Monday, June 5, 2017

A Neverending War

This is the 400th post on this blog,
A journey I started almost 6 years ago. I was pretty confused about what was going on here, in the USA, That was 2011.
 I was just beginning to go down the rabbit hole.
The research I was doing invariably led me to a chain of corruption, bribes, nepotism & cronyism.
It definitely wasn't what I thought it would be.
If you could have told me then, that Donald Trump would be president in 2017, I doubt I would have believed it. At that point, I was just beginning to understand why nothing was getting better, in this country and today it is much the same.
Actually, it is worse.
We are still bombing and droning the same countries we were back in 2011, but with an updated list. We still are the largest purveyors of weapons worldwide.
Still have the worst healthcare, for an industrialized country.
We've got guns, guns and more guns and there's another shooting in Orlando today, almost a year after the Pulse Nightclub attack occurred. There's going to be more, Americans know this and they just shake their heads and move on.
Back in 2011, when I was new to blogging, most  people I knew were struggling. In 2017, almost half the country is in poverty. My point being, that nothing much has changed and things have degraded for the average American.
So how do you explain that?
I am trying to think of something that the government has done this year.
6 months into Donald Trumps presidency, with majority Republican in both houses, what has actually been accomplished?
He had a party in the Rose Garden for a healthcare bill that has no chance of making it through the Senate, making healthcare worse again. Seriously?
I looked at the list of signed legislation since Trump took office;
 A Joint Resolution For The Regent of the Smithsonian Institute? A Joint Resolution for the Bureau of Land Management to prepare, revise, use land, initiated by Liz Cheney, she was proud to "stop one more Obama Administration policy that was part of an eight-year war on the west."
If anyone knows about war, it's Dick Cheney's daughter.
 I think this piece of fairly unnoticed legislation is pretty telling. Since it seems to be about giving the power to manage these lands back to the states. Who knows how that's going to work out? More pipelines, more mining, probably, but Obama wasn't very effective when it came to water protectors and "letting things play out"
Well, the oil is flowing now, despite 3 spills so far. Corporations win again, Trump had investments in the parent company of the Dakota Access pipeline, he says he divested, but there's no evidence of this.
The only thing that really counts is corporate power. There's a healthcare corporation between you and your doctor. Almost everything Americans do has some kind of corporate structure involved, that's propped up by government corporate welfare. And they call us useless eaters.
If anything, since 2011, corporations have more power, while Americans have less full time work at minimum wage. It's not going to improve, if we go by Trump's first 6 months.
However, nothing improved with Obama either.
Americans are still heavily invested in a two party system that does nothing for them. It's all the illusion of choice. I still don't hear anyone bragging about anything that Trump has accomplished,
I kind of understand. I just spent a few hours of my life trying to figure out what, exactly, Trump has done, by going to actual government websites. If it takes a college educated woman, who's been blogging for about six years, part of her day to figure out what is going on, then  the average exhausted over worked American, doesn't stand a chance.
Most people just hear about Trump's tweets. That's where they get their information.
This is where we are, it's like George Carlin said, the government doesn't want critical thinkers. The government is winning, because no one is paying attention between the bombings and the shootings and the daily chaos of Trumps tweets and that's not an accident.
When are people going to figure out that they've been played? It's a con.
The policies of the last 6 years and before, when Bush invaded Afghanistan, has led to the terrible circumstances we find ourselves in today. There is no doubt in my mind that what is happening in the UK with the terrible attacks, right before their elections is blowback.
How long before it's our turn again?
We just armed Saudi Arabia to the teeth and now they've cut off diplomatic ties with Qatar and this has everything to do with picking a fight with Iran. Trump has aligned himself and thus, the rest of us with the Saudis. Why? Qatar-Iran gas field probably. Not to mention Israel is no friend to Iran either, it's a win-win for Trump and if we keep meddling it's going to be a lose-lose for us.
This is the man that didn't want to involve us in any more wars, but is about to put another surge in Afghanistan.
400 posts ago, I guess I had a lot more hope, but now, you can predict how things will play out. Corporations have taken over the government and that includes defense contractors, who will clean up in the next conflict.
To make matters worse, after the UK tragedy over the weekend, Trump was hellbent on criticizing London's mayor on twitter, co-opting a tragedy. Totally cringeworthy. Totally heartbreaking, but not unexpected, I do expect him to keep ginning up for another war.
From 2011 to 2017, here I am writing about more, neverending war.
My only hope came from watching Ariana Grande and others performing in Manchester. Trying to give something back to the people who have suffered as a result of terrible decisions made by our leaders. I'll just leave a little video of her and the Black Eyed Peas here.