It’s coming to pass, my country’s coming apart
The whole thing’s becoming such a bumbling farce
Was that a pivotal historical moment we just went stumbling past?

Well, here we are, dancing in the rumbling dark
So come a little closer, give me something to grasp
Give me your beautiful, crumbling heart

Another disaster, catharsis
Another half-discarded mirage
Another mask slips
I face off with the physical
My head’s ringing from the love of the stars

There is too much pretense here
Too much depends on the fragile wages
And extortionate rents here

We’re working every dread day that is given us
Feeling like the person people meet really isn’t us
Like we’re gonna buckle underneath the trouble
Like any minute now, the struggle’s going to finish us And then we smile at all our friends

 — Kae Tempest: People’s Faces

A house divided against itself cannot stand.

As I write this, the Republican party is shredding any idea that our country has free and fair elections. While some of them may simply be seeking power for power’s sake, I believe that many of them truly believe the election must have been stolen.

Firefighters fighting a house fire.“House fire” by Ada Be is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Why would they distrust the Democratic party so much? Likely because they see the same problems I do, but assume bad faith, where I do not. And in return, they destroy our institutions through distrust by enabling a tyrant.

I don’t assume bad faith because I used to believe in the policies of the Democratic party. I see and understand the logic. Now I also see why their policies were, and continue to be, a disaster.

I can’t help noticing that their success at “the economy” enables economic exploitation by people with economic power. Bill Clinton jump started the economy through trade deals that enabled outsourcing, banking deregulation that led to a mortgage crisis, and funding technology that now gets used to extract massive wealth from our collective retirements.

I agree with the intentions of their social programs. I also understand that their reliance on tax revenue means that they have a perverse incentive to keep a destructive economy growing.

The GOP on the other hand exclusively blames government for our problems, and want to destroy it. Destroying “Socialism” is so important to them, that they support taking Steve Mnuchin and Wilbur Ross, two former Goldman Sachs executives who spent the economic crisis stealing the wealth from families hit hard by the crash caused by earlier Wall Street speculation, and gave them government power.

Our problem is power, not just government power.

So what do they do? They deregulate economic power, and cut the taxes of the most destructive people in our economy.

You can choose to look at a particular party when you examine our government. You can see results and assume bad intentions. The GOP is now using distrust to try to disenfranchise entire states of voters without evidence.

You can also choose to look at the whole. After all, the whole is what actually has power. The Obama administration wasn’t *just* the Democrats implementing their policies. It was *also* Mitch McConnell obstructing every attempt to solve problems.

Neither party operates in isolation.

Was Joe Biden elected? Absolutely.

Was there weaknesses in our election equipment? Absolutely.

Was there any voter fraud? Maybe. But in-person voter fraud is high risk and low reward, and attacks against voting machines can be mitigated by hand counting paper ballots, which is what happened in most states. The election was not stolen through voter fraud.

I’m watching the Trump administration attempt to steal an election through fraud daily though. I’m watching them try to disenfranchise voters based *PURELY* on an assumption that the other party must have cheated.

They are true believers in Trump, or at least their own party. They believe, like Democrats often do, that the future of the country depends on *THEIR* party having power.

What destroys us is their conflict, which I don’t see and end to anytime soon.

After all, Mitch McConnell is still there to obstruct any actions they try to take.

And I have no faith that the Democratic party are going to address the treason I keep watching.

I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.

This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.

Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.

It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.

There is an opinion that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the administration of the government and serve to keep alive the spirit of liberty. This within certain limits is probably true; and in governments of a monarchical cast, patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit of party. But in those of the popular character, in governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency, it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose. And there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be by force of public opinion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume.

— George Washington’s Farewell Address