Footer and Header: Election 2024

Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet, that did not commit suicide.

‘Tis one thing to shoot oneself in the foot. ‘Tis quite another to shoot oneself in the head.

On a cold winter’s night in Paris, December 17th, 1814, John Adams penned a letter to “John Taylor of Caroline.” Be ye not confused as Caroline, in this context, references the County of Caroline, Virginia. Taylor was an influential politician and writer that served in the Virginia House of Delegates as well as the United States Senate.

A Jeffersonian Republican, Taylor wrote several books on politics and agriculture. Remain cognizant of the time and an agrarian economy which, after all, built what is known as the United States. Pursuant to same, he provided sizeable inspiration to states' rights and libertarian movements.

The fanciful mind will gloriously muse upon the terms Republican (states’ rights) and modern, so-called, Libertarians.

Taylor published a book entitled: An Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States. John Adams' letter to John Taylor in 1814 was a response to a request from the North Carolina state legislature for advice on a form of government. Its portent, most ominous.

In Adams letter he cautions Taylor: “Remember democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet, that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true in fact, and no where appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence and cruelty. When clear prospects are opened before vanity, pride, avarice or ambition, for their easy gratification, it is hard for the most considerate philosophers and the most conscientious moralists to resist the temptation. Individuals have conquered themselves, nations and large bodies of men, never.”

From its inception “America” shot itself in the foot. Since I have have been recently asked why I always put “America” in quotes, it is because there are other Americas (both South and Central) and the European-American ownership of the term editorializes the very hubris and arrogance that will be its demise. The United States is a stolen “nation” that used stolen people to enrich it by its principle means, which was agriculture. An inconvenient truth, perhaps, but truth evermore and it shall end as it began.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

One cannot read, watch, listen to, nor encounter any mode of domestic political journalism without seeing or hearing the words “threat to democracy.” The recriminations are employed and deployed by both duopolistic political parties, their reprobate candidates and their respective minions. Considering that I might posit that the United States is hardly a democracy in its purest sense, such governmental description is more of an assumption, based on ignorance and emotion, than it is reality or fact. The notorious “Citizens United” ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court validates my previous sentence and, thereby, hushes all that possess or entertain the slightest of thoughts to disagree with my assertion.

I once had a female friend that I was quite fond of that had a young teenage son whom used to cut himself with razors. He was a really nice lad that never had a father and he was lost. I learned, from getting to know him a bit, that self-harm in young people chiefly is resultant of sudden life changes like death, divorce, abuse or moving and feelings of extreme pressure or fear of failure.

Be mindful that the United States is a very, very young nation (and I use the term nation loosely). It is a child among nations: consider that China is over 3,000 years old for perspective. Those of us that inhabit, voluntarily or involuntarily, what is known as the United States are witnessing the analogous self-harming youngster. Too much trauma than a young mind is capable of coping with. Three impeachments, a pandemic, misinformation, disinformation, malinformation, poor literacy, poor health care, homelessness, rampant drug abuse, daily mass shootings, inflation, ever present racism, a world rebuking hegemony and, thusly, a “nation” buckling under feelings of extreme pressure and, most importantly, a fear of failure.

What is about to take place, over the next few months, in the United States will be not only epic, but a global phenomena that scholars and historians will study for the next 100 years and beyond. Nothing less than, literally, the fall of Rome. All have heard the adage that “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” It also did not fall in a day, but it crumbled much more rapidly than it was built. Oddly and ominously enough, the very same dynamics that led to the fall of Rome are present today pertinent to its modern day incarnation.

I have always known that the United States would destroy itself. I have known this since I was a very young boy because there is something inherently dishonest about its modus operandi. However, I never thought I would actually see the beginnings of the crumbling cookie (though I am unlikely to see the end, as it were). To my intellectual surprise and, perhaps, chagrin I am saddened to actually, in real-time, bear witness to the inevitable. You see, it is one thing to shoot oneself in the foot, ‘tis quite another to shoot oneself in the head, which is what the United States has done.

A shot in the foot one will likely survive; potential altered gait notwithstanding. A shot in the head will likely result in, at the very least, a vegetative state with a brain dead patient on life-support. A person who is brain dead is legally dead and has no chance of recovery.

There never was a democracy yet, that did not commit suicide.