Nov 29, 2016

November 29, 2016: Failed our Institutions, Circling the Bowl, Trumped the American Dream


 
Many people are now saying that our institutions, our political system, our media, our schools, have failed us.  I disagree.  I think that we have failed our institutions.  It was the “Boomers” who have made a pig’s breakfast of governance, who have set the tone.  It is we the people, led the “Generation of Swine”, that has opened the nominating process and then failed to show up to vote leaving the field to the knuckle-dragging ideologues be they Neo-Cons, Neo-Liberals, or the unwashed Teabaggers to seize control.  It was we the people, led by the “Generation of Swine”, who have stopped READING—newspapers, books, magazines—in favor of catching the latest meme now swirling through the “Internets” like so many turds circling the bowl.  It was we the people, led by the “Generation of Swine”, who have failed our educational institutions first by defunding them in favor of vouchers in order to finance the equivalent of the “American Madrasa” in the form of parochial and “on-line” education and thereby electing ourselves out of a well-rounded education.  It was we the people, led by the “Generation of Swine” who have been about the business of transforming our universities into glorified voc-ed centers thereby sacrificing the well-rounded citizen in the singular pursuit of money.  It is we the people, led by the “Generation of Swine”, that have failed our political system by supporting candidates who universally denigrate the very institutions they seek to join.  It is we the people, led by the “Generation of Swine, who have compounded the error by imposing term limits on public service thereby sacrificing experience to the lobbyists and the special interests they represent, and by imposing limits on the ability government to tax.  It is we the people, led by the “Generation of Swine” that having made an ethic of the individual we now compound the error by genuflecting before the altar of ignorant innocence. 

Our institutions are what we make of them and our ancestors bequeathed to us solid institutions that by and large performed the task of providing the greatest good for the greatest number.  Yes, there always has been and continues to be need for improvement, and the history of this country has been a history of struggle to achieve the ideal enshrined in our constitution to “create a more perfect union” in part by “providing for the general welfare”. 

But this generation, the “Generation of Swine”, have gone about the business of vandalizing our institutions by making continual war upon governance.  The mendacity of the swine has now Trumped the American Dream.  We are about to pay a heavy price and we have no one to blame but ourselves.