If there were three quick lessons I wish people would understand about government, they are these:

(1) Governments do whatever is necessary to secure and expand their own power and wealth.

(2) Governments have no capacity for morality and will lie about anything large or small.

(3) Governments always put their own interests ahead of those they purport to govern.

That's the dirty truth of it.  Politicians and State-run media corporations can slobber about the selfless and noble souls who sacrifice their lives as "public servants" so that they may lift the people up, but that's all dribble, no bucket.  An honest politician, as if any existed, would tell you politicians are in the business of creating problems where none exist so that they can solve them, declare victory, and parade around as heroes.  While they are fast to proclaim poverty, their vocation is entirely about pecuniary gain.  They engage in the kind of insider trading and quid pro quo that would send anybody else in America straight to prison.  Many of them enter office with lint in their pockets, and many retire as millionaires.  Taxpayers, in effect, pay criminals to represent their interests, and to nobody's surprise, the criminals fleece the taxpayers silly and drop new problems at their doorsteps along the way.  It's all grift and gripe for personal glory.  

That being the case, the populace governed by these charlatans and felons responds to this outrageous behavior and routine dereliction of official duties by coming to one of two possible conclusions.  Either (1) citizens properly deduce that people in government should never be trusted, or (2) they look around at all the fires started by government actors, stick their heads up their own derrières, and decide that only more government could possibly fix the crises already created by too much government in the first place.  I know, I know — how is it possible that so many people choose the foul odor of number two?  I wish it were as simple as pointing out the obvious truth that half the population is running on overheated mental hardware limited by sub-hundred I.Q.s.

I wish I could say, "And that's how we came to have two political parties, one represented by elephants, known as exceptionally smart mammals, and the other by Equus asinus, known universally as the common ass."  However, as Old Guard Republicans have put the "stupid" in the "stupid party" for decades, it is abundantly clear that politicians, regardless of party, will do anything and everything to corroborate the three dirty truths up above, even if they do so while paying lip service to the virtues of limited government and the people's inalienable rights.  Stabbing Americans in their backs is a bipartisan undertaking.  

So here's where the scorecard stands:

Runaway inflation; a collapsing currency set in motion by an unconstitutional central bank that manipulates the dollar and destroys personal savings; a "health emergency" that has been systematically abused to blow up the Bill of Rights; a voting system that nobody trusts because of its inherent and intentional conduciveness for enabling fraud; schoolchildren who have never been dumber yet more indoctrinated by communist claptrap; an unprotected border that has helped destroy communities around the country with crime, division, and drugs; global war against amorphous threats of "terrorism" (which has morphed into a dangerous domestic war against Americans for their political beliefs); and endless attacks on traditional American culture by nasty, self-glamorizing moral poseurs intent on despoiling Western civilization, wrecking Judeo-Christian sanctities, squashing families out of existence, and plundering anything left over to help pay off some Treasury IOUs owed to China.  

Let's be clear: The American people built none of these catastrophes; their worthless government did.  (I think some overrated former president once said some version of that to great applause.)

Now, on the positive side — oh, whom am I kidding?  Right now we have death, debt, and dystopia brought to us by a man with dementia yammering incessantly about "our precious democracy."  Isn't it revealing that the handful who occupy the seat of government are always so insistent on pretending that they represent "democracy"?  That's called propaganda, friends, so that the real majority is linguistically bullied into submission by fewer Americans than have been killed by the China Virus.  How does one king bring ninety-nine lords to heel?  By whispering into each noble's ear that the other ninety-eight are already on his side.  As it was with feudalism, it is today with the American government: how dare you stand up to Congress and the White House?  That's an attack on Democracy itself!

One of Allan Moore's delightfully brutal yet sagacious observations is this: "People shouldn't be afraid of their government.  Governments should be afraid of their people."   I find this notion to be so elemental to any functioning "free system" that I think we would all fare well if it were chiseled onto the marble of every D.C. institution as an obligatory reminder to its inhabitants, not at all different from Ancient Rome's tradition of having a slave continuously whisper into the ears of victorious generals parading triumphantly on chariots through the streets, "Remember that you are but a man!"  

However, if anybody dared to stand before the U.S. Capitol today with a bullhorn reminding lawmakers that "governments should be afraid of their people," I do not think it would be long before the speaker joined the January 6 political prisoners who have been thrown into the dungeon and treated heinously for nearly a year.  To attack "democracy"?  To threaten America?  Heavens to Betsy!  When words are treated as violence, and the U.S. government is allowed to pretend it is America, then everything is an insurrection!  

I know for a fact that D.C.'s propagandists invented an "insurrection" out of thin air earlier this year because (1) the Capitol protesters were armed with nothing more than American flags; (2) only unarmed Capitol protesters were killed by Capitol Police; and (3) you can't overthrow the American government by merely prancing around half-naked and taking selfies in Nancy Pelosi's desk chair.  If the American government is, in fact, considered "overthrown" after the equivalent of a college streak through the quad, why should the Russians ever need tanks or fighter jets to conquer America?  Apparently, sending in the crew from Animal House and letting them rain crazy hijinks down on Congress is sufficient for the U.S. government's full surrender.  Who knew?  No wonder Lindsey Graham urged officers to fire on unarmed American citizens, however boisterous, at will.  "To save 'democracy,' we must kill all the voters," perhaps?  I don't know, just spitballing, but it sounds like a good slogan for the Democrat party.

All of this is to say one thing: America is much more than its government.  The American people and what they want are more important than what the collection of grifter criminals who occupy government offices tell us to believe.  There are no statesmen in the molds of Pericles or Churchill or Washington left.  Politicians know only one word now: "Obey."  Americans should have only one answer: "You first."

Image: Eric Fischer via Flickr, CC BY 2.0 (cropped).

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