Thank you for these clearly written thoughts. Sometimes I get too scattered to be clear. What I do is write postcards to voters every day. I write in an in-person group. In zooms. And at home alone watching detective shows where bad people get caught and punished. We’re all so Justice deprived. We must do whatever we can. Each in our own way. I am so disheartened, however by the lack of empathy and compassion. It’s difficult to stoy positive but we must.
Yes positive is the only way to go or we'll all sink. A lot of people need to start writing about what our goals are as Americans and the qualities we want to emulate and how to treat each other. That seems to have gotten lost somewhere among many of us. But this thuggery, disrespect, cruelty, disregard of law, order and respected norms and lack of service to the American people does not represent us and is an existential danger to all of our futures as it grows out of control. But what do you do when anything we say as 'the people' or do in a civic way is ignored, disregarded and our civility taken advantage of and used against us?
These are all great points and need to be hammered home again and again. I would urge you to send this to newspapers, either as a reader letter or an editorial.
Be happy I lost the first part of my comment. I relied on past Presidents who appointed and listened to their advisors to help them to learn things they didn't already know, until tRump fired them. I knew we would have to endure his idiocy at least one term, but then he got in a second time. Congress acted as if he were a wayward child, and he didn't know better. It would pass, and the only thing that passed was his stinky gas.
Add in Musk and you have a sinister team, however, it's no surprise there was a war of egos, and Musk is gone. Whenever Democrats get back their majority, if they ever do, they need to write job descriptions for any political candidates and perhaps even have to pass a "Civil Service" test like here in California to make sure they know how our government was set up to run (in great detail) and full knowledge of the Constitution. At least we would have something in writing that said he understood the rules and laws instead of claiming he had no idea. Relying on an outdated Constitution that is vague enough in its language to allow for endless appeals is like relying on voodoo mysticism to interpret the law.
Maybe the DOJ terms needs to straddle 2 years into each Administration. Trump would have certainly been in jail by now, and the frantic swoop to dismantle regulatory commissions would not take people by surprise because they would have already been in place for 2 years of the current administration. It was just too easy to pull this off before anyone realized what was going on.
The Supreme Court needs to be term limited. It is demonstrated that these life long assignments lead to corruption of our country as well as the politicians, and they also need absolute dictates for accountability. I can just see Clarence Thomas and his wife having a big fall-out and a lot of stuff coming to the surface. She and Musk, Hmmmm....
This is not hard, we just have a mostly lazy and/or corrupt Congress who doesn't want to be bothered. It is still difficult for me to believe that the wealthy and powerful are not seen as average citizens of the U.S.A. that poop and get dressed the same as the rest of us, yet if we did the same illegal things that tRump and his minions have gotten away with, we would have been thrown in jail immediately.
Congress needs to clean up and update our guiding principles to be air-tight, but what do I know? I'm just a law abiding citizen.
Thanks for sharing this Cecil. Here in Australia we look on in disbelief. Even people not politically engaged talk about the ‘American experience’ and this influenced our recent election results. We held the line. For now at least.
Thank you for these clearly written thoughts. Sometimes I get too scattered to be clear. What I do is write postcards to voters every day. I write in an in-person group. In zooms. And at home alone watching detective shows where bad people get caught and punished. We’re all so Justice deprived. We must do whatever we can. Each in our own way. I am so disheartened, however by the lack of empathy and compassion. It’s difficult to stoy positive but we must.
Yes positive is the only way to go or we'll all sink. A lot of people need to start writing about what our goals are as Americans and the qualities we want to emulate and how to treat each other. That seems to have gotten lost somewhere among many of us. But this thuggery, disrespect, cruelty, disregard of law, order and respected norms and lack of service to the American people does not represent us and is an existential danger to all of our futures as it grows out of control. But what do you do when anything we say as 'the people' or do in a civic way is ignored, disregarded and our civility taken advantage of and used against us?
Cecil,
These are all great points and need to be hammered home again and again. I would urge you to send this to newspapers, either as a reader letter or an editorial.
Be happy I lost the first part of my comment. I relied on past Presidents who appointed and listened to their advisors to help them to learn things they didn't already know, until tRump fired them. I knew we would have to endure his idiocy at least one term, but then he got in a second time. Congress acted as if he were a wayward child, and he didn't know better. It would pass, and the only thing that passed was his stinky gas.
Add in Musk and you have a sinister team, however, it's no surprise there was a war of egos, and Musk is gone. Whenever Democrats get back their majority, if they ever do, they need to write job descriptions for any political candidates and perhaps even have to pass a "Civil Service" test like here in California to make sure they know how our government was set up to run (in great detail) and full knowledge of the Constitution. At least we would have something in writing that said he understood the rules and laws instead of claiming he had no idea. Relying on an outdated Constitution that is vague enough in its language to allow for endless appeals is like relying on voodoo mysticism to interpret the law.
Maybe the DOJ terms needs to straddle 2 years into each Administration. Trump would have certainly been in jail by now, and the frantic swoop to dismantle regulatory commissions would not take people by surprise because they would have already been in place for 2 years of the current administration. It was just too easy to pull this off before anyone realized what was going on.
The Supreme Court needs to be term limited. It is demonstrated that these life long assignments lead to corruption of our country as well as the politicians, and they also need absolute dictates for accountability. I can just see Clarence Thomas and his wife having a big fall-out and a lot of stuff coming to the surface. She and Musk, Hmmmm....
This is not hard, we just have a mostly lazy and/or corrupt Congress who doesn't want to be bothered. It is still difficult for me to believe that the wealthy and powerful are not seen as average citizens of the U.S.A. that poop and get dressed the same as the rest of us, yet if we did the same illegal things that tRump and his minions have gotten away with, we would have been thrown in jail immediately.
Congress needs to clean up and update our guiding principles to be air-tight, but what do I know? I'm just a law abiding citizen.
Thanks for sharing this Cecil. Here in Australia we look on in disbelief. Even people not politically engaged talk about the ‘American experience’ and this influenced our recent election results. We held the line. For now at least.
Keep on sharing your thoughts.
Bob
Thanks Bob!