Watching The Democratic Debates last night for a little while

My fear is that The Left is becoming accustomed to leadership that is acceptable only to the Minority.

And that The Right has created a circle so large it now holds The Center, which includes corporate chieftains, Christian pastors, Supreme Court justices, the NRA, small towns in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and even the poet Wallace Stevens were he still alive.

For it is now almost impossible to form one's own political opinions:opinions are now formed for us.

Our political leadership is feeble, but follows a global pattern of feeble political leadership in which No. 1 on The Agenda, no matter how many other agenda points are included on The Agenda, is money--primarily the pursuit of money for personal gain. 

We the People, the subjects of those who rule against our will, are being bullied by cowards, whether the coward is a dictator in Russia, China, or The Phillipines. Donald Trump aspires to Dictatorship but lacks the political experience and acumen to achieve his desired goal.

Though fate draws a thread between politicians, there is only the faintest thread between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Donald Trump, a thread in title only. To say the same thing another way: the thread between FDR and Abraham Lincoln was far more distinct, palpable even, so that one, a citizen for instance, can actually see the thread. Imagine Donald Trump delivering the speech Lyndon Johnson, as flawed as LBJ was, delivered upon enactment of The Voting Rights Act of 1965:it cannot be imagined.

A problem: that there is no longer a Majority. The majority, bedrock of the notion of democracy, exists only as phantom ideal the way the notion of a middle-class now exists as a phantom ideal.

The American political system, such as it is, is now comparable to a Walmart: so many choices, so many of them imported from countries where democracy hasn't been tried or, if tried, has failed, and the choices (a pair of blue jeans for $8.99, a t-shirt for $2.20) hailed as a triumph of capitalism! The problem with each is obvious: the cheaper the product the more likely it is to be thrown away.

The normalization of the abnormal: a phase or a process? For what does it mean that so many women and men aspire to become President of the USA in 2020? 

Lincoln Memorial, Washington DC, June, 2019. Photo by author.