Ignorance Will Destroy Us

So, the wannabe Nobel Peace Prize President (and “winner” of the more highly esteemed and more widely recognized FIFA Peace Prize) is bombing Iran because we “obliterated” (a direct quote from the Peace President) their nuclear program a few months ago. Or something, something, something (part of the “something” that POTUS made clear was that this was a war for regime change. Those always end well for us, right? I wonder if there’s an example of this not working out according to plan. Like maybe… Iran?

Let me be clear, IMHO, Iran is a bad actor. They should be contained. But as far was we can tell, this incredibly incompetent administration entered into this war without any debate, without any consultation with erstwhile allies (fellow leader “let’s-start-a-war-to-distract-from-our-other-corrupt-problems” Netanyahu doesn’t count), and without any attempt to prepare the people of the U.S. for war while decimating our intelligence/national security/terrorist tracking capabilities in order to deport hard-working undocumented people with jobs. My guess is that we will soon enter the “no one could have known this would be the consequence of our actions” phase.

BTW, there’s always a tweet:

I want to focus on Congressional Republican’s abdication of their constitutional duties. The Constitution allocates to the legislative branch the sole authority to a) levy tariffs, and b) declare war. The “Commander in Chief” role assigned to the Executive Branch (i.e., the President) is, in theory, only operative after Congress has done its job be formally declaring war.

Both parties have been culpable in ceding constitutional powers - unconstitutionally in my view - from the legislative branch (Article I) to the Executive branch (Article II). But the Republican Party in the MAGA years has literally made Congress irrelevant.

To me, this ultimately comes down to education and Thomas Jefferson’s admonition that “The best defense of democracy is an informed electorate.” Low info (i.e., ignorant) voters gave us an ignoramus President who then hired completely unqualified ignoramus people to run his Administration. The results are horrific and utterly predictable.

Here’s an example of what we get when ignorant voters elect ignorant people:

This is… mind-boggling scary. A person who took multiple attempts to pass her High School GED exam has absolutely no f*^kng clue what inflation actually means. None. And she’s not alone in Congress. I spent a fair amount of time on the Hill as a federal candidate. The level of ignorance in our electeds (several Dems included, but Republicans clearly held a large lead in this area) was staggering. I know we eliminated literacy tests for voting with passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (which is being dismantled by the current SCOTUS piece by piece), but Lauren Boebert and her ilk make a very strong case for a “No Idiots” Act. I’m being facetious but also… I’m not.

The simple truth is we are currently “governed” (I put that term in quotes because this Admin literally has no interest in the hard work of actually “governing” with the “consent of the people”) by completely unqualified and voluntarily ignorant people.

This is as disheartened as I’ve ever been about the state of our country. Now is not the time to give up, but I need to take some really deep breaths to reenergize.

Fuck.