So, yesterday, Steve Bannon gets a 4-month prison sentence and a $6,500 fine and Donald Trump gets served a subpoena to testify before the January 6th Committee. Or as Grandpa used to say, ‘eince fur dem zwei,’ (read: two for the price of one.)
Back in 2016, Bannon was ranting about how he and Trump were going to ‘destroy’ the Establishment and create a new, anti-globalist movement that would totally transform the traditional, national state.
And then along comes Trump with his MAGA movement which he claims was a response to the ‘failed’ policies of both the Socialist-Communist Democrats on the Left as well as the lack of a true, conservative approach from the RINO Republicans on the Right.
Where does this leave us? Here’s CNN telling us what the January 6th riot was all about: “The result has been to raise the stakes in the ideological polarization of the parties that has been reshaping American politics for decades.”
Exactly what reshaping is CNN talking about? It’s the reshaping that the Fake News continues to obsess about with its endless attempt to picture America as being on the verge of a catastrophic political collapse.
After all, since global warming doesn’t get everyone all hot and bothered (pardon the pun) anymore, and now that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine hasn’t resulted in the outbreak of World War III, how do we keep the click-rate high enough to generate enough advertising revenue to keep everyone on the editorial staff employed?
The way to do it is to invent some looming, apocalyptic calamity that will change everything in a complete and total way. And what could be a greater crisis than a fundamental alteration, indeed disappearance, of the way that America is governed because after all, just about everyone needs the government for something, right?
You think Bannon has been shooting his mouth off about smashing the Establishment to bits for the past ten years without trying to take advantage of this narrative in a financial kind of way? You think that Trump’s invention of the MAGA ‘movement’ hasn’t been anything other than an attempt to bolster his revenues now that the LIV golf league is becoming nothing more than what Grandpa would call ‘drek?’ (read: sh*t.)
Liberals still cling to the shopworn cliché that public service is something we do because we need government to get involved whenever something happens that threatens society in a fundamental, widespread way. That was how FDR justified the New Deal, but that was then, this is now.
The role of government today is to provide opportunities to scam some of the $9 billion that will be spent for the midterm election and get ready to grease the rails for the money that will start coming in for 2024.
And let’s understand something about all that money, okay? It’s cash. It’s not some phony IOU or an entry in some financial ledger which may bear little or no relationship to how much real money is on hand.
Since 1980 and the so-called Reagan ‘revolution,’ we have held 21 elections with #22 about to occur. During this span of years, the GOP has controlled the Executive Branch for 24 years, the Democrats have been in charge for 18 years. Advantage – red team.
During those same 42 years, the GOP has controlled the House for 20 years, the Democrats have been in the majority for 22 years. Advantage – blue.
On the Senate side, the Democrats have been in charge for 16 years, the GOP has been the majority in the Upper House for 26 years. Neither party has ever held a 60-seat majority, which means nothing gets done.
Actually, both chambers get the one thing done that they have to get done every year – they vote a budget. And the reason the budget gets passed by Congress and signed by the President is because of all the advanced nation-states, the United States has the largest percentage of its daily workforce receiving a government paycheck.
That’s right. For all the talk about how we are capitalist country and Socialism is something which exists ‘over there,’ what we all buy, consume, or resell at a garage sale is dependent on something known as ‘revenue sharing.’ You can thank a Republican President named Richard Nixon for inventing that one, okay?
Nobody, not Trump, not Bannon, not anyone else, is about to threaten this state of affairs.
What we have, thanks to the internet, is a verbal polarization because that’s what generates clicks. As Grandpa would say, ‘gai gezinta hai,’ (read: big deal about nothing.)
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