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Blood, Patriotism, and Eagleshit
By Rob Tannahill |
Fifty years ago, Harry Truman replaced the old republic with a national-security state whose sole purpose is to wage perpetual wars, hot, cold, and tepid. Exact date of replacement? February 27, 1947. Place: White House Cabinet Room. Cast: Truman, Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson, a handful of congressional leaders. Republican senator Arthur Vandenberg told Truman that he could have his militarized economy only if he first "scared the hell out of the American people" that the Russians were coming. Truman obliged. The perpetual war began. Representative government of, by, and for the people is now a faded memory. Only corporate America enjoys representation by the Congresses and presidents that it pays for in an arrangement where no one is entirely accountable because those who have bought the government also own the media. Now, with the revolt of the Praetorian Guard at the Pentagon, we are entering a new and dangerous phase. Although we regularly stigmatize other societies as rogue states, we ourselves have become the largest rogue state of all. We honor no treaties. We spurn international courts. We strike unilaterally wherever we choose. We give orders to the United Nations but do not pay our dues. We complain of terrorism, yet our empire is now the greatest terrorist of all. We bomb, invade, subvert other states. Although We the People of the United States are the sole source of legitimate authority in this land, we are no longer represented in Congress Assembled. Our Congress has been hijacked by corporate America and its enforcer, the imperial military machine. We the unrepresented people of the United States are as much victims of this militarized government as the Panamanians, Iraqis, or Somalians. We have allowed our institutions to be taken over in the name of a globalized American empire that is totally alien in concept to anything our founders had in mind.
--Gore Vidal, "A Letter to be Delivered"
We'll possibly never know who first said, "No taxation without representation," but it is currently attributed to one of our forgotten Founding Fathers, James Otis, Jr. Unfortunately he was "raving mad" according to John Adams and a drunk to boot. He died by being struck by lightning. And so he was abandoned by the cause he championed. But everyone in this country, whether they like it or not, know these words. I just read the essay I quoted above, and it pleased me to see that Vidal had come to the same conclusion I did.
Why is the country the way it is? Historians and sociologists and anyone else who want to try a hand at answering that question can list off any number of terrible things about our country and government, but everything comes down to that one thing: NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION. It's true that we still send these clowns to Washington, but they do not do our bidding. They only answer to their corporate overlords, and THAT is why we are all so fucked. THAT is why we live in an oligarchy. THAT is why America is coming to an end.
We'll still toddle on for a while. It'll still be called America. But it won't be any such country. It will have died an ignoble death at the hands of Trump's Horrible Terrible No Good Very Bad Bill.
But this is not about Trump and his pack of assholes. This is about America, and we've been fucked for much longer than he's been haunting our presidency, not like some grim specter in classic lit-rit-chure, but more like Slimer from Ghostbusters.
In a fit of rage I thought that maybe the income tax should be eliminated. Instead we should be taxing corporations an eye-watering 99%. If they want to run the country, they should pay for it. But no, that would just make things worse.
I have a solution. Three, in fact. One is good. One is, mmm, not so good. And one is flat-out terrible. More on that later.
A SIMPLER TIME
Before we go any further, we must first reject our thoughts and prayers begging for a return to a simpler time. The world has never been simple, not since we gained sentience. I know. I get it. The first thing that I do, whenever shit gets crazy and complicated, is wish for simpler times. Do not have, to paraphrase the Dead Kennedys, nostalgia for an age that never existed.
We all have our own experiences to go by in this regard. The illusion of simplicity is that we were kids at the time, dammit. How aware of world events is an eight year old? I assure you, the world was just as complicated back then. The only things that have changed are technology and style. I follow several social media accounts "covering" history in real time, and one of them was from when I was in junior high and high school. The stories were just as fucked up back then as they are now. I'd just never read about it.
And don't tell me about how, when you were a kid, you could leave your house unlocked, and no one would bother it. Maybe that worked for *you*, but try doing that in a different neighborhood. Not everyone had that privilege. The experience of an era does not mean that everyone had that exact same experience. Maybe you danced the Charleston and drank bathtub gin and had the time of your life in high society balls. Were you under the illusion that everyone experienced that in such an era? Let's ask the WWI veteran who returned with his face blown off so he has to wear a mask just to not be noticeable in public. Did he have the time of his life back then? These boys came home and became the first socially recognized junkies. Not exactly the time of their lives.
Full disclosure: I really wish to return to the pre-Trump era, but not because it was a simpler time. It was a time with less cruelty.
ORIGINAL SIN
Another thing we're going to have to understand is, our role in the world's cruelty started pretty much day one, when the first Europeans washed up on the Atlantic's shore. Some tribes sensibly made war with us, but others were foolish enough to think we could be bargained with. Because of their aid, our virus of unrestrained greed infected the land, and here we stand today, sea to polluted-as-fuck sea, greed leaping from our eyes and mouths, the buzz of it in our ears constantly. Oh, and those tribes? I think it was Garth Ennis who originally wrote in Preacher that converting the natives to corpses was cheaper than converting them to Christianity. Hundreds of thousands of native people thrived here before we arrived. Now they're limited to reservations and make up less than 2% of our population. Our hunger for genocide is baked into the land.
And then there's slavery. We held on to the peculiar institution for a very long time. We brought it to the New World where it grew strong in the cotton and tobacco fields. To say nothing of our oppression of women and our urge to prey on the helpless.
How could the Founding Fathers, who extolled the virtues of freedom, have let all this happen? It's all in how you define "man." Generally we think of that today as a catchall term for "humanity." Back then a man was someone who was male, white and a landowner. That sounds like something a lawyer would throw together. The scourge took hold early.
Still having doubts? Just about the only land we got without conquering someone was the Louisiana Purchase. When we wanted the southwest territories, we invented some reason for war with Mexico to simply steal them. And then there was our lust for lands abroad, especially the Philippines where we killed so many Filipinos (after betraying them, of course) that Mark Twain observed that the American flag should be a skull and crossbones. There are no exact figures, but it's hundreds of thousands to a million Filipinos we killed to subjugate them. Genocide = America.
Cruelty and inhumanity are thus inherent parts of our identity as a nation. No one likes to hear that about their own country, but you can't deny it. Once you face it and understand it, we can perhaps move towards changing it. (He said ever-so-hopefully.) The first step in AA is the only one I agree with, and the only one I ever took. You have to admit you have a problem. America needs to do this, because our problem is set so deep in our structure that an entire overhaul of the system might be needed. Wish in one hand.
THE NATURE OF THE PROBLEM
Anyone can run for President of the United States. *I* did it once as a book promotion. And every once in a while we get a hopeful third party candidate, like Perot or Nader, but that person will never win. Because in this country we have two choices for president: a Republican or a Democrat. Some choice. Doesn't it seem to anyone that this is exceptionally unfair to people who want to see some real change? The two political parties are well funded, which means that no matter who gets into office, we're fucked. Why? Because the Republicans and Democrats are owned by the same people who own us: the corporate overlords. How much money do candidates spend to get the White House? Do you think a couple of grand would do it? Of course not. So the only people who are electable in this system are the people who have a shit ton of money, ie. people who don't have We the People's best interests at heart.
It's even worse in Congress. More political parties and independents have a chance there, but it all amounts to the same thing. The only reason they got elected is because of the corporate money that got them elected. The corporate money EVERY politician got, just to ensure that our needs are never satisfied by anyone in office.
This land touts freedom more than just about anything else, but your freedom is limited to a choice between two people as president?
Choice is the problem. We don't have it, but we think we do. You've all seen the charts that prove that three to five corporations own every fucking company in the country, so I won't bore you with that. You might say that's not bad as far as selection goes, but these companies don't compete. They chopped up our nation and each owns their own piece. This means they set the prices. It also means they get to abuse the fuck out of you. What are you going to do about it? Hence the enshittification of products.
But that's a topic for a different day. We essentially live in the land of the free where we barely have more freedom than the Communist nations we needlessly fear. How did this come to pass?
It happened in 1962. The Committee of Economic Development. 75 of the most powerful corporate officers in the country. They were mostly in charge of the food supply, but they were also represented by other interests: oil, insurance, retail, etc. An Adaptive Program for Agriculture. That's what they called their plan to "eliminate farmers and farms" according to Joel Dyer, author of Harvest of Rage: Why Oklahoma City is Only the Beginning. So naturally they told Congress that "the biggest problem in agriculture was too many farmers." They were aware that farm kids who go to college don't return to the farm, so why not encourage that trend? All the better, the federal government covered the grants. These corporate assholes got together and fucked as many farmers as possible by paying them less than it cost to grow their product. Those farmers then had to go to banks, also represented by the Committee, to get loans they would never be able to pay off until they had no choice but to foreclose on their farms. And guess who gets those farms?
That is what started the merger-mania that consumed this country until we're stuck with those 3-5 corporate owners. Eventually it became easier to just sell out than to fight the mega-conglomerates.
Planned obsolescence should be a fucking crime. "Just go somewhere else," the capitalist says. "Where?" I say. We can't go elsewhere. We're held in thrall to our corporate overlords, who will never make quality products so long as they have the freedom to abuse us.
These are the guys who pay for our elections. They're the ones who shovel money in each and every time, and everyone gets a piece. It would be terrible if an unbribed candidate accidentally won. This is necessary to our corporate overlords. Those who control the people in Congress, controls any laws that would be made in regards to business. The house, in other words, must always win.
None of these assholes have an interest in changing the way things are. They are the beneficiaries of our current system. To turn down that much money would be unthinkable.
Private equity firms buy up good companies and turn their goods and services to shit in order to raid the company's assets, leaving it an empty husk. This is exactly what Musk and Trump did with DOGE. They wanted to transfer all the money in the country from those at the bottom of the economy to pad out the wallets of those at the top. And they pretty much succeeded. I suppose that is a capitalist's wildest wet dream, to financially raid the federal government. Is Fred Christ Trump looking up fondly on his son?
Ordinarily the corporate overlords wouldn't have gotten so greedy. To ensure the status quo, they let a lot of things go. But since they have a real prick in the Oval Office, why not butcher the government like a hog?
HOW DO WE FIX IT?
First we must get over the idea of horrifying the Founding Fathers, who aren't even here to be shocked, anyway. Some of them did time, so a modern day MAGA would dismiss them as criminals, when technically the American Revolution was a criminal enterprise . . . to the British. To quote Vidal, "I fear the United States has always been a nation of ongoing hustlers from the prisons and disaster-areas of Old Europe." He might be thinking mostly of Thomas Paine, here, but how about a quote from another FF, George Mason?
"The government will set out a moderate aristocracy: it is, at present, impossible to foresee whether it will, in its operation, produce a monarchy, or a corrupt, tyrannical aristocracy. It will most probably vibrate some years between the two, and then terminate in one or the other."
But none were more pessimistic than Benjamin Franklin, who was caught leaving the Constitutional Convention and was asked what kind of government they'd created. "A republic," he said, "if you can keep it."
Thomas Jefferson was equally dubious. Everyone knows about his "tree of Liberty" quote, but he went one step better on this one. He built something into the Constitution that might just save us.
Our empire is drawing to a close. It has been falling since 1950, but now that private equity has taken over, the process is rapidly deteriorating. Entropy is swallowing us whole. The end really is near. I never thought I'd live to see the end of this nation.
There are three ways this can go. The first option is to simply let it burn out and die. The second option is bloody revolution, which will take part as the Second American Civil War. I don't like the sound of either option.
But the third. Oh, the third! A dream! A hope! A vision! But a lot of people have to make financial sacrifices.
Remember when I was Evil John Bruni, writing Evil Goodnight, Fuckers? I lampooned the Constitution, interpreting it as a MAGA would. But I left one part alone. I'm a little surprised that no one mentioned anything to me about it. I hereby draw your attention to . . .
Article V
The Congress, whenever two thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress; provided that no amendment which may be made prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the ninth section of the first article; and that no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.
The Constitutional Convention! Jefferson recommended having one every generation, which is a great idea that never happened. Provided that 2/3s of both houses or 2/3s of state legislatures can agree to this vote, we can hold a Convention to RESHAPE THE ENTIRETY OF OUR NATION. This is our best shot of getting out of this alive with a republic.
Such conventions have happened a few times over the years, but those involved made sure to restrict the topics that could be discussed. For our purposes, NO TOPIC MUST BE RESTRICTED.
Voters are apathetic, I hear you say. Sure. Out of 340.1M Americans, 245M are registered to vote, and little more than 150M did so in 2024. The reason for this is, those who didn't vote recognize that voting is useless. Nothing ever changes here. Never. It's always the same shitshow year after year, decade after decade. The rich get richer. The poor get poorer. What middle class? Repeat until the heat death of our planet.
But if these people knew that this one time they could make a difference?
They would all show up for their vote--their REAL vote--to be counted. The risk is that we might lose liberties. The truth is, we won't, provided everyone shows up and demands the reform we need to turn back the tide. Empire is never the answer, but a sustainable country? Where everyone counts? Where everyone's well-being is considered? Where how much money you have doesn't mean a goddam thing?
With real consequences on the table, they'll show up.
When I was a kid I loved my country. I said the Pledge of Allegiance with hand on heart like my other classmates until I started noticing something didn't ring true. That was around junior high, when I started paying more attention. By that point I'd moved from plot to characters in figuring out how to tell stories. I'd discovered the unreliable narrator in elementary school, but the knowledge only kicked in at this moment. Which is the long way to tell you that I discovered the world was a lot more complex than I'd thought, and that not everyone worked towards a better world. When I started seeing that America stood for FREEDOM, but only for a select few, I started mouthing the words instead so I wouldn't get caught not saying anything. More and more evidence kept piling up until I knew to a moral certainty in high school (early on, too, I'd say near the end of freshman year) that America did not encourage freedom for all Americans.
I still do love America. Not what it actually is, but what it promises. We can change our country's betrayal of us. WE CAN WIN BACK OUR COUNTRY. This time we can make it live up to its own promises. Can you imagine it? An America FOR EVERYONE. All of us, not just the corporate overlords. Not just the oligarchs. And, on the lower levels, not just for white heterosexual men. No matter the color of your skin, no matter your background, no matter your genetic makeup, no matter your sexual orientation or even whether or not you were born a different gender. No matter your financial situation. For the first time ever, America will belong to We the People as it was intended from the start.
Something must be done. The United States of America is disintegrating rapidly. The only other options result in misery and murder and woe and tears and destruction and bloodshed and, possibly, ever-lasting fascism. The fascism is already here, but we're still in a position to stop it. The only reason Trump would never act against Article 5 is because he could never, in a billion years, imagine politicians willing to sacrifice their own money for the greater good. He's probably right, but fuck him. We need to do this.
You know it's the right thing to do. INVOKE ARTICLE FIVE. RESTRICT NO TOPIC OF DISCUSSION. It's the only way to save ourselves.
