This entire commentary is so short I'm printing it all. It's by Robert Reich, here.
Permit me an impertinent question (or three).
Suppose a small group of extremely wealthy people sought to systematically destroy the U.S. government by (1) finding and bankrolling new candidates pledged to shrinking and dismembering it; (2) intimidating or bribing many current senators and representatives to block all proposed legislation, prevent the appointment of presidential nominees, eliminate funds to implement and enforce laws, and threaten to default on the nation’s debt; (3) taking over state governments in order to redistrict, gerrymander, require voter IDs, purge voter rolls, and otherwise suppress the votes of the majority in federal elections; (4) running a vast PR campaign designed to convince the American public of certain big lies, such as climate change is a hoax, and (5) buying up the media so the public cannot know the truth.
Would you call this treason?
If not, what would you call it?
And what would you do about it?Well, I suppose it might not be treason. But it's not all that far from it, when it's put the way Mr Reich puts it. Opposition politics is one thing; but the deliberate and wholesale blocking of a freely elected president's agenda, using Senate rules in ways they've never been before, solely for the promotion of a narrow set of aims that seeks to enrich the privileged few at the expense of the needs of the country; when it's done by deception and disinformation aimed at confusing and distracting voters; well, looked at that way, it's something unprecedented in its cynicism and destructiveness. So, maybe, yeah. It is.
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