USA Today: "Forecast of distrust with a chance of revolution" [View all]

[Attorney in Texas]

link; excerpt:

According to a recent Associated Press poll, the public lacks confidence in government. And by “lacks confidence,” I mean “really lacks confidence.” Specifically, “More than 6 in 10 respondents expressed only slight confidence — or none at all — that the federal government can make progress on the problems facing the nation in 2016.”

And this isn’t just Republicans in a sour mood after seven years of Obama. As the AP noted, “Perhaps most vexing for the dozen or so candidates vying to succeed President Barack Obama, the poll indicates widespread skepticism about the government's ability to solve problems, with no significant difference in the outlook between Republicans and Democrats.”...The Middle East is on fire; Putin is running rampant in eastern Europe and Syria; Saudi Arabia is probably looking to get an atomic bomb to balance the one that Iran is expected to get in spite of (because of?) the recent U.S./Iran nuclear deal; and Europe is flooded with migrants who don’t look likely to integrate well. The latter is of course a result of the Middle East problems and of the overthrow of Libya’s dictator, Col. Moammar Gadhafi, in a war-of-choice launched without congressional approval at the behest of Hillary Clinton, then-United Nations ambassador Susan Rice and then-National Security Council senior aide Samantha Power.

Meanwhile, at home, the economy limps along despite seven years of “recovery” and record deficits. Among the Democratic political candidates, only Bernie Sanders seems to make a big deal of real unemployment (including underemployment and people who have given up looking for jobs) being much higher than the rosy official unemployment numbers. ... Then there’s the official lawlessness. The IRS, hiding from investigations that it targeted Tea Party groups, keeps "accidentally" destroying hard drives. Hillary’s emails also keep mysteriously disappearing, and now the State Department has used the blizzard as an excuse for not producing court-ordered emails, though it’s known about the order for months. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, former attorney general Michael Mukasey says that Hillary should face criminal charges, but who really expects that? She’s politically untouchable, which says bad things about the rule of law.