What 20th Century French philosopher, historian, and political activist Michel Foucault (no relation to the 19th Century physicist Léon Foucault of pendulum fame) said here is entirely correct, and it’s what has made life in America so jarring over the past decade.
Since the origin of democracy in ancient Greece, and certainly since the founding of the United States 250 years ago, there have always been rival political parties with their competing philosophies on important matters like the proper role of government in our lives. Until recently, however, we lived within certain norms and boundaries that made America generally worthy of praise.
Yet today, we have somehow arrived at a point of pure insanity in the form of presidential criminality and the near complete absence of rule of law, as supported by almost half of U.S. voters.
For the first time in our lives, tens of millions of decent people are waking up to find that our “dominant cultural settings” are not what we believed them to be; in fact, they no longer exist at all.
For most of our lives, many of us boomers have believed that the biggest threat to the United States was our president, starting with Tricky Dick Nixon, the inventor of the “trickle-down economics,” liar Ronald Reagan, and GW (the moron) Bush.
But yes, none of us was prepared for the cold, calculating criminal who is Donald Trump.
There Were Prior Threats to the Nation Stemming from the White House
The fact that human activity is unsustainable has been revealed to us gradually over the last century. Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” was published 63 years ago.
That said, the ideas of climate change, ocean acidification, and loss of biodiversity have been essentially unchallenged by scientists for just the last couple of decades.
The only thing standing in the way of rapid environmental progress is greed, and in the end, that may prove to be an unbeatable foe. Decarbonizing our grid and transportation sector will eventually destroy the fossil fuel industry, a group so powerful that it has a stranglehold, both on our lawmakers and on our corporate-owned media, that works so hard to misinform our citizenry.
It’s still possible that our most senior military leaders will insert themselves in time to prevent some truly catastrophic event here in the United States/abroad.
I keep thinking I’ll read about an exchange like this:
Trump: We’re invading Greenland.
Some four-star general: The f*** we are.
This may sound like a pipe dream, but these are people of real honor and integrity who take their oaths to our constitution quite seriously.
Will the U.S. Top Military Intervene Before Trump Inflicts Irreparable Damage
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