USA: Nation of Yahoos?
NO WAY!
The majority of Americans are decent, rational, empathetic, hard-working people who are confused and/or aghast at the decline of our country’s original commitment to democracy, freedom of the press, fairness for all, good government, and rejection of autocracy.
We now face two severe problems that threaten democracy in the USA.
- Money Rules Politics, and therefore government. Influence buying, through a vast lobbying system and politicians desperate to raise cash for their next election, is unacceptably corrupting what the founding fathers had in mind.
- Narcissistic Demagogues. A group of self-serving individuals like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Robert Mercer, the Koch brothers, Steve Bannon, Trump, …, saw that the economic and social changes of recent decades gave them their chance to step out of the shadows and into the limelight. Their messages of fear, ANGER, pointing blame at “others”, deep state fantasies, distrust of science/ elites/ the press/ government, etc., inflamed the irrational yahoos among us. For this they were paid handsomely and given positions of power and influence.
It is time for the Americans who really believe in Great American Experiment, as envisioned at our country’s beginning, to get involved and fight back against the thinly veiled autocracy that is trying to undermine America. Interestingly, the same battle of democracy vs autocracy has popped up in many parts of the world in recent times.
The majority of rational people can, and hopefully will, fight off these ugly threats to democratic government, to freedom of the press, and to the environmental health of our planet.