~a column by Colleen O’Brien
When a government whose business is the welfare of its people honestly enhances a population, those people then work with strength because they trust that government, and goodwill and generosity flow both ways because they have reason to trust one another.
Sounds like a pipe dream, doesn’t it? But these are words that stand behind the country we live in. The government that runs this country was organized after a period of autocracy practiced on its people to their final annoyance and resulting rebellion. The original American ideal was honed through a great deal of arguing and final compromise among its founders to a point they agreed on: decency. The decency for all has stumbled along for two and a half centuries as this country matured, regressed, revived, fell back, moved on, always enough of its people trying to live up to its goals.
We are now becoming aware of one of those fall-backs in our existence as a democracy: we are living in a sickening time of loss of decency.
Many families live in areas where even in their own homes, helicopters have landed on the roof of their apartment building, masked hunks have broken into their rooms and dragged them and their naked children out of their apartments at 1 am., thrown them down the stairs and onto the street while other marauders destroyed their rooms. Then, some of the victims were hauled off to a place no one knows.
Many more have been attacked on streets, in front of schools, drinking coffee at a sidewalk café, one dragged away from his fruit stand by masked men pushing and punching and kicking and then shooting them with rubber bullets and tear gas. Call it the season of fear.
Knowing this, I say to myself, from a Mary Oliver poem (The Summer Day), “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life.”
Maintaining dignity, decency and respect for all, unless I persist fiercely, my kids, my grands and my great-grands are in for a long, rough go that will include scarcity of housing (worse than right now), as well as goods, food, energy, full education regarding our history and our future, and the complete disregard for science, which includes the pretended ignorance of climate crises. And, oh yes, laughter that does not come from bullying leaders who have sicced the masked men on us.
We have expected our elected public servants to actually serve us. We as a country have worked for two and a half centuries on an up and down curve toward expanded decency and civility. Right now, we are in a steep downward plunge full of ugly talk, blaming, politicizing and war-mongering every damned thing, from late-night comedians to the removal of historic objects from America’s attic, the Smithsonian Institution. What’s not downright indecent and physically hurtful of people to stealing from a museum, it’s more than tiresome and disgusting as I begin to understand that we are becoming pawns for the perpetrators who are now fully cruel in their stupidity.
We’ve not always been exemplary toward our governmental goals, but goals they are, and each generation keeps bringing them up because it seems there is always a faction that wants everything for themselves.
I wish those greedy for themselves would go live with those they admire (not us, obviously), where that kind of point of view is already in place; Russia, China, North Korea come to mind.
I absolutely do not want my kids and grands living in a stratified country in which only the powerful and wealthy prosper by downgrading the other 99 percent. I don’t want myself living in such a country.
It’s coming to that, or I’m already in it, and if I fight it in moral combat, maybe I won’t have to fight it in mortal combat. Moral combat is the key. A country operating in blatant lack of decency regarding others is not what the outlook for this country was in the first place; it will not be a good place to live. We must do something.
To fight back in a moral rather than physical way? Endless protest marches and gatherings (the town of Jefferson, Iowa, has one every Friday at Chestnut St and Lincoln Way); daily texts, phone calls, letters to ALL elected officials, telling them what I, as employer, demand of them. Phone calls to companies and colleges and lawyers’ offices to question their lack of spine and my intent never to buy from or hire. Other methods of combating in a moral way — humor, irony, song and dance; plays, funny skits on sidewalks or in malls or in grocery stores can do a lot to undermine the self-love of that greedy bully, the tyrant.
Those who incessantly boast of their arrogant view of themselves need to be made fun of. I decided that as much as I’d like to excuse myself from the reality of my times, I can’t stick my head in the sand all the time. I have to read about and watch for what these snakes are doing as long as I can stand it. Then I need to talk to others about how I feel and what we can do. Anyone of writing talent or just plain opinion can make podcasts of their own information, their own outrage and demands. . .as well as make fun of the bullies and greedy-guts fellas as we become fully informed about what they’re really up to.
I know that so much goes on each day it’s difficult to keep up – the BIG Press leads in a purposeful blindness, ignoring or neglecting or choosing not to talk about certain things done by the power-lusting, money-grubbing one-percent. BIG Press owners are often on the side of the oppressors rather than the oppressed, probably because they are or want to be in that upper echelon of more money than honor. Their habit of ignoring their obligation to the First Amendment harms us in such an ignoble way.
For an example of a big corporation sucking up, Google, which possibly 99 percent of us Internet users employ as a search engine for information, has just donated money for the “big beautiful ballroom,” the gold-encrusted $300 million monster of a building that a rude employee of ours has decided he needs to add to OUR White House because “so many people want it.” BS. He acts precisely as what he is, a self-proud contractor who wants his name on all his buildings. In this case, not his own home but ours. No decency, no shame. He’s good at that.
But how dare he. Am I just going to say, “Oh, dear, what can I do about it now?”
Other suck-up donors I might want to avoid enriching by never spending money with them again: Amazon (no news there), Apple, Comcast (which once owned MSNBC, who is in the process of spinning off into a new, publicly traded company called Versant being called MS Now), Hewlett Packard, Microsoft, T-Mobile, Union Pacific Railroad, Meta. This means I need to abandon my cell phone and my writing app. Complicated endeavors but necessary. As long as I stick with them, I am paying for the dancehall that will accommodate a thousand wealthy donors to the lie.
I call or text my Representative and Senators and the places of business I once frequented to tell them what I think about their boot-licking. Sometimes I ask them why they think they need to help a greedy bully do anything; so far no one has answered me. I have wondered where all the stuff – art, paintings, furniture, rugs – from the entire East Wing went when what’s-his-name wrecking-balled that end of OUR house. Apparently, they haven’t found out yet because they never answered my question.
When I keep track of what’s going on, I become tired and over-excited. When I refuse to watch or listen, I am tired, fidgety, ill-humored. Might as well keep informed. Onward:
I know that the theme of the greedy is to keep us watching the bouncing ball of their wilder schemes (big beautiful ballroom being one of these) so they can proceed with their dismantling of our democracy without our noticing. For example, they’re working diligently on ruining our voting system, the backbone of our democracy. It’s chilling how bright they are in gerrymandering, damning mail-in ballots, closing voting places, insisting on deep checking of one’s worthiness to vote . . . on and on. Their deviousness, like the incessant lying they practice to hide it, wears us all down.
Are the billions of dollars suddenly directed to ICE salaries and bonuses spread out among all the other agencies now deployed? — (CBP) Customs and Border Protection, along with the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration), ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives), USMS (US Marshals Service), IRS (Internal Revenue Service). Who knows?
We do know that there’s not much paying of federal employees locked out of work and paycheck because of the shutdown of the government. Because of citizen outrage, at least SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) has been temporarily saved by court order, not the leading politician.
We are as unaware as is the Congress of exactly where the billions that once were legally appropriated only by the Congress are winding up.
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To the ramparts, I tell myself. I’d rather go down fighting as I’m sued for writing what I see as the truth. Or I’m bullied into a black SUV that will transport me . . . where? To a concentration camp? Or just a time-out in a jail? Or to invisibility?
I sound hyperbolic and outrageous, but until we stop the 2025 Project, I have a feeling I’ll be thinking that just about any injustice is not just possible but probable.
