This Modern Utopia

I don't want a Republican between me and my lover, just like I don't want a for-profit insurance company between me and my doctor. But hey, with regulations and oversight and accountability and ethics disappearing, I won't have time to worry about that while I am worried about having a living income, having affordable health care, being safe, having clean water and air and soil, a safe retirement income, and lead-free schools.

But I will be a model citizen. In this modern radical conservative utopia, in order to fulfill my societal obligations, I will give up my religion, disown people of color, agree to for-profit justice, for-profit prisons, wild west gun laws, unregulated for-profit schools, unregulated markets, and let corporations write the laws for their own benefit.

I will listen to people judge me for not being rich and will let them explain to me that my stagnant income and lousy or non-existent benefits are not because the wealthy don't pay enough, but because it is their money and I should not try to take it out of their pockets like they are taking it out of mine. I will listen as the elitists tell me I have health problems and an inability to treat them because I have made immoral or idiotic lifestyle choices including having a pre-existing condition or being the wrong gender.

I will stand by and wave while the White Nationalists and Nazi-wannabes march. I will stand meekly while there is gerrymandering, purging of voter rolls, requirements for photo ID's to correct a problem that doesn't exist, limited numbers of voting booths and voting hours in less privileged areas, unlimited money for elections and the ability of the wealthy and large corporations to buy politicians and elections both nationally and state-by-state.

I will not complain if my company has been bought and the new owners sold off the pensions, thus cutting drastically my retirement income. I will give up my blood for testing for drugs while politicians on the public dime are exempt. I will just stand by as we return to the era of back-door abortions and dead women, robber barons, sawdust in hot dogs, rivers catching fire, and being fired because I can't do my job without the limb I lost while working on that job.

Cigarettes are good for me, lead and arsenic are both natural substances, pot is a severely addictive narcotic, and great will be the return of poorhouses where the destitute elderly beg for medicine and food and heat and are kept away from the public eye.

I will be part of the nanny state that regulates and limits consensual behaviors and the sanctity of my body. I will give up my home so a company can build on that great location and be good generators of taxes 20 years from now when their agreement with the city expires. And I will understand that companies, for our own good and for the advancement of capitalism, place their enlightened interests above the interests of consumers, neighbors, voters, indigenous people, workers, women, children, people of color, and the elderly and the poor and the disabled.

I will not laugh as our lawmakers spout nonsense and disproven theories, explaining to us how victims of rape cannot get pregnant, climate change is a Chinese hoax, being gay is a choice, trickle-down works, cutting Social Security will help balance the budget, and universal healthcare that most western industrialized nations have had for years and decades won't work. Just because we are the wealthiest nation on Earth doesn't mean we can afford more than a third-world health care system.

And now, a tear threatens to fall from my eye as I listen to those sacred words, "We The Corporations hereby establish this plutocratic system of government of the Corporations, by the Corporations, and for the Corporations in order to insure the peace and comfort and segregation of the wealthy from the grubby little people."

Presidential Fault Lines

A list of just a few of Trump's accomplishments, goals, and

ideas for the first 18 months of his four-year presidency.

• Healthcare that covers everyone with sheets.
• Throwing out the Iran deal without a better one.
• Picking anti-department heads to run departments.
• Withdrawing the U.S from the Paris Climate Accord, joining Syria and Nicaragua as the only countries not signatories to it.
• Claiming that other countries don't pay their share for membership in NATO, confusing NATO required payments with voluntary defense spending by other countries as compared to our massive military defense spending.
• 50% tax breaks for corporations while saying we don't have enough money for social programs.
• Denying Russian interference and denigrating all of our intelligence agencies.
• Claiming the Russia investigation is a Witch Hunt and that there is nothing to find, ignoring that at least 30 people have been charged with crimes.
• Firing FBI Director Comey for not stopping the Russia investigation.
• Nominating unqualified people for seats on SCOTUS, and filling federal judicial offices with unqualified conservative radicals.
• Moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem.
• Not knowing and understanding the Constitution and the National Anthem and how to spell, while telling us he has the greatest memory and is the smartest person ever.
• Admiring racists and Nazis and despots.
• Threatening to start a war with Venezuela and to nuke North Korea into oblivion.
• Making friends with Kim Jong-un, North Korea's leader.
• Asking for a build-up of our nuclear weapons.
• Advocating a Space Force.
• Asking for military parades with tanks and missiles.
• Initiating a policy to forcefully separate children from parents at the border, often without information and tracking so that families could be reunited, and sometimes deporting parents without returning their children to them first.
• Starting a trade war with Canada and others, with negative impacts on workers, companies, farmers, consumers.
• On the phone insulting and yelling at other heads-of-state.
• Not understanding the Executive Orders that he signs (when he remembers to sign them).
• Giving intelligence information (boasting) to the Russians visiting the White House (unplanned declassifications of secrets).
• Giving himself a 10 for his non-response to Puerto Rico's hurricane catastrophe.
• Nepotism.
• Profiting from his Presidency.
• Campaign rallies up to five days a week and golfing on weekends while telling people he's working hard.
• Calling journalists Enemies of the People and calling any criticism Fake News, except for the state propaganda machine that is Fox News.
• Calling kneeling before the flag treason rather than peaceful protests.
• Calling his opponents crooks and liars and puppets and advocating locking them up.
• Public displays of rudeness and bullying and hostility and indifference, even to Gold Star families.
• Spreading conspiracy theories and fake news on Twitter, with his Twitter rants to be considered as official White House correspondence.
• Thinking that Frederick Douglass is alive.
• Thinking that health insurance works like life insurance; by the time you reach age 70, you have a great plan (for $12 a year).
• Denying events and quotes that are taped or recorded.
• Making up facts and figures.

This is just off the top of my head. I'm sorry it is not more comprehensive.

Capitalism vs. Socialism?

Ever hear of Democratic Socialism? Democrats are not about to support Socialism. Only a combination of capitalism and socialism works. Do you think privatization of Social Security (it's already self-funded, not part of the federal budget, and has a Trust Fund of $2.8 trillion in interest-bearing U.S. Treasury Bonds - those pesky paper IOUs) is feasible? How many people lost their retirements to the crash in 2008? I don't want my retirement subject to stock market crashes, thefts, bankruptcies, high admin fees and churning, and major benefit reductions (selling off pension obligations when taking over a company).

Do you like or want privatized prisons, privatized pollution prevention and clean-up, for-profit courts, privatized borders, for-profit schools without regulations or oversight but still with public funding, privatized police and fire protection, unregulated construction and unfunded infrastructure maintenance, for-profit roads and utilities, privatized coast guard and military, unchecked monopolies, unregulated insurance that is more like a coupon, and companies and hospitals and doctors operating with no regulations or requirements or oversight?

Do you really believe in pure capitalism such as that espoused by Trump and Ryan and McConnell? Are you that naive? BTW, how are those pay raises after the massive tax cuts? What, didn't you know workers are making less?

It's not capitalism vs. socialism or communism. It's capitalism plus socialism.