Disestablishment, Disintegration, Disinterest Made in the USA

Unmitigated gall of a lawmaker

Sorry, America! We are just too profitably engaged in servicing private interests to burden ourselves with your constitutionally-promised common defense and general welfare. 

McClatchy News and sources caught up with a U.S. Senator pontificating nonchalantly on a domestic tragedy. 

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chool shootings — 

“I don’t think at the federal level there’s much that we can do other than appropriate funds,” U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is quoted telling a group of Danville, Kentucky, community leaders. 

The honorable Senator expands in the manner of aw-shucks, guys, I just work here! And barely that!  

“It’s a darn shame that’s where we are,” his honor is quoted, “but this epidemic is something that’s got all of our attention … (and) the attention of every school superintendent in the country.”

Really?!

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ith all the intelligence capabilities and alphabet agencies, fancy high tech surveillance equipment, and access to a cast of thousands of experts turned consultants plus all those aides and other lackeys at their beck and call, it is hard to believe that a member of the federal government only recently discovered America has a problem or that it takes another mass killing (besides all the daily domestic homicides) somewhere—in a school, a newspaper, a church, a cinema, a child’s birthday party—to finally get the “attention” of a public servant or school executive. 

It is hard to believe that public officials in Washington or in any state house or municipality don’t know that they, themselves, as well as ordinary Americans, have had, for a long time, a human relationship problem, a character and human sensibility problem. Washington cannot or does not relate to the world without killing thousands of people. 

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hy would a person in a schoolyard act any differently when he or she doesn’t get her way or what he or she wants? Washington partnering with CNN splattering blood 24/7 all over wide screens in public and private arenas is a great teacher and modeler of violence—everywhere, anywhere, against anyone, anytime, and with impunity.  

 Aw-shucks, y’all, I just don’t know what to do—from an elected official who has been hanging out in Washington for generations—is unacceptable! Yet Kentucky voters have been entrenching him on Capitol Hill for thirty-four years! 

Kentuckians first elected Addison Mitchell (Mitch) McConnell in 1984 and returned him through 2014 with a term ending in 2021.

In the 1960s, before entering the Senate, McConnell was a legislative assistant to Senator Marlow Cook (1968-1970); and in the 1970s Deputy Assistant United States Attorney for Legislative Affairs (1974-1975) and Acting Assistant Attorney General (1975).

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entucky and the nation as a whole can do better, much better. And not to dump on one public servant, McConnell is just one of a huge concentration of cross-party/both sides of the aisle entrenched, often corrupt do-nothing know-nothings couched in easy chairs from Capitol Hill to Pennsylvania Avenue to K Street. 

The common defense and general welfare of America sacrificed to make public servants millionaires.

Sources

McClatchy “McConnell says there isn't much federal government can do about school shootings” Daniel Desrochers herald-leader.com July 03, 2018

https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/congress/article214224494.html

Congressional Biographical Directory http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=M000355

Insight Beyond Today’s News, CLB

Then and Now citizens responsibly HOLD THESE TRUTHS

A Pattern Reminiscent of that Notable Era

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ontemporary American leaders stand charged with 

• ·       Refusing their “Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.”

• ·       Exciting “domestic insurrections” among the public.

• ·       Rendering “the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.”

• ·       Erecting “a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people .…”

• ·       Deploying among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies, without the Consent of our legislatures.”

July 4, 1776

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henever “any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.….”

“…We hold these truths to be self-evident: … all [people] are created equal …, endowed by their Creator with certain [inalienable] Rights; among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” … 

To “secure these rights, Governments are instituted [which derive] their just powers from the consent of the governed.” [Excerpt, minor edits from the Declaration of Independence]

82 years from Independence

“If we could just know where we are and whither we appear to be tending, we could all better judge of what to do, and how to do it. … 

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‘A house divided against itself cannot stand.’… I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. 

“I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other.” [Excerpt]

89 years from Independence 

“With malice toward none …

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[L]et us strive on to … to bind up the nation’s wounds, … care for [those] who shall have borne the battle, … do all that may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.” (Excerpt, minor edits)

Sources

Declaration of Independence United States: The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America in Congress July 4, 1776 Declaration of Independence.  (2013). Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica Deluxe Edition.  Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica.

Abraham Lincoln. “A House Divided” delivered June 16 1858, Springfield, Illinois American Rhetoric http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/abrahamlincolnhousedivided.htm

Abraham Lincoln. “Second Inaugural Address” delivered March 4, 1865 American Rhetoric http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/abrahamlincolnsecondinauguraladdress.htm

Abraham Lincoln was America’s 16th president

Insight Beyond Today’s News, CLB

Distinguished US Court of Appeals Judge in Headlines

“It is never appropriate for a judge to impose that judge’s personal convictions, whether they arise from faith or anywhere else, on the law” — Amy Coney Barrett

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rofile in brief without prejudice

Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s credentials include having been

• a distinguished Juris Doctor and Executive Editor of the Notre Dame Law Review,
• 
  
• an accomplished law school professor, and
• 
  
• United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and Supreme Court of the United States (1998–1999) law clerk (Judge Laurence Silberman and Justice Antonin Scalia respectively), private practice attorney (Miller, Cassidy, Larroca & Lewin, Washington, D.C.)

After several years of teaching at the University of Notre Dame Law School, Amy Coney Barrett was named Professor of Law (2015) and held the Diane and M.O. Miller Research Chair of Law (2014-2017).

In earlier years Coney was Phi Beta Kappa and a magna cum laude (Rhodes College) graduate with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature (irrelevantly, I too received a firm undergraduate foundation at a Presbyterian College in TennesseeJ).

Reaching the pinnacle of her career, Amy Coney Barrett accepted the U.S. Executive nomination and U.S. Senate confirmation of her appointment to serve on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. She received her commission in November 2017, and serves currently.

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udge Barrett is in broadcast and print headlines for supposedly being on U.S. President Donald Trump’s “shortlist” of potential nominees for the seat left vacant by the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court of the United States.

Profile Source

Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Coney_Barrett

Insight Beyond Today’s News, CLB

Beyond “Nauseating Hypocrisy” and Invective

Wight’s Points taken but like any ism Missing Essential Complexity

Wight takes on past and present US executives’ immigration imprint.  “When they were not responsible for the mass slaughter of children in the Middle East with their regime change wars, … [t]he likes of Barack Obama (the 44th US president) and Hillary Clinton (the 44th’s Secretary of State) have, in the case of Clinton, supported mass incarceration in the US itself, involving the forced separation of families.” 

Such people, therefore, have absolutely no standing on a “moral high ground,” Wight charges.  

“T

he nauseating hypocrisy of liberals excoriating the [45th) president over the policy of separating children at the border with Mexico has been near impossible to bear.” He was expressing his thoughts surrounding the immigration crisis manufactured and maintained by blame throwing U.S. officials (my words).  

As many writers do, Wight speaks of imperialism and suggests that imperialism and devotion to imperialism cuts across kin, kind and color; and razes nations and regresses peoples. Concerning the US and Latin America—but in my view the pattern applies also to US policy and patterns regarding Africa and Asia—Wight puts it this way:

 …the development and wealth of the United States has been contingent on the under development and poverty of Latin America—the former impossible without the latter.

In his arguments Wight prefers to assign blame around color. I am less inclined to pull the race/color card. Though I understand its usage in the case of this author, I am more inclined to use the dangerously infantile delusion of supremacy as of exceptionalism, and a variety of delusions to which all colors of people have overtly or covertly, consciously, subconsciously or unconsciously pledged their allegiance or sacrificed their minds.

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White supremacy has to be understood not only as a racial construct,” Wight writes, “but also as an ideological construct.”  Citing mixed alliances, he says,

During his tenure, U.S. president Barack “Obama, whether consciously or unconsciously,”  served “the purposes of white supremacy, rooted in the very foundations of a country that was founded and built upon the genocide and slavery of non-whites, and whose foreign and domestic policy to this day functions along the same white supremacist lines.” The tragic fact is that Barack Obama often seemed apart from the United States of America, removed from the actual act of U.S. leadership. Like many in Federal Washington, he reacted and pandered.  

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y view focuses on individual weakness that is the consequence of unpreparedness. One of the great tragedies in America is that, in more than two hundred years, the citizenry has not demanded that the constitutional qualifications for the U.S. presidency—what is arguably the most important leadership position in the world (and also legislative positions) — be expanded to more than sex, age, and nationality.

The “color” construct is also too narrow, as it lacks sufficient complexity.  

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oth Barack Obama and Donald Trump were elected to a position far above their grade levels. 

Their unpreparedness and incompetence rendered them weak (it doesn’t take strength to bomb people back to antiquity or to sell bombs to “terrorists” or autocrats) and prey to any passing pull. Certain sectors of the United States promoted both of these men, just as certain sectors supported Hillary Rodham Clinton. Yet all three of these people were unprepared, without credential or relevant work history, for the critical requirements of executive national governance and international leadership.

In the United States, though individuals comically preach and pretend to possess and to export democracy, the systems of elections and of education instructing in the making of independent choices (not what choices) are out of date and broken.

Voters, if they bother to vote, hand their votes to candidates because of their oratory or rhetoric or because they promise something favored by some narrow segment of the population. Would-be leaders operate as panderers to narrow interests and in doing so they fail to serve broad national or global interests. On a global scale these would-be leaders have preferred divisive bilateralism, playing nations and groups against one another, over open multilateralism. Inept, corrupt and unprincipled leadership has regressed foreign countries and also regressed and stymied the progress of the United States of America. The status quo is underwritten by Americans living in a fantasyland, voting for their favorite entrenched and corrupt politician, going along with a broken system; instead of demanding that it be fixed. 

Viewed from a broad perspective, the USA subsists in systemic failure.

The further problem with “white supremacy,” “white supremacist,” “racist,” “racism”—hurled by “shock jocks,” blared from headlines (Twitter accounts, Posts and CNNs) and spewed from atop Confederacy-era statues—is that these outbursts, often self-serving pageantries in distraction, solve no problems.  

They don’t feed American youth hungry for crumbs of quality education, life, liberty and livelihood. They don’t serve peoples of the world in need of clean water, sanitation facilities, their own doctors and disease prevention; ultimately, self- determination.

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lame throwers R us?

“White supremacist” and “racist” invectives inflame. They divide. They deepen and spread impenetrable anger and resistance all round. Yes, anger is a proper human emotion—absolutely!

But anger aged into bitterness impairs the mind, the spirit, the body, and the capacity for healthy human relations characterized by civility, equality of exchanges, respectful communication and conversation, honorable debate, facility for active listening and learning.

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itterness breaks relations and mends no bridges. 

Americans generally suffer a great sickness of delusion and politicians’ rhetoric deliberately feeds, massages, takes advantage of Americans’ state of delusion. Despite public officials’ endemic corruption and the maintenance of a flawed and undemocratic system—their entrenchment handcuffed to the status quo is sold to and paid for by private partners; and further aided by a divided, apathetic, and careless citizenry.

Sources

Sputnik International John Wight (columnist) June 25, 2018 “America’s Problem is Not Immigration. America’s Problem is White Supremacy” https://sputniknews.com/columnists/201806251065767940-us-problem-not-immigration/

Hard Facts aired at Sputnik International John Wight June 27, 2018 “Mass Migration, White Supremacy and The Sanctimony of Liberal America” https://sputniknews.com/radio_hard_facts/201806271065821902-immigration-white-supremacy-trump-liberal-america/

In Sputnik News, John Wight is profiled as “a writer and political commentator whose articles have appeared in a variety of publications” and whose broadcast interviews and analysis can be heard on several news outlets. He anchors a “topical weekly radio show, Hard Facts, at Sputnik.”  https://sputniknews.com/authors/john_wight/

Insight Beyond Today’s News, CLB

Immigrant to Immigrant “from an America created by Immigrants”

Ellis echoes 17th century poet, 20th century preacher at Brownsville

“America has constantly drawn strength and spirit from waves of immigrants, bearing different memories, honoring different heritages. They have strengthened our economy, enriched our culture, renewed our promise of freedom and opportunity for all.”

“A

ll of us…. came here from somewhere else….” Few in this country “have roots in this country. Whether it was through slavery or migration —  

This land flourished because it was fed from so many sources; because it was nourished by so many great cultures and great traditions and great people, who crossed borders to get here.

Together we built cities. We built industries. We built movements. We built a culture.

Wendell Ramone “Jay” Ellis Jr. was speaking at Brownsville, Texas, a few days ago.

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ay Ellis grew up a military “brat” (no  disrespect intended) reportedly attending twelve schools in thirteen years before heading to Oregon for college sports and university studies. Southern (Sumter, South Carolina) born Jay Ellis Jr. then heads to Tinseltown, City of Angels, Ciudad de Angeles and embarks on a modeling career (not unlike First Lady Melanija Knavs Trump) and an acting career. At Brownsville, he recalled another “Jr.” who had said (in the original text):  

“… [A]ll life is interrelated, and in a real sense we are all courting an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. For some strange reason, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.

“John Donne caught it years ago and placed it in graphic terms: ‘No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.’

“And he goes on toward the end to say: ‘Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.’”

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n the assembly of migrants and protesters Jay Ellis recalled “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” and continued in the spirit of ML King Jr.: 

“‘We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.’ That connection, that ‘single garment of destiny,’ is most visible when [people wielding inordinate power try] to break it. Mutuality is most tangible when [inordinate power tries] to tear us apart.”

Ellis assures immigrants: 

“You are accepted and you are loved in an America that has been created by so many immigrants. We will continue to fight for that America every single day.”

Sources

American Rhetoric (speeches)

Dr. Martin Luther King  Jr. (speech) ”Methodist Student Leadership Conference Address delivered 1964, Lincoln, Nebraska, http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkmethodistyouthconference.htm

Wikipedia

John Donne (/dʌn/ DUN) English, poet, priest and lawyer 1572 – 1631 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Donne

Jay Ellis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Ellis

Rebroadcasting

Democracy Now! “Actor Jay Ellis of HBO’s ‘Insecure’ Condemns Separation of Families at Protest in Brownsville, Texas” June 29, 2018 https://www.democracynow.org/2018/6/29/actor_jay_ellis_of_hbos_insecure

Insight Beyond Today’s News, CLB

Leaders who govern by Distraction refuse to govern serving the Public Good

False Premises Failing State USA

U.S. Media, Public Officials and Partners Prefer Infighting; and Pandering to Tribes, Think Tanks and Private Enterprises, Fantasies and Passing Fancies.

E

ric Zorn addresses part of the problem.

His June 29 column at the Chicago Tribune points to partisan dissembling and its pageantry of distraction. But it stops short of addressing prior causes, underlying problems and the failure of public officials, as a body of government, to take responsibility for both problems and solutions. Immigration is a manufactured crisis whose cause is rooted in the character and conduct of US relations with world nations.

Zorn cites one side’s dissembling and fixing blame.

“Democrats love open borders” [pandering to National Federation of Independent Businesses]

 “Democrats” [want to] “Let everybody come in. …, let them come in from the Middle East, let them come in from all over the place.…” [Pandering to Duluth] Quotes attributed to President Trump.

Remember, for years, U.S. officials have been at war against peoples of the Middle East and the violence and destabilization caused by US policy and practice have forced people to flee for their lives. It doesn’t take a genius to see this. And I’m certainly no genius.

Since 2001 a U.S. law has licensed US officials to claim “terrorist” as pretext for conducting mass killings in foreign countries, forcing survivors to flee their native lands.

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ince 2001, the “Authorization for Use of Military Force” (AUMF), opposed by only one member of the U.S. Congress, Representative Barbara Lee, has been used first and repeatedly to shatter Iraq and then to destabilize and/or decimate Afghanistan, the Philippines, Georgia, Yemen, Djibouti, Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia.

The George W. Bush administration used the AUMF legislation “18 times.”

The Barack H. Obama administration used the AUMF “18 times.”

Among the countries mentioned in 37 instances of the US use of force under this all-political-parties-embracing law of endless violence were “Afghanistan, Cuba (Guantanamo Bay), Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Georgia, Iraq, Kenya, Libya, Philippines, Somalia, Syria and Yemen.” (Wikipedia citing Congressional Research Service report)

Causation and Consequence

There’s no getting around it, except by dissembling to a segment of the masses who want to believe in their favorite prejudices, politicians and/or personalities!

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SSA Pattern of Foreign Interference, Regime Change, Breach of Sovereignty

• ·       20th century against Latin America and Caribbean: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay 

• ·       20th - 21st Century Global: Panama 1903, 1942, 1989; Honduras 1920s; Nicaragua 1910s, 1982–1989; Mexico 1914; Haiti 1915-1934, 1991; Dominican Republic 1916–1924, 1965–66; Russia 1918; South Korea 1945–1950; China 1946–1949; Greece 1946–1949; Italy 1948–1970s:; Syria 1949, 1960s, 2000s; Iran 1950s/1953, 2005; Guatemala 1954; Laos 1955–1960; Indonesia 1957–1959, 1965–1967; Lebanon 1958; Iraq 1959, 1963, 1972–1975, 1991–2003, 1994–2000; Laos 1960;  Cuba 1960s (Bay of Pigs 1961); Brazil 1961–1964; Bolivia 1971; Chile 1973; Afghanistan 1979–1989, 2001 – present; El Salvador 1980–1992; Grenada 1983; Kuwait 1991; 1999-2000 Yugoslavia; Palestinian territories 2006–07; Libya 2010s/ 2011 Libya; Yemen 2015-present.

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artners in Hostility: Democrats, Republicans, Whatever’s-expedient Bernie 

• ·       Destroy Their Homelands then

• ·       Block their Entry into USA

Eric Zorn cites a June 27 New York Times report showing that “In 2013, every single Democrat in the Senate voted for the ‘Gang of Eight’ immigration overhaul bill that would have provided about $40 billion for border enforcement—including deploying thousands more agents and building 700 miles of fencing …”

In 2006, “26 Senate Democrats voted to build 700 miles of walls and fences on the southwestern border.”

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hundred and ninety three (193) “House Democrats have signed onto a proposal that (a) ‘enhances technology used to monitor the border, and (b) provides yearly grants of $110 million for collaboration between local law enforcement and Border Patrol agents.’”

It is impossible, believably, to speak of migration or immigration without speaking of U.S. foreign wars. Migration is effect ● War in whatever guise is cause.

  

Sources

Eric Zorn’s op-ed Chicago Tribune June 29, 2018 “It’s time to build a wall around the ‘open borders’ lie” http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/zorn/ct-perspec-zorn-open-borders-trump-fact-check-0701-20180629-story.html

Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change_in_Latin_America

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorization_for_Use_of_Military_Force_Against_Terrorists

My additional commentary and minor editing

Insight Beyond Today’s News, CLB