Tossed into the trash
There is much to loathe about the way that our government is run. Corruption, greed, self-service, graft and a vast affirmation of the Dunning-Kruger Effect is enough to keeps cooler heads wagging in dismay. That those rueful characteristics are endemic to human organizations may very well be an unavoidable unpleasantness. (At least until Gene Roddenberry’s ‘Federation of Planets’ comes to power.)
However, one of the most disturbing, persistent claims from the Right is that government is not here to protect the populace from corporate malfeasance or disease, or famine, or flood or disaster – other than the disaster of military assault or invasion, of course.
Pish-posh!
The primary function of a representational democracy is to provide protection to the people. This inviolable tenet is the bedrock of our Constitution. Our government is here to protect us from military encroachment, yes, but also from the more serious, consequential vagaries of life that corporate malevolence, a morbid pandemic, systemic racism, or structural economic disadvantage may impose.
‘Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness’ is the raison d’être of our Republic. So was it written in the 18th century. Thusly was the Republic conceived and founded, upon the Humanism of the Enlightenment. Protecting Life, ensuring Liberty and assisting in the Pursuit of Happiness is the principle justification for our government. Dictators, despots, kings and tyrants were put forever on notice. This was to be the way of modern governance; by the will of the People without fealty to class, blood-line or heredity.
Woefully, the Republican Party and most pointedly, the Trumpian/MAGA/Q mutation of the Grand Old Party has tossed all that into the trash. They erroneously deem that bedrock tenet humbug and blather. They toss aside the norms in favor of their latest, most perverse iteration of ‘Deep State’ with specious and unsubstantiated clamoring about pedophile rings, cabals, socialism and secret societies.
Such drivel is perversely entertaining, to be sure, but to take it as truth, to supplant the tenets of our Republic with such utter twaddle is more than an egregious error. It is sedition; tantamount to the treason committed by Lee, Longstreet, Hood, Jackson, Bragg, Pickett and Jefferson Davis. It must not be tolerated or else our tolerance will be rewarded with a fascist dictatorship.
