Without Adult Supervision

Remember that high school party—you know the one—the dividing line between the popular kids and the rest—and you were invited!  There was a swimming pool and lots of rooms to change into your new bikini and a happening band and there would be kegs (and other unannounced indulgences) and a super hunky guy had asked if you were going to be there.  It was like a fantasy…until your parents wanted to know if there would be adult supervision.  They wanted to contact the hosting parents to check out the plans.  And then you weren’t going.

It happened without you. One kid went to the ER with alcohol poisoning and your best friend ended up pregnant by the hunky guy who said she forced herself on him.  He was lying, of course, and you knew it.  Your friend never forced anything on anybody.  She dropped out of school to raise the baby by herself when her parents threw her out of the house.

The point of good adult supervision is balance—balancing exuberance with common sense, balancing big ideas with reality, balancing fun with protective rules.  Teaching the young to weigh benefits against costs.  Rules provide boundaries so that life can proceed as planned without excessively ugly side trips.  After parents stopped being the voice of reason, we listened to the accountants, the doctors, the scientists.  When we didn’t, we took chances that didn’t always pay off. Our lives are a series of checks and balances.

At the end of the two-segment Comey film, the seats in the FBI sit empty.  All of the seasoned experts at the head of an agency that prided itself on being unbiased and apolitical have been fired or resigned.  Abroad, experts in influence in countries that are delighted to see our national decline have open access to our exposed national throat.  In fact, the rational thinkers in many non-political American departments are gone.  The far right wanted to dismantle the structures.  They wanted to impose their will.  No more adult supervision.  Under this administration, the far right is free to do what they wish with the country although they aren’t the majority.  What they do doesn’t have to make sense, be kind, or be good for the future.  The puppeteers know how to spin the reports filtered through their own news outlets so it looks like something good is happening to those too indoctrinated to know better.

The followers of the far right—many of them religious or white supremacist zealots who don’t want to know about politics—know not what they do.  Democracy depends on checks and balances.  Both parties and those in-between have always had the “other side” to voice dissent—until now.  At the moment, objections are nothing but wind without enough people in the Senate doing their sworn jobs.  And it all happened quickly.  We set ourselves up.  Like James Comey, we depended too heavily on the ethics of our leaders, the good sense of our electorate.  We were SO CERTAIN no one—not even people we found reprehensible—would want to see the destruction of the United States.  We told ourselves we live in one of the greatest countries on Earth, and we believed that could never change.  Now our fate hangs on a single election.  Will we reorganize a better democracy on the other side or will we be squeezed into authoritarian rule by cheating sanctioned by right wing extremists?  Many have no clue how close we are to the precipice.  Watching THE COMEY RULE will break your heart if you love the United States that was or as it could be.  Please vote to reorganize the bits into a better whole.  We can create hope.