Friday, February 14, 2020                                       7:33 AM

What Are You Doing In Public Service?   (2020Feb14)

I imagine right now the Republicans feel pretty much the same way the White Sox felt after they threw the Series, 101 years ago. See, the ‘Black Sox’ (as they came to be known) were just part of a culture of sports-bet fixing that had become endemic. The players assumed that this was acceptable behavior, because of the corruption all around them. They went out and got drunk on the money they were paid.

When a straight-up judge was appointed the first Baseball Commissioner, he ignored the legal acquittals of the players and banned them for life, ignoring life-long pleas for re-instatement. This seems harsh to some, but it resulted in restoration of public faith in our national pastime—and our common belief in the integrity of modern pro baseball games.

The Republicans have been doing the truth-denying, respect my authoritah, science-is-lying ‘thing’ for years—remember the ‘Tea Party’?—a simperingly-cute label for a regressive inversion of truth and logic never-before-seen. What a bunch of racist conspiracies against the plain truth! Those people made me want to start screaming—the blatant confidence of sheer dumb-assed-ness.

But I don’t think these intellectual cowards, these locked-in-their-own-self-interest morons, have yet become the majority of voters. I think people that miss a respected and powerful America (or human rights?) may vote for someone else….

And please don’t try to tell me that Trump deserves credit for the fantastic Obama-fix of our economy—which he did nothing but ‘F’ with. Trump has been an out-in-the-open criminal (while Republicans spent the last four years pretending he was fine) destroying, dismissing, or demeaning every American value he can get his hands on. And while his leadership results are in the high negatives, his practical effect on our country has been nil—his accomplishments remain entirely on Twitter. His advisors remain in jail.

But isn’t AG Barr the cute one? He may actually believe that if you BS in the right tone of voice, no one will question it—but I find him neck-and-neck with King Ubu. Never before has anyone accepted that post on the understanding that his job will be to prevent the law.

Now, I don’t blame the media, per se—they are the fully-owned creatures of about four rich fuckers (tops—might be two). But they do abet the charade by pretending Republicans aren’t blowing it out their assholes, every time they respond to serious allegations against any of those traitorous scumbags.

I have taken a cue from my wife, who stopped watching TV news after the 2016 election. Rachel Maddow is remarkable by contrast with all the rest of it—a lone voice of reason and research—but sometimes even she is reduced to following the peer-telephone up BS creek.

So we have no social grapevine, like Johnny Carson or All In The Family, that can assure we’re all on the same page. We certainly have no Murrow, or Cronkite, to give us all the straight poop. We have to develop judgement of our own. We have to learn to look at rich people and ask, “What the fuck are you doing in public service, now that you’re old and out-of-shape? You think you’re a good leader because you’re used to giving orders? Get tha Fuck outta here!”