Pushing string and shattered guardrails--

It seems that, for a very long time, I've been struggling with must-do/want to do/ can't do/ should do, and what to do about (fill in the blank). Why do I feel so responsible?

Some people would say it's elder child training, or my type-A personality, or childhood "you must be busy" tapes. Maybe it's being a very sensitive person, easily frustrated and upset by situations I just know will not work out. Or my overdeveloped sense of justice and fairness being assaulted daily by the goings-on of nefarious, evil people. 

I can't shake the feeling that if I try hard enough, pray enough, work faster and better, I can make a difference -- but the horrors persist. 

Actually, that's kind of darkly humorous: my husband got me a tee shirt for my birthday that was on my wish list. It's a navy blue one with a lovely spray of flowers depicted, with the words (in delicate script) saying "The horrors persist...and so do I."

I persist. It ain't easy, lemme tell ya. Swimming upstream, slogging through mud, wading through the muck-- choose your metaphor. It seems so very strange that the sky should be so blue, the weather so warm and inviting, coffee taste so pleasant when the country is about to be plunged into a form of darkness that has not ever been seen. There are those people who feel this is over-reacting, but I am not convinced. I suspect they think that cooler heads will ultimately prevail, that saner days will soon come, that the roiling sewage tsunami will be held at bay by a system of checks and balances. 

That very system that has been bent and breached, perhaps irreparably. See, it only works if the people occupying the tripartite form of government are all in agreement that it will work. If the legislative, executive, and judicial branches are to have equal say, to check and balance each branch's operations, then we have been running off the rails for a long time. All it takes is a shove-- and this week, that shove put us right through the guardrails. 

How do we correct a system that has two of the three elements being controlled by a powerful money-machine? And it is about money and the power that comes with it. We are living in a desperate, out of whack form of Monopoly. 

I want to flip the game board and send all the pieces scattering. But that would be destructive, and innocent, hard-working people would be the victims.  Who am I kidding? We already are, losing our rights and our collective way every day. 

I have no answers. The framers of the Constitution did not have a crystal ball; there was no way they would have known that such unworthy humans would do this to our country. They, even when they didn't agree, still felt safe in assuming that disagreements could be reasoned out (at least, most of the time). The best and brightest were asked to be the delegates, and educated men were hard at work, proposing and countering one another's arguments. We have our foundational documents because they felt that human beings deserved a chance at self-determination. 

Today, we have money-grubbing, skanky, ill-informed, and easily manipulated people dictating how we live our lives. There are some good people trying their best to stem the tide of putrescence, but they have been undermined and ridiculed on the daily. Now, six people who were never elected but who hold their positions for life, have done the bidding of the highest bidder. 

Shakespeare said it well, from The Tempest:

"Hell is empty and all the devils are here." 

Yours in hope, however slim it may be,

C