The events of the past several weeks in Puerto Rico, leading to the ouster of the island's corrupt Governor, ought to be an object lesson for all of us in the rest of the United States. And yes, this is your periodic reminder that, contrary to what the crypto-fascists in social media tell you, Puerto Rico is part of the United States, even if it isn't yet an actual state itself.
As if the residents of Puerto Rico haven't suffered enough at the hands of Hurricane Maria, and the far tinier hands of T****, it has also had to deal with extensive abuse of power within its own territorial government, abuse that has added to the slowness of the island's recovery from Maria. Puerto Rico, in that sense, has been a mirror image of government on the mainland, where we have a national government that is paralyzed by Republican corruption and Democratic fecklessness.
Which brings to mind a question I have been asking myself many times, as I look at the streets of this country, and especially the streets of our nation's capital:
Where are the people?
In earlier times of crisis, the people--the ultimate government not just of democracies, but of any society, as the end of the Cold War demonstrated--took to the streets, just as the people of Puerto Rico did over the past fifteen days.
They marched.
They demonstrated.
They occupied buildings.
They made themselves the focus of media attention, not just here but around the world.
And, perhaps above all, they did one thing that was perhaps more important than all of the other things.
They didn't go away.
Woody Allen is famously credited with saying that 80 percent of life is showing up. Woody is a former cultural hero of mine (former for reasons that I hope are obvious), so I would like to be able to attribute that quote to a better human being. As it turns out, I probably can't.
And that's a shame, because it's absolutely true. And, when it comes to protecting the rights of all of us, it's absolutely essential.
Almost from the miserable moment T**** was elected, perhaps by the Russians, the MSM mantra has been that American institutions are big enough, powerful enough, and enduring enough to contain and repair any damage that might be done to our system by the Slumlord-in-Chief. The MSM wanted to believe it, and, frankly, so did the rest of us.
The ugly truth of the matter is that, when it comes to the need to fight for freedom, a necessity that the founders of this nation were not afraid to look right in the eye, we've become fat and lazy. We are victims not only of our accrued political, military and economy power, but also of our own material standard of living, which has successfully managed, to a far larger extent than we realize, to separate the words "hard" and "work" from each other. We have so many devices taking care of so many aspects of our lives that we assume our political system works the same way, and that (for better and for worse) it will just keep running on cruise control without any need for us to do more than perhaps press an occasional button by voting. But only when we're in the mood, of course.
Well, folks, if running on cruise control worked for us in the recent past (and I'm definitely a dissenter on that point), it sure isn't working now. Because our institutions are, literally right and left, failing us.
Wall Street? It's too busy licking its chops at the fruits of tax cuts and deregulation, even as basic services wither away and our planet melts around us. The media? Yes, the supposedly knee-jerk-liberal MSM. Please. Give me a break. They're so completely corporate in their outlook on life that they only care about getting clicks and eyeballs. Say whatever else you will about T****; he routinely delivers those with Prussian efficiency.
And our national government? Our marvelous system of checks and balances? It's almost entirely a system of donor checks and campaign account balances. This is why we have a Supreme Court stuffed in the least democratic way possible with right-wing ribbon clerks. This is why the White House has a Grifter-in-Chief leading an Administration of lobbyists and other grifters. It has, for all practical purposes, become a henhouse not merely guarded by foxes, but full of them--and all of them whining that we haven't been cooperative enough in feeding them.
And, perhaps worst of all, it's why we have a Congress divided into a Senate led by a Senator who almost surely is a foreign agent, and a House led by a Speaker more enamored of keeping her job rather than keeping the Republic a Republic, hoping that Robert Mueller will do her job for her.
Well, he tried. He did his loyal and honest best, in testifying last week before then House Judiciary Committee. And, because he stammered a little and had to walk back one answer to a question, the right-wing echo chamber was ready to declare him an incontinent puppet of Hillarycrats. So much for Mueller. So much for the Democratic House. So much for the willingness of the Republican Party and its supporters (with a handful of noble exceptions) to put country first, and party second. For that matter, so much for the willingness of Mueller's detractors, who overlooked the withering substance of his testimony, to obey the law and not diagnose a patient they have not met, nor one that they are qualified to diagnose.
Do you get it now?
Do you really wanted to be saved from the T**** nightmare that continues to unfold? The one that may very well never end with the next election?
Then be like Puerto Rico.
Take to the streets, as its people did.
As your ancestors did.
As your grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and in-laws did.
And, above all, before it's really too late.
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