Eliminating All Other Possibilities

I do a lot of troubled thinking these days. I'll bet many United States citizens do. 

The actions that politicians have been taking recently seem somehow completely removed from the sorts of things we would expect reasonable, intelligent, responsible people to do.

Politicians are allowing corporations to knock the tops off of our mountains. They are forbidding citizens, even physicians, to disclose what chemicals are entering our water tables from fracking operations. They are allowing fracking to continue in areas where it has caused water to burn, and where it has caused earthquakes in lands where earthquakes have never been.

Politicians are exempting themselves from punishment for breaking laws, like insider trading and income tax evasion, for which the citizens of this country are sent to prison.

Politicians have passed laws like the Patriot Act and the ADAA, which are in no way Constitutional. They are passing laws every day that allow them to monitor every word we say, or text, or type, or e-mail. They are trying to pass laws that will allow them, at will, to shut down the greatest form of mass communication which mankind has ever conceived. And they have told us, while looking us right in the eye, that they have now devised a way to twist and torture the Constitution in such a way as to allow them to kill any American citizen, at will, with no trial, whenever and wherever they choose to do so.

Politicians are eliminating the rights of citizens, even some who have voted for their entire adult lives, ever to do so again. Politicians are, in at least one of our states, simply removing the right of self-government from the citizens who live there, and overturning any laws or protections those citizens thought they had.

Politicians are still saying, in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, evidence of which they are certainly aware, that legalizing drugs, taxing them, regulating them would be worse than the alternative. Worse than the enormous criminal culture, the beheadings, the shootings, the kidnappings, the targeting of our children, the imprisonment of millions, all of which have been spawned by the war on drugs. Politicians claim, while looking us right in the eye, that their war on drugs is sacred, and honorable, and non-negotiable. They are strangely silent when asked if donations from large prison corporations, or money from property seizures have anything to do with the never-ending war.

Politicians are allowing people to be evicted from their homes by large corporations that have committed the most blatant and destructive acts of fraud we have ever seen in this nation. Fraud that did more damage than we have seen in our lifetimes. Politicians are allowing the people who were wronged by those corporations to suffer, while allowing the guilty corporations to carry on as if they had done nothing illegal.

Anyone can see that none of this is right. None of this is the way America is meant to be. It is, in fact, practically the through-the-looking-glass version of the way America is meant to be. And that's what worries me. Politicians are going about their business, continuing to do these things, in spite of the obvious fact that what they are doing is wrong, in spite of the outrage of the people they were hired to represent.

Why have they decided to behave, unapologetically, in such an abhorrent manner? They wage their wars on the poor, on women, on racial minorities, and these days they hardly even try to justify their actions. It is as if they don't know, or care, that we are watching their speeches, their interviews, their pandering performances in the halls of government, with looks of betrayal, of horror, of revulsion on our faces. 

It has begun to dawn on me that perhaps politicians truly do not care what We the People think. It has begun to dawn on me that perhaps they know, or at least believe, that there is really nothing we can do about it.

It's as if some line has been crossed. As if some point of no return has been passed. 

My suspicion is that they know that their abuses of power, their political gerrymandering, their insistence on keeping the electoral college, and their attacks on voting rights will go a long way toward allowing them to expand their micro-management of the vote. My suspicion is that they know, although they deny it a little too loudly, that the voting machines their supporters and cohorts manufacture are fully capable of being programmed. My suspicion is that they know the fix is already in. My suspicion is that honorable men and women, who honestly stand against corruption, will simply fail to be elected very often anymore. If ever. 

I have been standing back, and observing, and eliminating all other possibilities for too long, now. I have reluctantly realized that politicians, at least a very large percentage of them, care absolutely nothing about the welfare of the people who live on this planet. If they did care, how could they continue to allow the destruction of our water, our air, our land, our organic crops, our oceans?

And where a logical person might say, "But they have to live here, too," I am afraid that politicians could be saying, among themselves, that when there is no clean water, people will have to buy clean water from corporations. I am afraid that politicians could be saying, with a shrug, that many people might well have to go thirsty. Especially those who have not built for themselves unconscionable fortunes at the expense of others. But corporations will benefit, and politicians will be able to afford clean water.

I am afraid politicians could be saying, among themselves, that when the earth and water are contaminated to such a degree that people can no longer grow their own food, people will have to buy all of their food from corporations. And many people might well have to go hungry. But corporations will benefit, and politicians will be able to afford food.

I am afraid that the politicians could be saying, among themselves, that they will be fine. And their friends, the very wealthiest of world citizens, will be fine as well. They have their jets, their bank accounts and vacation homes in foreign countries, and of course the tunnels they built for themselves and their friends, not for the People, of course, at enormous expense, deep beneath the halls of government. 

Finally, I have said this before, and I will continue to say it until there are enough of us who can stand together and take our country back from these politicians and from those who pay these politicians to betray their own honor as well as the trust of the People:

Politicians are not our government. Our government is the Constitution. We do not want to overthrow the government. Those who are constantly misinterpreting the Constitution, defying the Constitution, and making little chips in its armor are the ones who are attempting to overthrow the government. And the Constitution itself, in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, gives us the means to remove every single one of them from office.

Legally.

Peacefully.

Now.

"No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof."