Political thinkers, with apt historical confirmation, would predictably agree that the presence of a substantial number of populist, inadequately educated, and poorly informed citizens presents an existential threat to the existence of a democracy. The Founders’ aspirations for the creation of a Nation “by and for the people,” Thomas Jefferson presciently observed, mandates an educated and well-informed citizenry.
Unfortunately, the Nation has eternally been home to a sizeable population of citizens who lack such Jeffersonian criteria and the ability for useful participation in the affairs of the Nation. Furthermore, contextually, by the elected shallowness of their lives, they remain in a state of perennial discontent. Meaningless and purely mundane lifestyles predictably result in feelings of personal and self-generated grievance; the latter providing fertile ground for manipulation by tactical “snake oil” assurances by demagogic charlatans, of the promise of a better life.
A brief but revelatory visit to the populist “Whine Cellar” will predictably reveal a predictably large inventory of a non-specific sense of ubiquitous discontent, founded in a personally minimal and reductive mindset and its concomitant feelings of disappointment and of unfulfilled life experience. Such self-generated feelings of discontent and grievance often result in the defensive dynamics of projection of the cause for failure on others, conceivably expressed as racial or ethnic prejudice.
The contextual discontent renders the personally”aggrieved” populist amenable to tactical demagogery and political manipulation. The slogan, “Make America Great Again,” can be effectively translatable to “Punish Those Responsible for My Discontent” and is demonstratively vulnerable to political manipulation. This phenomenon is descriptive of the etiology and dynamics of the toxic etiology and endurance of the Trumpist-MAGA dynamic and its implicit hazard to the existence of a Democratic Republic.
It is frustrating but, painfully, comphensible that, while the copious clientele of the ‘Whine Center” maintain a skewed and reductive conception of the foundational basis of their felt grievance, by rational and empirical comparison, the consequences of such ubiquitous feelings of discontent are painfully objective.
As a proximate result of the facile manipulation of the frequent imbibers of the “Whine Center,” the traditional American Citizen has recently found himself deprived of a working federal civil service, engaged in the rendition of existentially vital, domestic and international, services, of financial relief services, of National security and intelligence services, health and medical research and treatment services, independance operation of American Universities and institutions of learning, empirical repudiation of the constitution and American rule of law, of an impartial Supreme Court, of the natural right of women to control their bodies, of the unfettered right of all citizens to vote and have their vote counted, of the casual treatment of the ” Separation of Powers,” violations of the constitutional “Separation of Church and State,” of humane and empathic treatment of immigrants, the widespread acquisience in the public ownership of military weapons and the consequent loss of lives, particularly schoolchildren, the dangerous and negligent avoidance of global and environmental concerns, the mishandling of our relations with NATO and other foreign friends and foes, of the pernicious influence of political and religious lobbies, the failure to construe a humane and equitable justice system, the hobbling and elimination of regulatory agencies, the latter, assuring the citizenry of the safety of food, drinking water ,medicine, ambient air and consumer products, the safety of travel by air and highway, the salubrious nature of the workplace and the fair treatment of labor, and as well, the telling elimination of federal inspectors-general, and the persistence of inequitable and discriminatory tax provisions.
The latter ubiquitously numerous categories of atavistic elimination are matters of great and objective consequence to the Nation and constitute substantial impediments to the maintenance of the American society. They are a proximate result of the eternal vulnerability to perverse influence of the reductionist, dissatisfaction with personal life, resulting from the elective failure to strive for personal advancement. its implicit satisfaction of enlightenment, and the consequent acquisition of a meaningful and rewarding life.
It is manifestly inequitable and tragic that the predictable, easy proselization of the reductionist, “whining” underbelly of the Nation by the malevolent Donald J. Trump and his MAGA confederates has thus resulted in a plethora of (democratically) valid and objective grounds for material, substantive citizen complaint.
-p.
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