The roadmap to today's America

The current state of America has been developing for a long time. A rough timeline of significant events would include:

1961: Eisenhower warned of the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex
1963: JFK assassinated
1971: Powell Memo published
1986: Fairness Doctrine repealed
1996: Telecommunications Act passed
2010: Citizens United ruling
2016: Russian-Republican subversion of the American electoral process.

At each step, the power of big-money interests to implement and defend their preferred social order was increased. The majority of those interests appear to have thrown their weight behind the "New, Improved Republican Party". At the same time, they have invited huge amounts of dark foreign money into the American socio-political process. Those interests are now thoroughly entrenched, and have commandeered all the levers of true power.

The state of America today is the culmination of an ongoing social monetization process in which cash is king and the poor are Kleenex. Consequently, it's hard for me to see how political action is going to succeed in undoing the last 65 years of unidirectional development. The Golden Rule applies more now than ever: "Those with the gold make the rules."

Absent a social catastrophe, I don't think the situation can be adequately or permanently addressed by standard party politics. The problem is now far bigger than mere politics, especially given the damage that has been done to the street-level political process. In the short term, a resolute intelligence community including the FBI may be able to temporarily stem the tide. But the big money interests aren't going anywhere, and their objectives will not change. Also, as Comey said in his Senate testimony, the Russians will be back - and they play a very long game, for keeps.

On the other hand, party politics is the only lever left to the average person. We have to work with the tools available, even they doesn't work all that well and seem inadequate to the task at hand. That's what human beings do. If you are a political person - like virtually everyone on this board - the only reasonable response is to resist in any and every way possible, even if that resistance seems at times to be a forlorn hope.