I say we are in a national crisis. I go for Climate Change and Immigration. You might pick explosions of nuclear weapons, global resource depletion, Islamic fundamentalism, emerging infectious diseases, an asteroid collision, and mass biological extinctions all are also candidates.
The real crisis is that we fail to acknowledge we have a crisis or have any suggestions for remedy.
The most ominous problems now threatening American democracy is our accelerating deterioration of political compromise. We talk past each other. Political compromise is one of the basic advantages of democracies as compared to dictatorships because it reduces or prevents both tyranny by a majority and its converse of paralysis by a frustrated minority. The U.S. Constitution sought to create pressure for compromise by devising systems of checks and balances. For instance, our president leads government policy, but Congress controls the government’s budget, and the Speaker of the House (Congress’s lower chamber) sets the House’s agenda for acting on presidential proposals. If, as regularly happens, our representatives in Congress disagree among themselves, and if backers of one view cannot muster sufficient votes to impose their will, a compromise must be reached before the government can do anything.
The Reps have no chance of passing a bill in the House and the Dem’s can not get a bill through the Senate. The only good thing that is happening in the Senate is thanks to Harry Reid’s black heart, is that judges are being confirmed to the lower courts.
The Dems have no solutions. Maybe the Reps have a solution, but there is no use to advance them as the response from the Dems will be vitriol with no chance of even being debated.
- A million-plus people entering the US each year is a crisis. The Border Patrol, a law enforcement agency, is now responsible for the welfare of a million new people a year. It serves no purpose to castigate the Border Patrol for saying they put children in cages. Yes, there are places that are enclosed with chain link. I have seen them. Exactly what I would expect to find in a law enforcement agency. There has been no directive or funds from Congress to build dorm rooms! In fact, there has been NO directive of any kind from Congress.
- Climate Change has become real to me in the last two years. I am not convinced that man is sole the cause and even if so there is not a damn thing man can do to reverse the warming trend. If the US ceased to exist tomorrow and not create a single carbon dioxide molecule. Nothing would change. Raising taxes, to be spent on boondoggle projects will do no good. The only solution I see is to figure out if we can adapt to ever-increasing temperatures. We can not count on any assistance from the major sources of carbon dioxide China and India.
We Talk Past Each Other- The Rules Are Off
I recall a line from the movie Body Heat. Ted Danson, playing the prosecutor remarked that when it was really hot people felt the rules no longer applied. I don’t know if heat has a damn thing to do with it now, but the rules no apply.
Anything a Rep says gets a caustic remark that is non-sequitur. “It looks like a beautiful day.” “You are racist.” There is no way forward from there.
The rules are off in more ways than just polite political discourse. Too many of us feel no constraint at all. Kill and burn your baby it because it cried. Take a look at the headlines on the Daily Mail any day. Here are the first three I saw today.
Missing four-year-old girl is discovered 1200 miles from home during a human trafficking raid on a property in Texas – and authorities believe her own MOTHER ‘handed her over to the group’s pimp’
a straphanger mercilessly beat another passenger unconscious on the platform after he was SPAT at twice as the subway doors closed on him in NYC
Man, 29, is charged with assault after being caught on video punching a protester, 61, at Donald Trump’s Ohio rally
These kinds of things did not happen with any degree of regularity even a decade back. We are off the tracks, the rules are off.
Underlining all of this is the fact that we have no sense of national identity as Civics has not been taught in schools for decades. If you don’t know something about your country how can you feel any identity with it? Same as any group, do you not feel a bit out place in attending a meeting the first time. Before you know the protocols, the etiquette.
So here we are in one or more crisis and no one is offering solutions. One side sees an elephant in the room and the other side even if they looked hard would never see an elephant. Like these lions, we no longer even acknowledge each other.
Now hear from someone else about something else. It gave me several chuckles.
Rarely has America seen a more unhinged group of candidates.
Flip a coin to see who gets spanked
Our Bottoms Burn 