To formulate thought in time of crisis

I remember thinking when Bush invaded Iraq (with an assist from Judith Miller of the NY Times) on the premise that Saddam had WMD, well at least now the American public will know where Iraq is on the world map, either trying to see some brightness in the gloom or deploying the kind of tongue-in-cheek cynicism that salves a wound. 

To see the parade of Bush cronies marching up to Trump Tower--Gates, Condi Rice, Bolton, Cheney (Cheney via Skype, supposedly)--in support of the Trump-nominated Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil, is to see history repeating itself, but with a sad difference: now, the political mechanism, such as it is, is overtly and defiantly corporate. No longer will the so-called 'experts' in statecraft--elected officials, political scientists, academics, state department bureaucrats etc--pretend to be in charge of the republic. At least now there can be no doubt among us, we the people, that corporate interests rule, not the people, and that this person named Donald Trump, essentially a corporate entity and not the individual his handlers claim him to be, is only the latest and entirely predictible manifestation of 'decisions' rendered in the body politic years ago. 

That the people's right to self-governence has been weakened once again, to a degree unprecented in the nation's history, is indisputable. The idea that good business practice, defined by the greatest amount of profit accruing from capital investment, cures every social ill, and that businessmen, often vulgar, at best naive and at worst dismissive of the very idea of good government, should be put in charge of government because they are deemed 'good businessmen,' is sad beyond words.

The incoming administration can be seen as the logical progression of US law and policy since Reconstruction--from the 14th Amendment and the 3/5 rule to Harry Truman and the establishment of the secret 'security' government--but it also feels newly fraudulent, as if it actually set out to destroy what it said it would create. The motives of this new dynasty are murky at best, and behind every bold action or statement they make to their target audience is either the sound of contempt for the very audience they most hope to persuade, or a blatant belief in their own dishonesty.  

If the people have spoken, surely they do not know what they have said.

We owe serious thought to the social and political circumstance we find ourselves in.

The least we can do is think.

A young friend goes to hear so-and-so speak, a well-known leftist, a social critic and feminist, thinking she'll clear the air, present an alternative plan he and his other friends can follow. She speaks about global warming and the last furious gasp of capitalism, the things my young friends and his friends already know of the world they live in every single day. She offers no plan when he expected she would. He expected her to say something like, let's all meet up at Fulton and Van Ness and march downtown to the Wells Fargo building with Fuck Trump signs...but she says nothing of the kind. He's furious, feels betrayed. 

We often let others do our thinking for us. 

We must do our own thinking. We must educate ourselves about the history of our country, and then go back even further, to the Mayflower Compact, the Magna Carta and learn for ourselves once again the sources upon which our republic was created. Then we must insist on our individual rights, the sanctity of the social contract between the governed and the government, as determined by the Founding Fathers. And once feeling the great power of the individual, knowing that the central focus of civilization has been, since the beginning of recorded time, the empowerment of the individual, we must use that power ourselves and find ways to express it politically, face to face, in conversations and town meetings, whenever and wherever we can. 

We must think clearly, and often, and then speak and act in ways that matter.