Anyway you tell it or spin it, the United States is DIW (dead in the water) as I write this. I don\u2019t mean to imply that the country is on the brink of destruction or even a major catastrophe, but that it is simply treading water and going nowhere, as if waiting for a breakthrough from its political malaise.<\/p>\n
Make a list:<\/p>\n
The cost of everyday living threatens to irreparably change the lives of ordinary Americans.<\/p>\n
The undeclared war with Iran has raised the price of gasoline, hurt the world economy and exposed the limits of American power.<\/p>\n
The Ukraine-Russian War continues largely because the United States has deferred to Russia and has abdicated its leadership to negotiate peace. Meanwhile untold people die each day.<\/p>\n
After initial success in ending the Gaza conflict, the United States allowed Israeli objectives to dictate politics. This has led to a stalemate resulting in continued destruction and loss of life.<\/p>\n
American intransigence and partisan politics has recklessly weakened relationships with European allies and threatened withdrawal from NATO, both of which encourage potential adversaries, most notably Russia.<\/p>\n
ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) continues to terrorize and kill Americans and illegal immigrants in the name of border security, too often as a nod to vicious xenophobia and \u201cred meat\u201d politics.<\/p>\n
By any standards, Congress is dysfunctional, failing to pass either partisan or bipartisan legislation and abdicating its prerogatives to the executive branch. In political parlance, it has been \u201ca do nothing Congress.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite the gravity of domestic and foreign crises, the President seems to spend an inordinate amount of time preoccupied with gilding the Oval Office and designing monuments to himself in Washington, D.C. He also spends hours venting his spleen against the media and political adversaries on social media.<\/p>\n
There is, of course, much more that could be cited here; no doubt, you can think of others that should be included.<\/p>\n
This view of where we are is really nonpartisan, it does not need to be that of either party if we keep an open mind and don\u2019t succumb to partisanship. There are, of course, those who will dismiss it out of hand as more \u201cTrump bashing,\u201d but that is a view of the proverbial \u201ccamel with its head in the sand,\u201d * an action, if true, would kill the camel.<\/p>\n
What strikes me most about writing this is that I can hear loud and clear comments by my right-wing friends, conservatives and Republicans as well as libertarians, that whatever might be said about Trump, the truth is that the Democrats are worse. Their message is that it\u2019s okay for the president and supporters to do bad things because the Democrats do bad things. I guess I could go down to the corner and rob the local convenience store because other people rob the convenience store?<\/p>\n
Please explain this logic to me.<\/p>\n
*This saying really refers to Ostriches but is untrue for either species.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Anyway you tell it or spin it, the United States is DIW (dead in the water) as I write this. I don\u2019t mean to imply that the country is on the brink of destruction or even a major catastrophe, but that it is simply treading water and going nowhere, as if waiting for a breakthrough…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-by-robert-fischer"],"yoast_head":"\n