.

And that’s just the last century and a quarter – go deeper into the 19th century, and tell me what you see.

On the ground, in our neighborhoods, we’re bitter, spiteful, vicious, bigoted gun nuts and “militia” wannabes and Bible-licking yahoos and conspiracy suckers, products of an unorganized Babel of an education system that’s usually, school for school, fit only for Barbary apes. Our civics delivery system is Fox News and reality shows; we prefer capital punishment to rehabilitation, sick and hungry children to any uptick in taxes, shitheads to saints.

All told, it’s no wonder that maybe a full third of voters – that’s over 80 million people – look at That Asshole and say, yeah, that’s my guy, and do not assume that their thinking about this – right or wrong – should go at least a few steps beyond that, into trying to understand what elected officials’ jobs and responsibilities actually entail. That Asshole is a rank stench of pig piss we need dry cleaned out of our lives pronto – but only because he represents what we are without rhetoric, disguise, self-deception or dishonesty.