Remembering JFK for being shot is as wrong as remembering Jesus for being crucified. On this sad anniversary, we need to widen the focus from bullets and wounds and Dealey Plaza to see where the country has gone in the 50 years since Dallas. (And to implicitly compare that to the 30 years before Dallas, when much good was done despite the Great Depression and WW2.)
Unfortunately, the sociopathy on display in the 1960s (nuclear warmongers like Generals LeMay, Walker, and Lemnitzer; corrupt, racist blackmailers like J. Edgar Hoover; murderous racist organizations like the KKK; the Italian Mafia at its peak; and sociopathic intelligence operatives like the anti-Castro Cubans) seems like amateur night compared to what we have today.
Today, the sociopathy is entrenched; it is "structural". Bad actors hold the commanding heights of our politics, our economy, our foreign policy, our energy policy, etc. But, despite the change in scale, 50 years on, it's still the Terrible Trinity of drugs, weapons, and money that forms the engine of the sociopathic challenge to democracy; and its still secrecy, both official and cabal-istic, that cloaks its actions.
As those of us who have seen the documentary "The Corporation" may remember, large corporations analyzed as persons via the DSM-IV would fully meet diagnostic criteria of psychopaths (ie. self-interested, amoral, incapacity to experience empathy and guilt, callous deceitfulness, disregard for safety of others and rule of law to get its way, etc).
- Reid Mukai Breaking the Corporate Trance
Step by step, as corporations and billionaires removed the restraints of the New Deal, they have taken our money, our government, and our rights. The JFK anniversary reminds us of how much we lost when three "peace-mongers" were assassinated in the the 1960s.
This diary chronicles that slow, steady strangulation of American democracy and the American middle class. My purpose is to recite for you (yeah, TLDR) all the really terrible things that have happened since Dallas; things that have never been put right; things that continue to happen. My purpose is to puncture the Pollyanna-ish faith in two non-existent things: am honest political process and an un-bought Democratic party. In other words, my purpose is to look clearly at how screwed we are.
As a preview, don't expect me to recite anything good that has happened. IMHO, it has been downhill all the way. Sometimes slower, sometimes faster; but always down.
Read More