It always amuses me when we hear "that's not who we are as a nation"

[PatrickforB]

17. And yet, we see overt racism is alive and well, institutional racism is worse than ever,

the holy-rollers in TX have essentially banned abortions, and other Republican states are getting on that bandwagon. Indeed, some Christians are called dominionists and intend to make this country a theocracy, and voter suppression measures are being put in place, or have been, that are specially designed to make harder for people of color to vote.

We had a bunch of treasonous Trumpies storm the Capitol on January 6, terrorized Congress members and staff, and smeared feces on the walls. There are still maybe 14 or 15 million of us that believe in Jewish space lasers, underground pedophile pizza, and that you can take horse dewormer or inhale peroxide with a nebulizer instead of getting a free, easily available vaccine. Because, hey, they are afraid of microchips in the vaccine, courtesy of Bill Gates.

And let's not forget the schools. We have a black high school principal whose contract was not renewed because he had the temerity to post pictures of himself and his white wife on Facebook, and a bunch of Kluxers and neo-nazis - very good people, Trump called them! - who are going into school curriculums to get rid of what they call 'critical race theory' and the rest of us call truth. Because we surely wouldn't want our kids to know about slavery, genocide and conquest - the three pillars of this Republic!

Republicans in the Senate are digging in and trying to prevent Democrats from passing the entirety of Biden's infrastructure bill, and even some so-called 'moderate' Dems are holding up a needed expansion of Medicare. McConnell's power strategy against Obama was to hold up everything, don't do anything, then sit back and blame the Democrats for doing nothing and it worked. They are doing that again now.

All this against the backdrop of the last ditch effort by big oil to delay any effort toward mitigating climate change, and we are well on the way to making this planet uninhabitable with our primacy of the shareholder supply-side capitalism.

This is the only country in the world that has crummy, rationed healthcare with financially crippling copays, healthcare debt, and healthcare bankruptcies. We can throw $1.8 trillion at a forever war, and strip over $3 trillion from our treasury through feckless tax cuts (2017), but we cannot afford universal healthcare that is not tied to employment. Some people on here will even tell you that.

But, hey, this vocal minority of Trumpie Qs sure has 'owned us libs.' Yep, they surely have.

I get that you love this Republic. So do I. But when I see someone say 'this is exactly how we are,' I have to concede this is true as we stand now. But, with you, I believe that if we get rid of the party of lies, obstruction, treason, and death, and put sane people in office, we could become a real light on the hill. Everything our founders wanted this Republic to become and more. We could. We have to stop talking about politics and start talking about good policy. AOC, Katie Porter, and Elizabeth Warren do this. Every day. The policies they advocate would materially help Americans and their families.

As an economist, that is exactly what I tell people. Policies affect you. Deregulation affects you. Tax cuts for the rich affect you. Health insurance lobbies affect you. In fact we can expand that and call it corporate corruption. It affects us every day.

Question is, will we be wise enough as a people to grow up in the way we must to save this republic and the world?