Suicide of a Nation.2

As more is learned about the Senate tax giveaway to the stupidly wealthy and other assorted crimes, the worse it gets.

It's clear now, if it wasn't before, that there isn't a Republican in the Senate worthy of any respect.

And December is just beginning, with more disasters piling up, and even more in the offing.

Looking at it strictly in political terms, the daily flood of consequential accusations of sexual improprieties against prominent men has become overwhelming, and might well be having the paradoxical effect of inoculating Alabama's Roy Moore and the Anti-president for their offenses, in the eyes of enough voters to protect them.

Maybe it's time to concentrate on Christmas shopping.  Or back to the late 19th century, when the future was beginning.

Why this melodramatic, apparently hyperbolic title--Suicide of a Nation?  The serious perils of the present will only increase in the near future.  For civilization to survive will require concerted will and wisdom.  Without a strong and wisely-acting America, the chances for that survival are severely diminished.

As our division into not only separate parties but separate realities suggests, the margin for error shrinks.  With the exception of the Civil War, our constitutional institutions have protected us from destroying ourselves in the past.  The received and active respect for those institutions by all but the most extreme elements has preserved enough to allow for this far from perfect country and society to survive and make incremental progress.

Much of that is going or gone, as we are seeing this year and this month.  In less than a year we as a nation have gone from a strong position to meet the future, thanks most recently to President Obama and his administration, to a situation poised at the near edge of breakdown and chaos.

There are positive developments in political activism and the response of some of our media institutions.  It's not over yet.  But everything that this tax bill does is likely to further weaken this country as its already weak points--such as the effects of income inequality and the natural environment. Already we're seeing renewed and emboldened threats along the same lines from the White House, the cabinet and the extremist Republican Supreme Court.

 This mortal threat does not come from outside as murder (not even from Russia necessarily) but as a result of our own politics and political institutions.  It is at least attempted suicide.  That's the point.