Thoreau it all away

Henry David Thoreau's supposed last words were "Moose...Indians" hardly a fit ending to a well lived life.  Still, with all the election hoo ha, and there has been some, I felt compelled to re-read both Walden and Civil Disobedience.  As Socrates opined, according to Plato, "an unexamined life is not worth living" and Thoreau cannot be accused of that faux pas.  Nor can I.  I am re-reading Thoreau.  I am, in fact, re-reading a number of tomes I read when first I was in college and perhaps too youthful to understand its true importance.  I quote from his essay Civil Disobedience "This American government- what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity?"

We have lost our integrity with the world.  But lo, that is not the end of end of the story.  We can do something to restore our integrity by holding the elected officials accountable for their actions.

Oft I have traveled in realms of gold and this is not one of them.  I am angry not so much that Secretary Clinton lost but that Trump won.  And all of his actions since the election has been to undermine his own campaign promises to drain the swamp, which is now his private privy.

As for the integrity of the election, it could be that the Republicans were so giddy to reclaim power from President Blackenstein that they can overlook the fact, and that is a fact, that our election was hacked by the Russians or that the the Electoral College vote was compromised by any number of irregularities by the Electors, e.g., holding an elected office in addition to being an Elector or living in a district other than the one they were representing.  All this, in my mind, delegitimizes the election. 

Other than a few Trolls, I have yet to meet someone who will say that they voted for Trump.  So, either I know nobody who has or that they can't admit that they did.  The Trolls speak in simplistic terms like "We won, you lost, get over it".  That is a heady argument indeed.  Smacks of sophistry.  Still they overlook the fact, those pesky facts, that they did not win the popular vote and that the Electoral vote was compromised.  The last two Democrats who lost the White House did so by winning the popular vote.  Mayhap it is time to review the Electoral College process and the debacle that they have handed us twice since 2000.

Many of my friends are so distraught with the election that they are politically paralyzed and don't know what to do.  I am doing my best to mobilize them to contact their representatives and senators, locally and on the national level, to voice their concerns.  One of the most popular Google searches of late is "Who is my representative?".  Indeed, you should Google that if you don't know.  Write and call your own representative; it does no good to email Senator McConnell if he is not your senator.  He will not listen.  He will not listen even if you are  his constituent if he doesn't like what you have to say.

Three times this year I have blogged and it is all the same.  We lost, they won and I won't get over it.  In fact, we won, they won, but we all lose.  We have a Twitterer in Chief who can compromise the integrity of our alliances with a 140 character tweet.  The Swamp of his Cabinet, mostly rich donors,   is giving us a gentleman who was deemed to be too racially insensitive years ago to be a federal judge is now deemed to be a good fit for Attorney General.  A gentleman who received a generous payout from Mobil/Exxon or Exxon/Mobil to assume the post of Sycophant of State.  Climate change deniers to posts for the environment and interior.  An energy secretary who wants to abolish the department.  And while it doesn't take a brain surgeon to be secretary of housing and urban development apparently that is what we have...an under-qualified brain surgeon, who is so sleep addled that he appears to be dead.  An Secretary of Education who basically wants to de-fund public education and institute a system of vouchers, virtually assuring that schools in the inner city falter and fail.  I give you your Swamp.

And so it goes.