How is it good for America to fire all those who offered “help” in our name overseas? Even if they are all “radical lunatics?”
And how is it good for America to sack all the people who kept an eye out for big crime and for terror? Even if they were all conspiring with a deep state?
Even if you clear out all the people, you offer some alternative, right? Because being of “help,” wins you allies? Because we remain against crime and terror? Right?
And how does it serve America to be the worst boss ever, time enough to clean out a desk or look for another job too much notice to give?
Why pull the plug on aid even before anyone can seek another source of funding? To make sure baby never gets a bath? Throw out its only water?
In what way do unhappy former employees and more kids abroad who feel betrayed by us or angry at us serve our national interest?
To be the town with no sheriff, where everyone can see anything goes, or the villager who refuses to lend a hand burnishes our image how?
Was there no implied contract on our end when we handed out the uniform, hired these folks to work for us? Were the rules of association we had with countries always ours to sever without warning? Did we never shake hands with our own agents and ambassadors as with those from countries we recently called partner? If so, how is it good for our handshake to be worth less now?
How does insisting we name neutral waters after ourselves look anything but petty? Especially when our house is on fire? And how is it good for us to tell our neighbors we are fine if their house burns down?
Does it make us a more perfect union to provoke law suits from governors and senators on behalf of their states? To force resignations from those who swear to uphold the rule of law? To be rude and haughty by default?
And why is the lesson of the Southern border that all other borders should be under contest too? How are more hot spots of conflict and distress good for you or for me?
Even if it is righteous to dismiss all who once served, deport all illegals, and stamp everyone either boy or girl, is it good to test nothing against due process, difficult ideas, or even one fact, as alternative as it may be?
Or is it good for us if we say only fools and traitors invoke precedent?
And if the only difference between a good guy with skin and a bad guy with skin is known only to the anointed, why should anyone put their skin in the game, pledge allegiance to flag and the Republic for which it stands? Is it good for us if there is no reason to gravitate to the patriotism of place and liberty and freedom?
Is thug behavior and mob justice not the logical thing to fear if only those who supplicate themselves to the party get hired, if friends are pardoned en masse and opponents persecuted as policy?
And why is the logic of common sense no longer good for us?
If only one person knows how to distinguish the enemy within from we, the people, how are we not all the targets of rendition? And how is that good for anyone?
The protective dad? The masterly commander? Even the noble king? Does anyone see these roles anywhere at play in this administration?
And what about the superior man of business? Where is he? With his art of the deal? What about the art of the sell?
Because who is being won over to our cause now? Who wants to climb on board now? Who would wish to invest in us now?
Who buys America as great now?
And if the answer is “no one,’’ or even “fewer than a month ago,” how that is good for us?
America?
Is the military being dismantled or repurposed to protect the executive? Are our resources now going anywhere but to the wealthy? How is dismantling USAID a step in the direction yo are discussing, even if it is only a cover for other nefarious activities?
It will be painful, but with any luck, they will (unintentionally?) break the empire and take away the financialized economic toys that neoliberal managerial elites have used to loot domestic and foreign resources, chiefly the laboring masses. With the dismantling of the outsized military that exists for this purpose, perhaps regrowth without nuclear war will be possible. On the other side of its self-humiliation, maybe 'Merka can be great in a corner by itself in some neo-Jeffersonian agrarian-isolationist sense, hopefully not too confederate and/or theocratic in some locales. It is already slavery by another name, and democracy never existed in this colonialist oligarch's plantation.