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Most Boomers remember the educational technology of the 1960s as one comprised mostly of flash cards. Today, I’m reminded of one such card in particular. On the front side it read “McCarthyism.” On the flip side it read “A brand of vitriolic, fear-mongering.” 

Future generations will likely ask: “Which McCarthyism? Joe’s or Kevin’ s?” Joe McCarthy is often credited with developing what dirty tricksters have dubbed the FIBS tactic. It leverages Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear. Kevin will be seen as having reprised what Margaret Chase Smith appropriately described as the Four Horsemen of Calumny. This Luciferian legacy was also seen throughout the career of Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and, more recently, in the prevarications of his protege Stephen Miller.

Joseph Goebbels said:

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

Both McCarthy’s exhibited a reckless indifference to the truth. They have each brought shame to the United States Legislature. Thanks to Kevin, the traditional republican emphasis on representative government is now widely considered to be an arcane banished idea. Not only has he betrayed the constitutionally framed representative form of government, he and his supporters have also worked to corrode its democracy underpinnings. The PUS that now oozes from such mortally wounded principle should also understood as an acronym for the Party of Unmitigated Selfishness. The only way such an abhorrent system of values can somehow emerge victorious is through acts of intentional deception, voter suppression, and election subversion.

If “the truth is the greatest enemy of the state,” then we must ask, What vision does Kevin McCarthy hold for the future of the United States other than a dystopian one? Do we want our grandchildren growing up in a world where lies, ugliness, and evil are the governing principle? Or, do we favor the truth, beauty, and goodness that authentic statesmen exemplify? One thing is certain, whatever Kevin McCarthy is leading his fan base to, is not good.

Like Miller, McCarthy is attempting to place the value proposition for our country’s future squarely on a plane of unreality. They are actively engaging in deceptive practices. After the January 6^th Insurrection of 2021, McCarthy said: ““It was the saddest day I’ve ever had in serving as a member of this institution.” Since that day he has become one of the saddest examples of human-kind to ever serve in that institution. The prevarications of such cowards are not new to the American experience. The truth is clearly not in them and they are now attempting to squelch anyone that might stand for what is right. 

The Supreme Court of the United States has also abandoned any pretense of being non-partisan, now that it has brought so much dishonor to itself, and now that they have shown their contempt for our democratic republic by ruling in favor of dark money politics, together with more sinister under the table transactions, McCarthy and other unprincipled politicians can run that table. Democracy is on the ropes precisely because statesmanship is in such short supply.

Those vested in deceptive practices have made the calculation that their constituency lacks the type of intellectual discipline that would consider both sides, within any given controversy, before making judgement. They even tried to install a couple of poo flinging monkeys on the January 6^th Commission. They see their most ardent supporters as mere simpletons who get all their news and analysis from the White Power Hour.

Such voters represent a diminishing minority and so their favored politicians can only win by cheating. The dollar skew in media and in politics is brought brought to you courtesy of seven hundred billionaires that control the information flow to more than three hundred and thirty million voters. The misinformation is parroted from the pulpit and on social media. The good news is the Intentional Consumer does not have to play Mother-May-I with any corrupt legislature or governor to vote with their dollars. And, as the corporatocracy found out after the racist riot of January 6^th in 2021, the free speech rights it gained by subterfuge carry severe consequences when they are abused. And, there should be ever increasing consequences for installing con men in high government positions. 

Any corporation making dark money contributions is presumed to be a bad actor. Information warfare has the power to destroy the world’s chance for government of, by, and for the people. Remember, to the practitioners of Geobbelianism, the lie must be maintained and “the truth is the greatest enemy of the state.” To those sentient beings, that can differentiate between politics and statesmanship, the truth is all that really matters.

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Two days before the United States celebrated Independence Day in 2021, a pathetic majority of justices on the Supreme Court published an opinion that exhibits, not only their reckless indifference to the truth, but also their contempt for the Mission Statement, the Value Proposition, and the Cardinal Precepts of the United States Constitution. Certain justices have, throughout their tenure, been perpetrating a fraud upon We the People of the United States. They have clearly set-aside what is arguably The Spirit of the Law. They are compulsively straining at gnats while also swallowing camels. 

In the 1290s another Scotus, Scottish Catholic priest and Franciscan friar Dun Scotus Ordinatio, penned the phrase consent of the governed. The principle influenced Declaration of Arbroath in 1320. The idea was mentioned in 1433 by Nicholas of Cusa in De Concordantia Catholica. Vindiciae contra tyrannos stated “…the power of the ruler is delegated by the people and continues only with their consent.” In England, the Levellers also embraced this principle of government.

John Milton wrote about the power of kings and magistrates saying it “is nothing else, but what is only derivative, transferred and committed to them in trust from the people, to the common good of them all, in whom the power yet remains fundamentally, and cannot be taken from them, without a violation of their natural birthright.” The quintessential conservative, Edmond Burke, wrote that rulers are only “trustees for the people” and, in describing the character of an effective leader he said: “the temper of the people amongst whom he presides ought therefore to be the first study of a Statesman.” 

Contrast this with the prevarications of those pretenders that occupy positions of honor and trust on the United States Supreme Court. To characterize the Americans For Prosperity Foundation as a “charity,” as if it is engaged in charitable service is to advance a thoroughly dumbed down legal definition to the point of absurdity. Like so many faux corporations, that the Supremes have elevated to the status of persons, AFP is primarily engaged in distorting the public discourse on behalf of the inheritors, skimmers, and hoarders of wealth in ways that work to the detriment of everyone else.

Justice Roberts, Kavanaugh, Barrett, Alito, and Gorsuch are each beholden to such dark money contributors. Their nominations, confirmations, and accommodations are undergirded by players such as the Kochs, that have secured an outsized political influence by means of the dollar skew. The justice’s corrosive influence, on the democracy underpinnings of our constitutionally grounded democratic republic is no longer deniable.

The modern day deceiver has traded his witness for a masquerade, steadily refining his craft through selective amplification, filtration, and contextualization. About seven hundred billionaires control the information flow for a country of three-hundred and thirty-one million citizens within the United States. Recent SCOTUS decisions concerning the concentration of media power also serve to enable those lacking the courage of their own convictions so they can express themselves through anonymous donations to political action committees.

There was a time, when sending an unsigned letter was widely considered an act of cowardice. The honest of heart would express an opinion over their own signature. But the Justices have converted what was once described as a whirlpool of information into a cesspool of disinformation through their complicity with the most cowardly actors among us. Feigning reverence for the Constitution of the United States, while actively working to undermine it, is the means by which the Supreme Court has placed the value proposition for our country squarely on a plane of unreality. Such judicial malfeasance serves to demotivate those who are the enthusiastic raisers, builders, and producers that have been more than willing to take our enterprises, our country and our entire planet from one level of attainment to the next.

The most integrity challenged justices on the court are addicted to the dark money by which they secured their form-fitting seats. Their strangely sociopathic form of corporate personhood is pure fiction. Their assertions of equal justice under law is also fiction. Their subterfuge, with respect to maintaining the system, whereby a black man or woman will never amount to more that three fifths of a person, is abhorrent. But it is their masquerade as originalists and textualists, while discarding the Preamble to the United States Constitution that is most problematic; for it is the way they skirt their obligations as conferred through the judicial oath. Such justices are unworthy to hold any position of honor and trust. 

The “Consent of the Governed” as advanced through the Declaration of Independence, presupposes an informed consent. The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights put forth by the United Nations in Article 21 states that “The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government”. In the final analysis, government of, by, and for the people is the only design that is truly sustainable. It is the only one that is spiritually serviceable; as it alone has the power to elicit the fully informed and enthusiastic consent of the governed.

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I recall an episode of The Odd Couple where Felix was in court representing his roomie; much to Oscar’s dismay. As Felix was questioning a witness about his interpretation of events, the witness said: “Well I assumed. . .” Felix cut him off saying “Ah-ha! You assumed! You should never assume because when you assume;” Turning to the white board Felix spelled out the word and then pointing to the individual syllables he said: “You make an ASS of U and ME.”

Throughout May and June of 2021, we heard governors around the country make asses of themselves as they assumed the only reason people aren’t scrambling for dead-end jobs is because of the enhanced unemployment benefits. Actual fact-finders are learning that, even when such assistance is blocked, many of the people that were unceremoniously and abruptly terminated from what were poverty-wage jobs, are starting their own businesses. They’re tired of working for employers that are intent on getting the people out of the loop through reductions in force. Intentional consumers are on the side of the workers and don’t want to help smooth any return to an outmoded economy.

McDonalds is now implementing artificial intelligence to take your order in the drive-thru. Uber is making huge investments in developing driverless cars. Walgreens has informed employees, with almost a quarter century of service with the company, that they will no longer pay insurance premiums upon that employee’s retirement. And, the most dishonest politicians, are still pushing the obvious lie that employer based health insurance is the way to go for comprehensive health care.

It’s hard to maintain a work-life balance when you’re swing shifted or having to work multiple piddly-ass jobs just to make ends meet. Some employees object to wearing a silly looking uniform that advertises to the world that the employee’s will has been completely subjugated at the whim of company marketeers. And, then there are those employees that simply don’t respect a company managed by executives too incompetent to maintain a rainy day fund.

So-called non-essential employees have had a year to think about mapping out a better life. They’ve concluded that any business person, that is unable or unwilling to pay a living wage, should move over and let someone more competent run the business. In 1997, the federal minimum wage was $5.15 an hour. It remained at that rate for ten years. In 2009 the minimum reached $7.25 per hour where it has remained for twelve years. This means the minimum wage increased by less than half the rate of inflation, about 29%, while the cumulative cost of living increased over 66% during the same period.

The Economic Policy Institute reported that, over the course of about forty years, corporate CEO pay increased 940% while the typical worker’s pay increased only 12% during the same period. Employees are often forced into conditions of peonage where they must seek nutrition, energy, housing, and other forms of public assistance while the employers are avoiding taxes and otherwise operating in parasitic fashion. The employees, as actual taxpayers, don’t want to support that business model. And what person of conscience can blame them?

The 1920s are remembered as an era of mass consumerism. The 2020s will be about Intentional Consumerism and what we choose to support. The shareholder rights movement has been led to expect every indulgence while buying low, selling high, skimming the cream and effectively sucking the life plasm out of a company for which they are holding any stock. Unlike the entrepreneurs that built the company, those on the take are not going to contribute anything that might help a company through tough times? 

Employee owned companies will undoubtedly emerge post-pandemic to challenge the parasitic business practices whereby some of the most integrity challenged among us exert an outsized influence on our public discourse and our national life. This will be a healthy thing, even though the professional backbiters employed by faux news organizations will characterize the movement as something other than healthy.

Certain justices on the United States Supreme Court have displayed an abysmal ignorance whenever they have held that corporations should have speech rights over and above those employees that have associated for a common purpose to act corporately. Whenever SCOTUS defines a company as something other than the group of people working in company with one another, the Court corrodes the democracy underpinnings of our constitutional republic.

While some justices may have minds too atrophied to learn anything new, responsible consumers can hold fake corporations accountable for the dark money contributions they make to advance public policy that actual citizens find abhorrent. While most of us are held accountable for our speech, companies should not be able to skirt accountability through court sanctioned subterfuge. It may be a big mistake to assume; but we can actively engage in a disciplined form of forensic investigation. Suppose a company is not accounting for significant expenditures. It could be an indication of engagement in corrupt political influence. We should not be giving them the benefit of any doubt. We should also not be throwing any of our hard earned dollars their way.

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In 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev was promoting glasnost (“openness”) and perestroika (“restructuring”) in an attempt to overcome the Soviet Union’s economic stagnation and stunted growth. These initiatives promised the “utmost respect for the individual citizen and favorable consideration for protecting one’s personal dignity.” By creating a dependable and effective mechanism for accelerating economic and social progress, Gorbachev hoped to encourage initiative and creative endeavor.

As General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991 and as that country’s de-facto head of state from 1988 until 1991, Gorbachov gained authority to create joint-stock companies out of state enterprises. The shares became available on stock exchanges. Gorbachev was instrumental in diminishing the role of the Communist Party in governing the state. The party’s official role was ultimately removed from the constitution, in a way that enraged some and inadvertently led to crisis-level political instability with a surge of regional nationalist and anti-communist activism. A failed coup attempt in August of 1991 was followed by an acute food shortage. On December 26, the Soviet Union was dissolved.

There were then fifteen new countries, of which the Russian Federation was only one. Roughly 45,000 state enterprises had been controlled by the Soviet Union. Upon its dissolution the planned economy was displaced by a market economy. The large scale privatization of state owned assets flowed primarily to form the financial, energy, and industrial sectors.

Opposing forces insured that Perestroika had more than one unintended consequence. As Russia’s planned economy transitioned from one in which the means of production was held by the state, to one in which work collectives gained a greater role in running enterprises, the country stumbled. It experienced what The Guardian newspaper described, on August 16th 2001, as “the most cataclysmic peacetime economic collapse of an industrial country in history.

Gorbachov’s benevolent vision for the country had been thwarted at almost every turn as the country became divided by winners and losers. The well positioned were able to leverage conditions that were not readily understood by the rank and file. Although Russia’s citizens were generally well educated, most were overly specialized. The university system, while rigorous, provided certifications that were not all that portable as most regions within the USSR were dominated by a single industry or employer, the equivalent of company towns. No national provision was made for basic social services and few employees or front-line managers had any firsthand experience with decision making in a market economy.

Self-centered forces wasted no time in turning Mikhail Gorbachev’s, and Boris Yeltsin’s shared vision into a variety of schemes to exploit the poor. What was intended as an equal distribution of national wealth became concentrated within the ranks of upper management as the starving masses were caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place. Cash strapped workers relinquished whatever they may have held of any value, including personal shares, settling for fire-sale prices just so they could buy foodstuffs. When they did scrape up a little cash, they faced the bleak reality of purchasing power that was dramatically reduced.

In 1995 a Loans for Shares program was adopted by the government of Boris Yeltsin to address a severe fiscal deficit. The auctions were largely controlled by favored insiders and were, therefore, devoid of competition. The same banks that were retained by the government to conduct the auctions ended up winning them and the assets were leased at prices just slightly over the minimum starting bid. Voters in Russia described the process using a term that translates to what our urban dictionaries have coined as grabification.

From Vladimir Putin’s perspective, Russia had lost its national wealth and 2 million square miles of territory under humiliating circumstances. Although thoroughly pissed, he was perceived by Yeltsin as loyal. He commanded the FSB, a successor to the KGB, as Director. He was later appointed as Prime Minister with Yeltsin declaring “There will be no vacuum.” Vladimir Putin was uniquely positioned, early on, to benefit personally from the rise of the oligarchs.

As the gamesmanship over vouchers and loans for shares played out, one such grabber, an oil oligarch, ran afoul of Putin and was put on trial. Putin had then arranged for the oily Defendant to be seated in a cage at the center of the courtroom. According to the prevailing legend, one by one the other oligarchs came to Putin and asked: “How do we stay out of cages?” Putin’s answer: “Fifty percent.”

With all the ink in the water, no one, except Vladimir Putin, knows exactly how he acquired his vast wealth or whether he is, in fact, the richest person in the world. We do know that between 1993 and 1997, as Deputy Chief of the Presidential Property Management Division, Putin organized a transfer of the assets of the former Soviet Union and Communist Party to the Russian Federation. Accordingly, he knew where all the real value was and, as a former Lieutenant Colonel of the KGB, he also knew where the bodies were buried. Consider that in light of the way he works the levers today.

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The fall of the Soviet Union was a vindication for the strategy of the first civilian Director of Central Intelligence, Allen Dulles. His plan to bankrupt the Russians through an arms race, a space race, and any other competition the adversary could not afford, eventually made it possible for Ronald Reagan to successfully challenge Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin wall.

Pitting a deep economy against a shallow economy, while effective, had significant costs beyond the economic. There was no shortage of individual stake holders in the old Soviet order that were outraged, including one Vladimir Putin. They found ways to make themselves feel better by indulging in grudges as they worked to redirect certain new equities, intended for Russian citizens, while enriching themselves.

The United States still struggles to manage the monetary debts it incurred over the course of the cold war, we are also paying the high reputational cost for impetuous behavior such as the 1953 coup d’état in Iran together with the 1954 coup d’état in Guatemala. While these events typically go unacknowledged over the course of our high school history classes, many U.S. citizens are surprised when, while traveling abroad, they discover our country is not seen as an honest broker in those regions of the world.

The reputational cost is exacerbated by the least intelligent and most boisterous within the MAGAlomanic factions. People around the globe have come to believe that if you are Asian, African, or Central American you will never gain the approval of the most inbred SOBs occupying the North American continent. And they’re not just talking about genetics. As master propagandist of the Nazi regime and dictator of its cultural life for twelve years, the selective inbreeding and hate mongering of Joseph Goebbels, was achieved through an earlier manifestation of the big lie. He said:

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

While MAGAlomania may be defined as Goebbelian twist on statecraft, the state of denial has now manifest on an epidemic scale within the USA. Of course, the big lie did not originate with Stephen Miller, Joseph Goebbels, or Adolf Hitler. They may have summoned it and embraced it, only to become subservient to it. It is the legacy woven throughout human history that was best encapsulated by the Rolling Stones with the lyric: “Just as every cop is a criminal and all the sinners saints; when heads is tails just call me Lucifer cause I’m in need of some restraint.”

Unbridled liberty is the legacy of Lucifer. It is, in effect, the license to rape, pillage, and plunder. It is always a matter of subjugating someone else. Liberty that is unintelligent, unconditioned, and uncontrolled invariably leads to the abject bondage of someone. To differentiate between true and false liberty, we must learn to balance freedom with self-control, to develop self-mastery.

At issue is truthfulness. Is it ever ok to mislead someone who may rely upon your word to their detriment? Those who participated in the racist riot of January 6, 2021 in Washington, are now using reliance on the alternative facts from faux news as an affirmative defense in courts of law. Pseudo-Christian pastors are actively deceiving the masses. When, in the Book of Job, God asked, “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?,” one might reasonably conclude that he was talking about the anti-immigrant, anti-mask, anti-vaccine pretenders that are turning their congregations into death cults.

Now that Putin’s harem is out of the White House, he is protecting the big lie in his own country by, as Goebbels prescribed, repressing dissent. Anyone sympathetic to Alexi Navalny is now an outlaw within Putin’s domain. Here, in the United States, Liz Cheney or anyone else advocating for a more traditional conservatism or republicanism is similarly subject to attack by the hoards of Hell, absolute enemies of our constitutionally grounded democratic republic. When every cop is seen as criminal, they are bludgeoned on the capital steps with flagpoles. When all the sinners are saints, they corrupt the likes of Liberty University. When heads is tails, voter suppression is sold as voter integrity.

A scholar’s parrot may talk Greek and rehearsing those that have traded their Christian witness for a masquerade is simply a matter or rote learning. This phenomena, where the most ignorant are quite literally the most arrogant, is not unique to the United States. But the USA has no excuse. It has a public education system where critical thinking skills are increasingly moving front and center.

Whether we will actually use the intellectual disciplines, to build a more perfect union, remains to be seen. In the meantime we can avoid the contagion and those intent on spreading it through their reckless indifference to the truth.

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Way back in 2005, The New York Times used the expression “gesture politics” to describe the substitution of symbols and empty promises for policy. Today, gestures towards bipartisanship and voting integrity together with a feigned respect for the United States constitution ring hollow. The will of the electorate really hasn’t mattered to some politicians for a very long time. Sure, we occasionally witness a certain genuflection as an election draws near. But, the real focus for politics, and its practitioners, is always on the big, oftentimes dark, money.

In 1870, James Freeman Clarke said: “A politician thinks of the next election. A statesman, of the next generation.” The Clark quote is especially striking in the midst of our country’s hyper-partisan election cycles, as so many politicians seem willing to betray many of the ideals they once touted, just to win re-election. Beyond politics, there is a higher plane where true statesmanship thrives. Within such an environment the cultivation of that entrepreneurial spirit, that can take our country from one level of attainment to the next, is encouraged and nurtured in accordance with the laws of fruitfulness. 

Some politicians have decided that, being in the game is just not worth it. They’ve asked themselves what their grandchildren will think of them once the kids have blown through the money gained through their forebear’s complicity in moving the country and the planet towards a dystopian future. Today, many Independent’s believe we have way too many politicians that are seemingly unable to even come down solidly in favor of democracy as opposed to autocracy.

Currently, principled compromise is rare as the modus-operandi of politics appears to have mutually assured destruction as its aim. This vengeful culture strikes at the heart of – and in many ways is calculated to cause damage to – the ideals of truth, beauty, and goodness that Americans have long sought to cultivate. The stark contrast between those patriots who would lay down their lives for their fellows, and those pretenders who have selfishly placed their own political ambitions above the welfare of the country and future generations is, at this juncture, hard for people of goodwill to ignore.

Fledgling democracies look on as principle has been sacrificed for political expediency by the most self-serving, It’s time for each of us to engage in some real soul searching. As groups inclined towards democracy, and once considered allies, were abandoned and uprooted to appease dictators, moral cowardice took center stage. As the politics of destruction is finally understood to be, first and foremost, about the tactics of distraction, it has dawned upon some of us that this may really be, for the USA at least, the last call for democracy.

We have been conditioned to think of ourselves as either liberal or conservative, left or right, Democrat or Republican, progressive or traditional, and socialist or capitalist. To those possessing a balanced intellect, it is clearly understood that, in actuality, we have all been hybridized to some extent. And, that the coercive labeling imposed upon us is simply the window dressing that obscures our view of the real battle that is raging outside.

The choice before us is between a democracy that will serve the highest and best interests of our children’s children or the featherbedded oligarchy that has, throughout history, sought to consign our progeny to conditions of peonage. In the United States, the first constitutional imperative is to advance the highest and best interests of “We the people” as we labor to “build a more perfect union.” To those holding some personal sense of superiority, democracy is instead seen as the domination of mediocrity. Such an ego-centric world view creates a definite preference for anything that will advantage they the few or they the rich. By this impetus it disadvantages everyone else and divides us accordingly, even on consensus issues.

The Us versus Them tribalism is directly attributable to divisions sown through the unmitigated and oft litigated selfishness of those placing their interests far above those of us they perceive as “the great unwashed.” Such a well advertised dysfunction is brought to us by malign actors intent on corroding the democratic underpinnings of our constitutional republic. Make no mistake, the oligarchy is the enemy of democracy. It always aims to wrest control from the demos, “we the people,” and instead vest it with the rich, “they the few.”

This gravamen is obscured by the dark money. It is evidenced by the suspect maps and moving polling places farther away from those that can least afford to travel or lose a day of work. It includes the politically motivated purging of voter rolls, and all the other forms of voter suppression and election subversion that seem to be in vogue. It finances the siloing and polarization of the press while it also impairs the First Amendment through its persistent attacks on the doctrine of net-neutrality.

From the tainted food supply to the high cost of disease care domestically; from the unrelenting attacks on education to the ritualized insanity of unwinnable wars abroad; each malady is directly attributable to the most self-serving of the few. This megalomanic oligarchy has been waging a deadly class warfare throughout history while, at the same time, they simultaneously accuse their targets of all things inexcusable, especially class warfare.

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Edmond Burke is best known for the quote: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” He was also the first and, some would say, the best advocate of conservatism. He held that rulers are only “trustees for the people” and, in describing the character of an effective leader he said: “the temper of the people amongst whom he presides ought therefore to be the first study of a Statesman.”

It may be useful to contrast and compare the way conservatism was defined, at the time of our nation’s founding, against what is sold as conservatism today. True conservatives understand the difference between that pride that comes before a fall and the kind exhibited by the person of true integrity, the one that puts the content of their character and the quality of their work above all else. Somewhere in the array of definitions for the term pride is the difference between motivating and incentivizing someone. 

Conservatives have long held that there is something to be admired and exhilarating about a forthright demeanor, a job well done. Much that is foundational to true conservatism is embodied in Burke’s portrayal of the “gentleman of fortune:” Burke said: “he did not take the ordinary Method of establishing Horse races and Assemblies, which do but encourage Drinking and Idleness but at a much smaller expense he introduced a Manufacture which, though not very considerable, employed the whole town, and in time made it opulent.”

Burke’s assessment of constitutional legitimacy was predicated, first and foremost, on its ability to resist tyranny. He believed claims of necessity and of new powers were an indication of tyranny. Many of today’s employees, that have to work long swing shifted hours for compensation that fails to keep pace with the cost of living, would likely agree.

The imperative, to resist slavery and tyranny, was underscored in his belief that a nation must guard against the tyranny of the majority. While today that may be defined as three wolves and a sheep deciding on dinner, in Burke’s day it was articulated as follows: “Aristotle observes that a democracy has many striking points of resemblance with a tyranny. Of this I am certain, that in a democracy the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppression upon the minority whenever strong divisions prevail in that kind of policy, as they often must . . .”

Burke also warned about excessive reliance on markets with the statement: “Your legislators, in everything new, are the very first who have founded a commonwealth on gaming . . .” Indeed, we have witnessed the folly of some, who have characterized themselves as “Constitutional Conservatives,” as they have prostituted their offices and systematically betrayed just about every aspect of such supposed reverence for constitutional principle.

Such tyrants resist any form of means testing for Social Security as they also try to kill it for future generations. They engage in coercive labeling, calling anyone advocating for any form of public assistance or government service, a “socialist.” They conflate socialism, marxism, and communism as if anyone in this entrepreneurial society is advancing the notion that the government should put the grabs on the means of production. For a nation supposedly dominated by Christian ideals, a pseudo-religious hucksterism has imposed a circumscribed world view that is self-serving, first and foremost.

An array of social programs, often designed to compensate for the absence of good corporate conduct, represents the least we can do in light of our failure to evolve in accordance with the true conservatism exemplified by Burke’s gentlemen of fortune. The faux conservative of today decries class warfare while thrusting it upon the masses. The ideological fault lines of days gone by have been blurred as the counterfeit, contorted conservatism of privilege looks down unsympathetically upon the struggling strata that rolls pennies to buy gas so they can work multiple jobs for poverty wages. The most selfish among us rise to occupy the commanding heights of the economy and object to any social program that might compensate workers for the parasitic behaviors of those employers that tamp down wages and benefits while simultaneously refusing to make any meaningful contribution to the public treasury.

In some European countries, monopolies have become nationalized companies in an effort to protect the population from unbridled monopoly power. In this respect, an emergent monopoly largely immune from anti-trust scrutiny may represent the most sure-footed path to a command economy. In our country, since the 1980s, Anti-Trust regulations are seldom enforced by politicians wholly owned and operated by monopolies.

Against a backdrop of morphing definitions for capitalism, and socialism, even the most casual conversations have become tedious. Other Western nations tend to define socialism not so much in economic terms, but in accordance with a given level of direct democracy operating within the context of what constitutes the greatest good for the general population. In his last ditch effort to dissuade the British Empire from going to war with the colonists, Burke argued: “To prove that the Americans ought not to be free, we are obliged to depreciate the value of freedom itself . . .” In short, Burke was a fervent advocate for the greatest good.

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The United Nations currently lists 18 “Global Issues.” Among the many are poverty, hunger, water, and health. Poverty-stricken communities are not only disrespected, they are often disregarded due to their low socio-economic status. This occurs even within affluent countries. However, according to the World Food Program, countries with the highest level of food insecurity also have the highest outward migration of refugees.

One in nine people on our planet goes hungry each day while also suffering from the lasting effects of nutritional deficiencies. Restricted growth, and the deaths of about 3.1 million children under the age of five occur each year as a result of our collective neglect. For countries with the means, the failure to provide comprehensive healthcare to its citizens hobbles their economies as well as their overall competitiveness.

Buckminster Fuller was an American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, and inventor. In the late twentieth century he noted “We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist.”

During an interview in 1981, with Norie Huddle, Fuller said: “Those in supreme power, politically and economically, aren’t yet convinced that our Planet Earth has anywhere nearly enough life support for all humanity. They assume it has to be either you or me, that there is not enough for both. Those with financial advantage reason that selfishness is necessary and fortify themselves even further.” Later in the same interview Fuller observed: “We can now take care of everybody at a higher standard of living than anybody has ever known. It does not have to be “you or me,” so selfishness is unnecessary and war is obsolete.”

And yet they persisted. For some there is never enough power or too much military hardware. The resources necessary to effectively address all of the global issues listed by the United Nations and the World Food Program are closely held by the inheritors, skimmers, and hoarders of wealth. They avoid and object to taxes while being the first to complain when their shiny new ride hits a pothole. They claim to abhor socialism while running their companies in ways that privatize gains while socializing expenses and losses.

They make extensive use of the nations roads, bridges, and airports while promoting a definition of infrastructure that encompasses only those things. Then, when given the opportunity to support such narrowly defined infrastructure, about 20% of Fortune 500 companies pay none of federal income tax that undergirds such structures. They underpay the workforce, forcing employees to seek housing, heating, and nutrition assistance while subjecting their public charges to conspicuous ridicule, scorn, and indignity.

Oligarchs have no loyalty to the United States or any other country. If the American farmer is too pricy, big-agri will clear new farmland by burning the Amazon forest along Brazilian Route 163, just as they did during the trade war with China in 2019. Ever since the United States Supreme Court made it legal for corporations to own and operate our elected representatives, the country has become less competitive not more.

Millions of our highly creative, potential entrepreneurs, are reluctant to venture out because their health care benefits are inextricably and unnecessarily linked to dead-end jobs where such benefits are routinely hollowed out or eliminated. There is wage stagnation coupled with worker uncertainty that prevails when unemployment rates are high or low.

On September 1, 1997, the federal minimum wage was $5.15 an hour where it remained for ten years. On July 24, 2009 the minimum wage reached $7.25 per hour where it remains today. This means that over the course of about one quarter of a century, the minimum wage increased by less than half the rate of inflation, about 29% whereas over the same amount of time, inflation resulted in a cumulative cost of living increase of over 66%.

Even as we enlarge our time-frame and scope beyond the minimum wage analysis, the Economic Policy Institute reports that, over the course of about forty years, Corporate CEO pay increased 940% while the typical worker’s pay increased only 12% during the same period. The penny-wise, pound-foolish, pseudo-conservatives holding elective office today, typically receive regular automatic pay raises to avoid public scrutiny.

There is no performance metric for such prevaricating politicians and they have actively harmed the nation by dampening the enthusiasm of our workforce. Grifters favor companies that operate in the most parasitic fashion. And, as they feign reverence for our constitutionally grounded democratic republic, they work to corrupt it at all levels. As long as the entrepreneurial executive takes a back seat to the custodial, as long as wealth without work together with greed is somehow fashionable, the drudgery experienced by the rest of us will undoubtedly continue. And, as Buckminster Fuller made clear in 1981, there is no excuse for it.

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<<AUDIO Part 1 (Ten Seconds): The Chair recognizes, , , Senator Smith>>

There was a time when, if you were to express an opinion in writing, it would likely be over your own signature. In fact, sending an unsigned letter was widely considered an act of cowardice. Today, those lacking the courage of their own convictions can express themselves through anonymous donations to political action committees. Under what is termed “traditional dictates of Senate courtesy,” a shifty member can even place a hold on legislation anonymously and two or more such members can make such a hold last indefinitely. Contrast that to the way the filibuster was once seen, almost universally, as an act of courage.

<<AUDIO Part 2 (Eleven Seconds): ’til doomsday>>

Yes, the filibuster was once painful. It was adversarial. And it was a way to reveal one’s true character. The person holding up a vote in the Senate would have to stand and be seen. Forty senators would have to be present for the arguments, the rhetoric, and the cookie recipes. It was not a back channel process for those lacking the kind of backbone required to be truly representative of one’s constituency. Today, dark money and under the table transactions rule in the USA.

The United States is now ranked by the Economist’s Intelligence Unit as a “flawed democracy.” The macroeconomic analysis of the EIU is seen by business leaders as a trustworthy way to determine how factors, such as the authenticity of any democracy, will impact strategic plans, business operations, and investment decisions. The vacillating coward caucus is making the United States far less attractive to the those astute observers currently vested, or planning to invest in, the de-facto global economy.

Our once constitutionally grounded democratic republic has become an embarrassment on the world stage. And it is due to the subterfuge of unprincipled senators, deceitful representatives, scofflaw justices, and compromised executives. No moral fiber is required of those who have aligned themselves with powerful incumbents. There is no perceived risk associated with making dark money contributions to political action committees that advance an agenda that people of conscience find truly abhorrent.

While retardant forces are sittin’ fat and happy, those looking towards a brighter future understand that every time an elected representative cowers before a tweet, an incoherent diatribe, or a person spewing the most self-serving BS, our republic falters and autocrats rise to say: “You see, democracy doesn’t work. That’s why you need a strong man like me.”

The long overdue sunshine that is brought to bear, as it exposes a wide variety of overpriced elected jellyfish, reveals stark contrasts when politicians are compared to steadfast statesman. Those who fervently advocate for government of, by, and for the people, one that is truly authentic and derives its just powers by the consent of the governed, are not dissuaded by smirks, shallow argument, or even death threats. While some prevaricating politicians hold a death grip on their cushy jobs, we should take note of great revelationary moments in history: One hundred and fifty years ago, James Freeman Clarke got it exactly right when he said: “A politician thinks of the next election. A statesman, of the next generation.”

On June 1^st in 1950, a little known freshman Senator from Maine took to the senate floor and exhibited the kind of courage that has rarely been seen before or since. Margaret Chase Smith challenged the pack mentality of that day as she took on the virus then spread by Senator Joe McCarthy. In an era when freshman Senators were to be seen and not heard, Smith later recalled “This great psychological fear…spread to the Senate, where a considerable amount of mental paralysis and muteness set in for fear of offending McCarthy.” Constrained by senate decorum, Smith focused upon the tactics of McCarthyism as she asked her fellow Senators not to ride to political victory on the “Four Horsemen of Calumny –Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear.” The Hartford Courant later commented “This cool breeze of honesty from Maine can blow the whole miasma out of the nation’s soul.”

The FIBS acronym refers to this very same McCarthian tactic of leveraging Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear. It clearly encapsulates the ongoing and primary aims of those morally bankrupt political operatives that have effectively hypnotized and seized power over the emotionally charged and intellectually stunted factions within the US electorate. They are intent on sustaining that legacy of Lucifer that promotes the counterfeit, unbridled liberty that continues to rape, pillage, and plunder by any means possible. Rather than working to advance the planet towards its high destiny and an era of light and life, they are content with its ongoing orgy of darkness and death. 

<<AUDIO Part 3 (Five Seconds) – I’ve got a piece to say>>

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The first time the Supreme Court apparently held that the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause granted constitutional protections to corporations, as well as to natural citizens, was through the 1886 Supreme Court case Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co. A headnote issued by the Court Reporter is alleged to have been secured by the railroad through bribery. 

The United States Supreme Court’s current view of corporate personhood is clearly not limited to any corporate need to enter into or enforce contracts. It has morphed to deceitfully rot the foundation of democracy. It now regards a corporation as something other, or somehow more than, the voice associated with the rights of those individual true citizens that are the lifeblood and the component parts of every enterprise.

Whenever these judges have held that corporations are, in effect supercharged persons with the right to exert unbridled influence, they have created a set of conditions that clearly favor oligarchy over the cardinal precepts of our constitutionally grounded democratic republic. The judicial monastery’s strange creature is an out of balance fictional character seen as somehow representing the corporation’s employees, retirees, clients, suppliers, and investors. In fact, the wildly disproportionate influence of those investors, that can pull up stakes as if they are shallow-set tent pegs, is typically based upon metrics that are little more than performance snapshots. It is sometimes referred to, by the more deeply vested, as “the tyranny of the balance sheet.” This is often the impetus for a speculator’s self imposed myopia and the most disruptive forms of influence.

In stark contrast to the comings and goings of what our nation’s founders undoubtedly would have described as “foreign potentates,” other stakeholders are not quite so portable. Employees must usually become “vested” over a substantial waiting period before they can exercise any stock options. They are typically required to live in close proximity to the place of business where they invest time and talent, as well as treasure in their communities. Their stakes are deeply set.

The Court has failed to understand just how its rusty scales of equity have been recklessly twisted in ways that adversely impact the health of the nation as well as its enterprises. When certain investors claim that managers and other employees have no stake in a company, consider just how fast an investment banker can dump their stock while the employee is left with few options when a company, or a company town, fails.

The Supreme Court, in its series of cases steadily advancing corporate personhood, failed to differentiate between employee owned corporations and those controlled by outside investors. This latter set often includes non-citizens that have surreptitiously become a big part of the donor base for politicians that are supposed to be representing actual citizens. A corporation that presumes to speak for its employees, without faithfully representing the needs or heartfelt desires of those same employees, gets a pass from our Supreme Court for a political influence that corrodes the democracy underpinnings of our constitutional republic.

A corporation is not a person. It may be a vehicle, an instrumentality, a device, a medium, a mechanism, a fiction, an auspice, an implement, or a contrivance. It is not however, by any stretch of the most overactive imagination, a person. At this critical juncture, we need our courts to behave rationally, and for the legislature to write laws unambiguously. As citizens of a participatory democracy, we need to understand why some in the corridors of power want a constituency that has never taken a civics class. Corrupt officials want an electorate that is entirely ok with effectively nullifying a constitutional imperative, such as the one popularly interpreted as “One man, one vote” by means of increasing the percentage of uninformed or misinformed voters.

Certain politicians have a long history of prostituting their offices to advance a form of corporate speech that has effectively drowned out the voice of the individual citizen. Today, those corrupt legislators and judges are discovering that this same corporate speech can be a two edged sword. Exposing the senatorial and judicial sophistries that have led to the legislature and the court of today being seen by many as illegitimate is the reap what you sow consequence of a stinky fertilization process. It was entirely foreseeable ever since they facilitated an all pervasive and reckless indifference to the truth.

It was inevitable that conferring corporate personhood upon a non-corporeal entity would lead to a distortion of “representative government” that is supposed to derive its just powers from the consent of the governed. Certain politicians can hardly be seen as representing the interests, or the will of, the electorate. In fact, in the context of our republic, they scheme to exacerbate the attention deficit of an intentionally overworked, under-compensated electorate that is distracted by the numerous difficulties often encountered as they try to make ends meet in conditions of peonage and on poverty wages.

The addled supremes, that strain at gnats while swallowing camels, have discarded the spirit of the law as it was so clearly stated within the Preamble to the United States Constitution. And, as long as they can continue to masquerade as originalists and textualists, the majority of us won’t have enough money to pay attention.