Thursday's Clinton-bashing hearing in Congress carried with it that "frog in heating water" feeling. The water is boiling and the country is the frog. This is a period where the country has gone crazy.
This has been slowly building since the ascendency of the corporate-funded "conservative movement" and then the presidential election of Ronald Reagan. The 24/7/12/365 drumbeat of corporate/conservative propaganda started then. The intentional defunding of government started then. The refusal to maintain our infrastructure started then. The continuing trade deficit that has drained our economy of jobs started then. The "volunteer army" perpetual-war machine got revved up then. The privatization of publicly held wealth started then. The collapse of the middle class started then. So many things started going wrong then. And after a slow, decades-long buildup, the country is threatening to collapse like an unmaintained bridge.
The planet is heating (the strongest western-hemisphere hurricane ever is heading toward Mexico as I write this). We are on the verge of a debt-ceiling crisis that could throw the world into something far worse than 2008 or the 1930s Depression. The corporate/conservative/billionaire money is flowing so freely into elections that almost all of the Republican candidates voice the concerns of the billionaires funding their campaigns and don't say a word about what the public needs. No wonder Republicans have turned to Donald Trump.
"Were You Alone All Night?"
The gerrymandered-into-office Republican Congress is completely dysfunctional for governing, and instead of addressing the country's problems we got this: An 11-hour long hearing asking a former first lady, senator and Secretary of State, "Were you alone all night?"
What the country experienced Thursday is SO FAR from any kind of normal, reasonable operation of a Congress or a country that I can't believe it could even happen. The Republicans have fallen SO FAR down into a hole of their own propaganda machine that reality is lost completely for them.
But it's like the alcoholic in the family that no one dares talk about. The elite pundit and news media class is so mired in a "both sides do it," and their careers are so tied to boosting Republican corporatism, that they can not scream about the situation.
Systemic collapse builds slowly and then happens very quickly. The water is boiling rapidly now. It's clearly a question of when, not if.
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This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF. Sign up here for the CAF daily summary and/or for the Progress Breakfast.
