The Party of Hypocrisy

First it was wall murals of Trump and Putin making out. Those were supposed to be funny. Then a picture of Putin in drag with the caption, “Putin hates this, so don’t you dare repost!” Last year I heard someone criticize Trump for promising to commit a war crime (torture) when Clinton had already done one (Libya.) Clinton was given a pass. Now we have Stephen Colbert making a gay joke about Trump and Putin.

So it’s OK to be sexist and homophobic if we’re the ones doing it now? Trump’s ‘locker room talk’ is bad. Ours is good? Do as we say, not as we do, is it? No wonder the left in this country is a joke. No wonder no one listens to us and thinks we’re a wash tub of whiners. Our government no longer stands for any of the principals dear to the American people and enshrined in our Constitution, so we spend our time squabbling, finger pointing, and believing propaganda. Keep the Proles arguing among themselves.

When did we give up on credibility? When did we totally abandon respectful dialog? When did shooting the messenger become more important than heeding the message? When did we stop demanding accountability from our leaders? Speaking truth to power? Saying No! to our government’s atrocities?

Those are all among the signs of a falling empire. We can sit by and feel superior while the American Empire slides into war, ruin, and extinction. Or, maybe, we can work to cushion the blow. Take back our heritage as a republic and one country among equals. Confident within ourselves, a partner to the world, respectful of all. It was never that way, of course. Not entirely. But it was never this bad, either.

Maybe we should be asking ourselves the tough questions instead of school yard aping everyone else. I’ll start the conversation.

Why, really, did we lose?