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Bad for Us

Ironically, perhaps even suicidally, we’ve elected the party whose assumption is that “government is bad for us.”

And now it is.

They are that cynical slogan. It’ll be hard to extricate ourselves from this disaster.

That’s why I flew the flag upside down, symbolizing my country in distress. It’s my patriotic gesture, flown despite the ire it might rouse. In the history of our society and government, in relations with worldwide friends, in the inevitable havoc of our precious and inescapable environment – our current government, Executive, Legislative, and Jucidial, is bad for us.

We keep making progress and then getting stuck.

(I’ve inserted lots of jokes in this essay, partly to balance the dismal and dangerous time we’re in. Partly, it’s to make use of the court jester function. Amy Goodman, Rachael Maddow, Lawrence O’Donnell, and Ari Melber make journalist sense. Jon Stewart, John Oliver, and Steven Colbert make it shorter and funnier.)

We’ve blundered. We’ve been duped. We’ve been duped by the manipulating of our media, from Reagan’s eliminating the Fairness Doctrine and resultant Hate Talk Radio, to “Fair and Balanced” Fox News, to Facebook and Twitter/X pushing propaganda, to the so-called Fake News now bemoaning (while enabling) this rolling disaster.

We were reeling from the combined shocks of Covid 19 and the resulting inflation, both worldwide problems. How did various countries do with the COVID epidemic compared to the U.S., and how did various regions of the U.S. do with it? Same with inflation. Rational answers to such questions seem missing. Did Joe Biden control both everywhere as some charge? Worldwide challenges were assigned to him in our compliant media. Relentless ridicule was the winning tactic.

The manipulation of our media and its iconic images isn’t new. This classic photo of George Bush on his manly way out to “clear brush” on his Texas farm skipped over the obvious staged stunt it was. Such chores take an ax, not a maul.

Take, for instance, images of Trump eliciting religious support, even adulation. Here he is shown being prayed over. (Note a prominent black placed to pretend racial inclusiveness. Note Mike Pence.)

See who some claim is the “second coming,” backlit at a sacred moment of prayer. (Pay no attention to the indifferent extras in the background ignoring the profundity of this staged photo shoot. Photoshop or AI should have cleaned them out.)

Candidate Trump bullied his way through protesters using armed police (wondering if he could shoot them in the legs) on his way to a dramatic display of his piety (holding the Bible upside down).

A more telling message was photoshopped into this classic pose.

Cheap shot? An insulting distortion of the sort of man he is? His pesky 34 felonies were over mere bookkeeping mistakes, business expenses, and pay-offs hiding his sleazy romp with a porn star near his sleeping pregnant wife. He paid to hide who he was and is. He lied to us. He’s a skilled liar. Americans might not have voted for him if they knew the sort of man he was and is.

Or maybe they would. Some outsmart the fake news to think for themselves.

There are various crises the news offers for our consideration and care.

Distracted voters think with the Prefaked News, like in this cartoon from 2021. Note the irony, especially considering how the 2025 version would magnify every frame.

What should we be looking out for?

Having the news misdirect our view and ire isn’t new. Consider this recent satire about so-called patriots.

Such voters have grown up with the supposed inspired leadership of conservatives and the GOP. They don’t see how Republicans have devolved.

The so-called “Party of Lincoln” now dismisses and attacks Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

They’ve been shown carefully crafted, utterly staged images of a tough guy commander-in-chief. The familiar supposed mug shot from being charged for those 34 felonies had a well-lit view of his stern glare.

I didn’t know police departments made such flattering portraits! Odd it turned out this way, considering he had worn a different tie that day, a tie sporting the loser Democratic color.

But why fret over the skilled staging of creating an elaborate, ongoing lie? We’ve been told government is bad for us, and that politicians only lie. What harm could come from their play?

We were misled by billionaire braggarts. Those who magnified shallow gripes on social media helped sway the 2016 and 2024 elections. They sit on the Diaz behind the new president, gloating.

I wonder how many Americans know how many millions there are in a billion. I wonder how many Americans know how much the ultra-rich were taxed in the prosperous 50s and how much they pay now. I wonder how many Americans know how many times more a typical CEO made compared to their workers in those 50s and now. How worried should we be to protect billionaires from paying fair taxes? How much do they spend to avoid paying such taxes?

A mere ten million dollars from Peter Thiel helped get J.D. Vance to the Senate (he’s the spooky-eyed newcomer, now Vice President). That was mere chump change compared to Elon Musk’s twenty-seven times more than that to push Donald Trump on us. He donated a quarter billion dollars to sit near the new president and eventually cash in on this “investment.” (Do you have $10,000,000 or $270,000,000 to counter these?) Demented megalomaniacs are taking a wrecking ball to our United States of America. They’ll upend everything, rake in profits, and smirk.

They’ll spend more attacking our government than supporting it. They may have resented paying into the Deposit Insurance Fund that rescued them last March, but they’ll take the bailout and then attack the system that provided it.

We’ve been had. Americans, beset by constant commercial and political ads, did their distracted best to vote.

Mother Earth has been had. We’ll blow a fossil fuel fart into her face – silent (because car and truck mufflers hide the roar of what we’re regularly doing) but deadly. Not just her but our children and theirs will endure the ecosystem havoc fossil fuels have created and will keep creating. The fossil fuel investments into disinformation and lobbying will pay off big for them for a while. Not so for those suffering the consequences now and in decades and centuries to come.

They’ve won. The cryptocurrency crowd has won. Look for scams grander than we’ve ever seen! Digital bubbles.

The corporations that would have had to regulate their relations with labor and our environment have won. They can avoid paying taxes from the wealth their conniving and callousness has garnered – nothing to the society that hosts them. They’ll ravage our society and environment with unhampered glee and greed. There’ll be no pesky “regulations” to impede their profits.

Selfish anti-tax crusaders have won. It’s as if the only thing we’re allowed to complain about is “taxes,” even though the tax most regular people pay is to our own and each other’s Social Security. When resenting taxes, we ignore all we pay for: medical care, various insurances, banking, housing, groceries, etc. Extraordinary profits from such commerce are sacred cows; meanwhile, we tie our government to a whipping post.

Meanwhile, the filthy rich will get all that much filthier. They won’t know they’re filthy. They’re investors in an abstract system of floating numbers disconnected from what generates those profits. Amorality hides immorality.

The petty moralists have won. With God on their side (supposedly, as such zealots assume) they can rule those who won’t live by their preposterous theology and punitive attitude.

Based on such theology, the Christian Church uses Jesus’ name to impose teachings and practices utterly alien to the sort of man Jesus was. Jesus’ last name wasn’t Christ. That was a title placed on him by Paul and others long after he died. Tragically, the church they founded has used poor, defenseless Jesus to drag the shadow of the cross across the generations and continents.

Is it blasphemy to accuse self-righteous Evangelicals of helping impose a person utterly opposite to Jesus on us? Is it blasphemy to accuse Netanyahu of engaging in apartheid and racist murder in Gaza and the West Bank, partly justified by old racist Bible verses?

https://www.nbcnews.com/video/explosions-by-israeli-military-destroy-dozens-of-buildings-in-west-bank-230897733946

I faulted Democrats for supplying Israel’s weapons in its campaign to murder hapless Palestinians en masse. About 50,000, largely women and children, have been killed, mostly innocent “collateral damage” victims of supposed “self-defense,” but also revenge. Gaza is leveled, and ready for “development.” (It’d be an ideal place for Israelis to swap with Palestinians in a two-state solution, each living in the other’s historic land!)

Now Trump wants to evacuate nearly two million Palestinians from their homeland so we (meaning he) can rebuild it as a “Riviera of the Middle East,” no doubt with big, flashy Trump hotels and casinos. The world’s unspecified “people” would live there. Supposedly, that would include Palestinians, which is doublespeak, for he also seeks to relocate Palestinians to countries that don’t want them. As is Greenland and Panama, he’d send in American troops to do so. Would Gaza be another new state in the U.S., our expanding Empire? Netanyahu and Trump quickly showed up, each sporting the signature color tie of the other, to gloat and plot.

Is God on a side? Would He bomb a mosque?

As Christian Nationalism once again intrudes into our secular democracy, we would best remember those humanistic founders accused of atheism. Long after Socrates’ unjust death, our founders suffered such accusations but founded a nation not beholden to any particular religion. The freedom of your religion is also freedom from someone else’s. Thank God for Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson. Thank God for others like Robert Ingersol. Some of the best Americans avoid all religion except in living a good life.

The Republicans have won. God damn Republicans. Whatever wisdom their party once represented – things like self-initiative and balanced budgets – has been coopted into a coup, a purge, a betrayal of any e pluribis unum they might have honored. My dad and uncle were Republicans; I doubt they’d approve of the current ones. Republicans themselves have been had. If they have integrity and bravery, they’re hiding it. Divisive hatefulness will be the law.

Those who dared try to apply the law to an obvious and unapologetic insurrection and its leader will now be hounded with retribution, the very “weaponization of our Department of Justice” he whined about, squirmed out of, and now will inflict.

Defending Trump, no matter what, some Republican Representatives claim they hadn’t even seen the proceedings or report of the January 6th Committee. They’re willfully ignorant and stubbornly stupid. As with Climate Change and the worst insurrection in our country’s history, they’ll not look, not think, not care.

Instead, they’ll cheer on and enable an evil Wizard of Oz who doesn’t even hide behind a curtain. Are flying monkeys next?

Groping around for sense in this senselessness we’re in, I turned to old Thomas Paine. Paine’s “Common Sense” and”The American Crisis” founded the American Revolution more than any other writer. He devoted profits from it back to the Revolution. He was a Deist and a radical humanistic egalitarian. He was a celebrity for our cause in France.

But the French Revolution (particularly the beheadings) scared the British, specifically Edmund Burke, an English aristocrat who detested democratic self-rule. Paine took on such inherited wealth. He didn’t favor giving our freeborn power over to dominating aristocrats and their old documents. In his 1894 “The Rights of Man,” he explained such entrenched power. “This is the general character of aristocracy or what are called Nobles or Nobility, or rather No-ability.”

Our aristocratic megalomaniac king wants loyalty, not ability. Our current nobility doesn’t care what their social media algorithms have done to us. They have pushed a Mad King on us. He wants a good-looking blonde woman with a Christian cross to intone crass chaos, to lie with a smile. They claim to be bypassing DEI to favor merit, meaning “being worthy of praise due to performance,” but in doing so, they install utterly meritless celebrities Unqualified henchmen and henchwomen are eliminating those of merit by the thousands. Trump merely calls an agency a “disaster,” never explaining the troubles of vast agencies, while simply decimating them no matter what it does to those working there or the intended function. Let children starve and democracy flounder because Trump and Musk don’t like USAID.

He wants adoration and obedience, not merit. Given how a corrupted Supreme Court has given him a preemptive pardon for breaking laws as a president – if you ever stroll on 5th Avenue in New York City, be wary; he might test out how far he can take such permission!

A well-funded and carefully crafted coup has been in place for decades. Orwell’s “1984” went from warning to game plan. They used Machaevelli’s advice to “The Prince” to use “The Prince of Peace” on us (appear pious, lie skillfully, and worse as patriotic duty). On Day One they were ready to invade and take over key governmental agencies. On Day One they released a nightmare of precisely-crafted bureaucratic tricks to agonize duly-appointed workers and administrators. On Day One thousands of loyal citizens lost their jobs for political reasons.

“No one feels safe to go anywhere near the Ronald Reagan building,” said someone at the USAID office. “We just had Elon Musk call us a criminal organization… We know we are being surveilled by DOGE.” When Trump was asked about disbanding what Congress had established, he said, “These people are lunatics and if it comes to fraud, you wouldn’t have to have an act of Congress.” Typical of Trump;s pronouncements, neither “lunatics” nor “fraud” were explained or justified to empower an unofficial with a pretend security force to seize our sensitive personal data.

The Supreme Court, whose nominees were unjustly blocked by Republicans during the Obama administration, was then further stuffed with right-wingers during Trump’s first term. Ending Roe v Wade was their first task. They catered to petty moralists to claim control of women’s bodies and lives. They protect life up until the moment of birth, then they abandon it. No economic or emotional support accompanies their punitive Puritan laws.

While the justices have wily evaded any official connection to Opus Dei and other hard right-wing Catholic organizations, their primary promoter, Leonard Leo, is proudly and militantly conservative Catholic. He, of the Federalist Society, the conservative think tank picking our justices in recent decades, has a mission: to crush “liberal dominance.” His Rule of Law Trust (a dark money group) had amassed $200 million for the 2022 election and he manages the conservative Marble Foundation, recently given over a billion dollars. Justices Scalia, Thomas, Alito, Roberts, Kavanaugh, Barrett, and Sotomayor (though she is more liberal) have all come through that Federalist portal. This cadre of conservative Catholic types now rules supremely.

Other than Roe v Wade, consider what else they’ve recently done.

The Supreme Court, having declared corporations to be “persons,” has also declared their vast money as their “free speech,” even dark money hidden from our scrutiny. Such gigantic voices can overwhelm us mere ordinary persons, but we won’t know who amplifies the speakers. Such corporate persons long ago were instructed to only pursue profits as their fiduciary responsibility, not worthy considerations about society or our environment (In Dodge v Ford). Adam Smith’s famous assumption that universal selfishness is moderated by the invisible hand of the free market, was conveniently shortened, for he also advised looking to “the common good.” But that sort of requirement of our corporations is long forgotten. Unlike in other countries, our corporations are not expected or required to tend to the common good. The best psychopathic CEOs get paid the most despite what they do to our society and environment.

Only rarely does someone take revenge on their back. Could modern guillotines be far behind?

Not only did Donald Trump announce early on that the election would be rigged, he used that planned tactic to incite and excuse the insurrection. He resents that he was investigated at all for what he blatantly did, launching retribution on all those involved. He is evading the largest investigation in American history. He lies, commits crimes, and complains when accused or caught. Only now, he will purge them all, it all.

Worse, he simultaneously pardoned all those admitting guilt for attacking Capitol police, unleashed the most violent of them on our streets, denied protection to those targeted by foreign and domestic terrorist persons or groups, and fired three-fourths of the FBI for doing their job! He complained justice was being weaponized on him only to weaponize justice against thousands of career policemen. Gone too will be all those records of past and intended domestic terrorism. One of his rationales on who to fire was based on whether they had voted Democratic. How is this not a coup in our face?

Remember BLM? Remember how it once stood for Black Lives Matter because blacks were being regularly attacked and killed by police? Remember how those protests against such police behavior then erupted in destructive riots in places like Portland, Oregon, and the meaning of BLM lost concern for blacks and applied it to the police? Remember how hundreds of angry blacks attacked our Capitol with weapons and murderous intent, wiping their shit on the walls of our hallowed center?

Oops, that last one didn’t happen.

Imagine, though, that it had. Imagine what Trump and his Republicans would have said and done about such an insulting assault. Would they be glorified as patriots? Has he modeled how we should treat our government when we don’t like something about it?

He’s a divider in chief, waging insult and assault on over half the country. He claims he has “a mandate,” conveniently forgetting more people voted for Biden or someone else than him. Of the 66% of eligible voters who voted, 77,935,722 voted for Biden or other presidential candidates, while 77,302,580 voted for Trump, a slight but telling majority. There is no “mandate” to ignore half the country.

The red/blue maps of a supposed landslide victory and resulting mandates are based on a clunky Electoral College system. Both solid red and solid blue are misleading graphics, lies that discount the varied and disbursed people that we all together are. Consider similar misleading versions from 1964 when Johnson won over Goldwater and the Facebook map of 2024.

Both maps could create “mandates” that ignore and dismiss the varied Americans involved. Were there no conservatives in Oklahoma in 1964 and no liberals there today?

He and his cannot see this or don’t care to see it. Since Gingrich’s and Rove’s use of divisive hate words fueling the Tea Party and Hate Talk Radio, the tendency to use simple-minded totalistic thinking has effectively taken over. Relentless ridicule and stubborn obstruction turned people against “Congress” as if both houses deserved that disgust equally. Trump upped it. It was “crooked Hilary,” or “the Biden crime family,” which is “totally corrupt,” “a disaster” about which you had better “fight like hell” or “you won’t have a country anymore.” He frantically warned about all the “rapists and murderers” immigrants are, then rounds up children. Mostly brown ones – for now.

The mad king divides us in our country and divides our country from our allies and friends. He’s a sociopathic narcissist who likes to be known for his brash behaviors and resulting chaos. For all we know, he could be Putin’s Puppet. (For God’s sake, release the Pee Tapes! I’d rather deal with that sleazy embarrassment than the worldwide havoc he and Musk impose.)

He, Musk, and their enablers mock our country. They step on it on their way to transnational dominance. Countries and their laws are a mere annoyance for the arrogant ultra-rich. They will trounch ordinary persons to let corporate “persons” do whatever they want. How is this not fascism?

Musk’s Starlink communication satellite system is not our government’s program. SpaceX has put nearly 7,000 in worldwide orbit. This is already two-thirds of the active satellites in orbit. It plans to deploy 12,000, which could expand to over 34,000. Given Musk’s takeover of Twitter, now called X, and his slant there, and his Nazi salute, what might be his hidden intent? What government could constrain him?

Self-declared “patriots” in military garb and some with actual guns claimed they were “taking our country back.” Their complaints were mostly emotional. They weren’t big on saying which regulations ought to be examined. They weren’t big on explaining what they’d do instead. Nor were they cognisant of how resented taxes for the lower class are mostly investments in their own long-term social security. Nor have they explained what sort of country they’d institute. We’ve gone from assured Social Security to anxious social insecurity. We have well-armed people angrily threatening to use their “2nd Amendment Rights” while ignoring those crucial words in it: “well regulated.”

What could go wrong?

Consider the longer history of we European types. Self-righteous “God on our side” zealots have often been our nemesis. Didn’t Rome fall when it pushed its empire too far? Wasn’t the Inquisition a horrid fest of sadism on those liberals who didn’t believe right? Hadn’t we come to value the Enlightenment and a humanistic self-run, secular democratic republic over the imposed dogmas of monarchs and popes?

America was founded on not letting such types and forces rule. At our country’s founding, we learned that although there can always be those who would take over, we don’t have to let them do it. The rabble insurrectionists, the pretend patriots, the lofty and hidden corporate boards and CEOs, the masterfully staged social media manipulators – none of these should be our rulers.

Thomas Paine had grander hopes for us. He saw our inherent and unalienable American human rights as humanity’s. “The cause of America is in great measure the cause of all mankind,” he wrote and hoped.

I’ve expressed the fears many of us are feeling. Some will laugh at such fears and feelings. They’ll joke about “liberal tears.” Let’s consider such words as conservative and liberal.

Nice list, but all that liberal winning is done now. Plan-ahead, no-holds-barred, fearful, hateful, Republican-enabled fascism is winning now.

Let’s remember the sort of things an earlier fascist did. See if it looks familiar to Trump’s way.

Let’s remember why I would toss around such terms, particularly “fascism.”

You might think I have only fear and one-sided criticism. Not so. I have a glimmer of hope that RFK could root out corporate influence in our FDA and HHS. Not likely, given how entrenched corporate media and lobbying are in our governmental/social system. Both sides have to run the compromised system they’ve inherited. Could Elon Musk simplify our government and make it and our society more efficient and prosperous? Could he help promote environmental rescue and revival? Not likely, given his and his bros’s hands in the cookie jar. Not likely, given his and Musk’s utterly divisive sociopathic narcissism. If I’m proven wrong on all this, I’ll admit it and cheer on the success. Don’t hold your breath.

Breathe.

I’ll close this screed with a child’s version of the sort of democracy I also wish we had.

Byron has been using his writing and public speaking to engage, challenge and inspire audiences for over 40 years. Reverend Carrier's mission is to rescue and revive our earthly Eden, including our human worth and potential. If you enjoy his work, consider supporting him with Patreon.

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Jim-el
Jim-el
23 minutes ago

Powerful message, well done. I wish you hadn’t had to compose that, but I’m glad you did, and I’m glad you got it out to the world before the general shutdown.

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