Part 4:Ruminations of a Baby Boomer: Why Our Elected Reps Don't Represent Us

By Frosty Wooldridge

Part 4: Men and women elected to the US Congress submit to money, greed and power, systemic corruption, human nature of self-interest

Back in 1776, a whole bunch of American colonists lost their lives attempting to free themselves from the “Divine Right of Kings.” As ‘subjects’, they lacked any enjoyment of the amenities of the King of England and his entourage.

Today, the United Kingdom maintains the ‘royals’ who don’t work, don’t contribute and lead frivolous lives—paid for by every working stiff in the country. Via their birth-lottery luck, royals enjoy wealth, public adulation and pomp—for doing absolutely nothing of merit or worth. It’s almost comical to see Prince Harry, now led around by the nose by his American wife Megan Markle, try to figure out his life in Los Angeles where he flops around emotionally, mentally and physically trying to figure out his new life as a commoner. His journey may see some contentious turns in the coming months. He’s a man without a country. I could speak few words about his manhood, but I’ll leave it to your imagination.

Whatever happened in America in 1776, a new brand of individual emerged. That guy and gal gritted his or her teeth when England unfairly taxed them, housed soldiers in their homes and submitted to being wage-slaves to the Crown. It didn’t sit well with Daniel Boone, Nathan Hale, Paul Revere, Samuel Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Ethan Allen, Ben Franklin and George Washington.

After driving the British out of America, those great men and their wives, Abigail Adams & Martha Washington, created a Constitution that mandated an extraordinary form of government, “…of the people, by the people and for the people…free speech…right to carry arms….”

In the amendments, they gave us, the average American citizen, the ability to control our government by our choices. We enjoyed electing representative to serve our needs. That proceeded rather well up until 55 years ago around 1965.

That’s when the Military Industrial Complex corporate heads bribed, lobbied, and cajoled our reps with gifts to create the Vietnam War. They used the one thing that the Founding Fathers didn’t place into the U.S. Constitution: term limits. Since 1965, our career, corrupt criminal class of ‘forever’ politicians continue to screw us out of our children in wars and out of our money through tax mandates. As I’ve stated in recent columns, America has been creating and continuing wars for half my life. What exactly have we accomplished in Iraq and Afghanistan in the past 19 years?

Those same politicians play on our fears, on our emotions and on our sheep-like frailties to follow-support greedy men in high places.

Essentially, career politicians resemble the ‘royals’ that screwed their own ‘subjects’ in jolly old England. Why do so many of them become millionaires? Answer: they enjoy insider trading on massive defense contracts maintained by the Defense Department, et al. It should really be called the “War Department.”

When you and I use common sense and painstaking accounting of our earned incomes, those people in Washington DC use their influence to make themselves rich, self-important and forever politicians. As the great Lord Acton 150 years ago said, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

While we clamor for “term limits” or stand against the wars in the middle east after 19 years of futility, notice the wars continue whether we can afford them or not at $6 trillion of wasted money. Those wars continue because we keep voting in the same scoundrels who make money off those wars at the expense of tens of thousands of our young soldiers. Is it possible that we can equate the 22 soldier suicides daily to PTSD, to the suicide of our country?

What about the massive and endless illegal immigration crisis? It hasn’t stopped since it began in earnest in 1980. It’s caused our poor to become poorer and our 5 percent rich to become richer. We’ve got 40 million people subsisting on food stamps for heaven sakes! Notice that we have 25 million illegal aliens displacing our working poor! The big money people thrive while our country fragments and fractures on sociological, linguistic, cultural and religious fault-lines.

We don’t need or want 1.2 million legal immigrants annually because we can’t afford them, can’t afford the welfare, and can’t afford the exploding sociological fracturing—but Congress keeps pumping them into our cities at 100,000 per month, without end. Some rich people along with religious groups make a lot of money while you and I open our wallets and pay a lot of cash.

As a baby boomer, I’ve seen this grand criminal procession from 1965 onward to this day. I’ve long given up hope that it will end. Washington DC remains a den of thieves who could care less about the future of our nation.

“Here is how we can destroy America,” Lamm said. “First, turn America into a bilingual or multilingual and bicultural country. History shows that no nation can survive the tension, conflict and antagonism of two or more competing languages and cultures. It is a blessing for an individual to be bilingual; however, it is a curse for a society to be bilingual. The historical scholar Seymour Lipset put it this way, “The histories of bilingual and bicultural societies that do not assimilate are histories of turmoil, tension and tragedy. Canada, Belgium, Malaysia, Lebanon—all face crises of national existence in which minorities press for autonomy, if not independence. Pakistan and Cyprus have divided. Nigeria suppressed an ethnic rebellion. France faces difficulties with Basques, Bretons and Corsicans.”

Lamm said, “If you believe that America is too smug, too self-satisfied, too rich, then let’s destroy America. It is not that hard to do. No nation in history has survived the ravages of time. Arnold Toynbee observed that all great civilizations rise and fall, and that, “An autopsy of history would show that all great nations commit suicide.”

Wouldn’t you say that we’re pretty much on the same path as when I witnessed this speech in Washington DC in October 2003? Do you think there’s any chance that we will stop all immigration to save ourselves? What do you think will happen to your kids if we don’t stop all immigration and add the projected 100 million more people by 2050? Any chance you realize that we are committing national, cultural, sociological and linguistic suicide?

Do you think our elected forever criminal reps serve us or even care a twit? My thought: in a pig’s eye!

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– Frosty Wooldridge