Opinion by: Krystal Ball
Well I thought we could take a quick peek at what’s going on around the world right now.
So this is Bolivia. Nearly one million pro-democracy protesters in the streets.
This is Iraq where the country is basically disintegrating before our eyes as its inept, kleptocratic government, installed after our fraudulent, endless war, falls apart.
This is Port-Au-Prince, Haiti where anti-government protests are entering their fourth week. At least 17 people have been killed and around 200 injured.
And this, this is the United States.
That’s right, while the world melts down right before our very eyes our news media and political leaders have decided to focus all of their attention on an improper phone call.
A phone call by our president that was meant to hold military aid to Ukraine hostage to their willingness to investigate Joe Biden. But the investigation was never actually opened and the aid flowed anyway so what we are really fighting over here is the idea that Ukraine and Joe Biden were made to feel uncomfortable.
Meanwhile, Hong Kong is burning with riots in the street. Egypt, whose murdering, torturing dictator we arm and support, is falling apart. We sponsor the worst humanitarian crisis of our time in Yemen. ISIS murders with impunity in refugee camps and remains active in Northern Syria where of course we’ve just abandoned our Kurdish allies to the brutality of strongman Erdogan. Iran and Saudi are at the brink of conflict. The yellow vests in France riot. Tunisia has been rioting for a year. Shall I go on?
In the words of the prophetic Will Bunch in the Philadelphia Inquirer, who made this connection powerfully and courageously, “The autumn of 2019 is fast becoming the most revolutionary season on planet earth since 1989 …The sparks are pretty much the same everywhere.The people we’ve tasked with running the world have, for the most part, turned out to be corrupt. Did they really think that citizens wouldn’t notice?”
This is why when I see wall to wall coverage of Schiff TV I want to scream and when I hear Democrats wring their hands about the norms, and guardrails of democracy I feel like I’m taking crazy pills, and when I hear Joe Biden earnestly insist that Trump is an aberration, I begin to wonder if we don’t deserve what we’ve gotten.
Open your eyes and look around at the world in full meltdown. Or, if international affairs aren’t your thing, look around at our own country where life expectancy is actually declining, we’re rapidly heading towards a recession, domestic terrorism is on the rise and pretty much everyone is addicted to some stupefying thing from drugs to porn to Twitter.
Yet what our elite institutions have decided to focus our attention on, what really brings us into high dudgeon, causing Democrats to launch an impeachment probe that will further strain the fabric of our society, what makes Rachel Maddow must see TV is exactly what Trump said about Joe Biden on that phone call. The fate of the western world hangs in the balance? What if Trump actually tried to use the presidency for his own political benefit rather than conducting the office in an honorable and transparent way? I’m sure no one has ever done that before. Perish the thought.
I can’t wait to have our whole national attention and decision-making process paralyzed for four months so that we can impotently slap Trump on the wrist. The constitutional equivalent of a strongly worded letter since we already know that the Senate is not going to convict. And if you want to indulge in the fantasy of imagining Trump actually being convicted in the Senate and removed from office, ask yourself the question, what then? What kind of leader do we get after Trump is gone when no one has done anything to address the rot of a system that is rigged for the wealthy and the powerful and a culture that has taught us to worship the false God of cheap crap made in China and a people who are amusing themselves to death.
So here’s a little bit of advice. Order your cans of 30 year water, figure out how to make home-brew antibiotics, and buy a mating pair of Irish wolfhounds because, ladies and gentlemen, winter is coming. Or ya know, you could just fritter away your time watching palace intrigue infotainment and glued to an impeachment probe with the most predictable ending ever.
Don’t miss tonight’s episode of a manufactured drama meant to distract you from the terrifying reality that is unfolding every day if we just bothered to look.
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