Ted Cruz was late to the checkout of his flight, desperately hoping to get to D.C. in time to massacre the new Supreme Court nominee. (Not meaning to be political….but let’s call a spade a spade….Republicans try to massacre Democrats, Democrats try to destroy Republicans. Anyone trying to tell you otherwise is trying to sell you something). His efforts to get the airline to make an exception for him fell on deaf ears, and eventually a “policeman,” a Public Safety Officer, was sent by management to deal with another difficult customer.
Don’t worry folks. He made it to Washington D.C. in time to save the Republic.
Here is the original source for the breaking story:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bozeman/comments/tirgtl/ted_cruz_accosting_airline_employees_today_at_bzn/
Again….I’m not trying to say Tom Cruz is good or bad. I’m not here to tell you what to think, if you love him, if you hate him…here are the points I want to make.
- 1. I have been the guy telling a politician I could not help him. It sucks.
- 2. The elites have felt more like rulers than servants for my entire lifetime. Maybe it is time that stopped.
- 3. Don’t think it is only Republicans that expect special treatment…this is totally a two way lane leading nowhere.
Once upon a time, I worked for a company as a call center representative. It was a glorious time filled with candy, ribbons, rainbows, sugar and spice and everything nice. The only thing that made it remotely better than retail was the fact that you were usually on the phone with just a few people, and there wasn’t someone who could physically knock the excrement out of you. In order to stay out of trouble we’ll call the company….Villemorte…..anyhow, I was answering caller’s questions about a high end life insurance that Villemorte sold, and it wasn’t a bad gig (as long as you hated yourself and all life on the planet). One day, I got a phone call….(again, names will be changed to protect the innocent). “Hello, this is Vicky Vale, administrative assistant to Jorge Paternoster, ex governor of New York.” “Dahhhh….OK George! Which way did he go!” “Yes I have some questions about his life insurance.” I go to look it up and…..the information for that particular kind of insurance was taken care of by a third party vendor. I could literally do nothing about it. And that likely doesn’t sound like a big deal, but for me it was stressful as heck. “Sorry governor person….I am utterly useless to you. Don’t forget to hire me on your staff for your next campaign!”
On to my second point. The Founding Fathers envisioned public servants, not rulers. Otherwise we would have had kings. George Washington was offered the crown, but turned it down with such dignity and grace that the men who were rebuffed left in tears, loving him even more than they had before. Thomas Jefferson as president used to meet visitors personally at the door in his “old homespun clothes and a pair of worn bedroom slippers.” https://millercenter.org/president/jefferson/family-life
In the meanwhile, every president since Nixon has leaned on “executive privilege” at some point. Nixon felt he owed nobody an explanation about the Watergate tapes. Clinton asserted executive privilege fourteen times, and was the first president since Nixon to have a court deny his motion to evoke executive privilege. Among other things, he wanted to bar Kenneth Starr from questioning staffers in the forgettable Monica Lewinsky case. Barrack Obama invoked executive privilege in relation to Operation Fast and Furious. Basically every President since Jimmy Carter has invoked it.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/442754-five-fights-over-executive-privilege?rl=1
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/442754-five-fights-over-executive-privilege?rl=1
Both parties are chock full of “Karens.” (With apologies to the Karen who works with me). The example of Ted Crumb is one example (though I’m sure there are Republicans who will take his side…and that’s fine). Let’s look at what I hope are balanced examples.
Nancy Pelosi, during the height of the pandemic, went to a hair salon in San Francisco without her mask on. When the salon blew the whistle on her and exposed Madam Speaker for hypocrite she was metaphorically ran out of town on a rail. Trump for good or ill tried to benefit from the scandal, but in typical Trump fashion all this did was to make the Democrats look like helpless victims before the big bad Trumpmiester. And don’t get me wrong….maybe Pelosi was set up as she claimed….but number one, when I failed to wear my mask my superiors called me out for it, whereas with Pelosi…no biggy. And I was pretty much helpless, I had to take my criticism (justified or not) and go on. Pelosi in the meanwhile gets a social media war going and the whistle blower loses her small business. Last of all….you may wonder why the most powerful woman in Washington D.C. gets her hair done in San Francisco? She takes a jet plane every week from D.C. to San Francisco. Since 9/11 that has been the prerogative of the Speaker of the House. I’m not saying she shouldn’t have perks (and to be fair, the Republican Speaker also avails themselves of the same privilege), but surely this is more the mark of a monarch than of a public servant. Of coarse she isn’t getting speeding tickets like U.S. Grant. She gets a Jet plane to fly her….Below I list some sites where you can read more, I begin with the one I feel is most biased (but still makes some good points), the last one I feel is the least biased.
https://www.ocregister.com/2020/09/13/nancy-pelosi-and-the-hypocrisy-of-the-elite-gloria-romero/
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/sep/3/nancy-pelosi-hair-flap-shows-crisis-political-arro/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nancy-pelosi-salon-setup-video-owner-responds/
The Republicans, as I’ve mentioned, are frankly no better than the democrats. Shall we focus our sites on Mitch McConnel? The current minority leader (if ya’ll wanna keep the majority, maybe you should….oh never mind…..) recently ranted about how big corporations should not be telling the American people how to vote. Honestly, I agree, but this is coming from the mouth of someone who’s campaigns take hundreds of millions of dollars from big corporations. His SuperPAC (lovely Orwellian term) took in 475 million dollars from major corporations in the year 2020. While you and me were quarantined and living hand to mouth his campaign was humming to the tune of almost a half billion dollars from Big Macs, colored sugar water with bubbles, tech giants that make mega billions from our data, and uberbanks that decide whether we can live in the suburbs or have to live in the streets. This might not bother me quite so much….but this is the man who personally led the crusade, and won the crusade, to remove spending limits on corporations for political bribes….I mean contributions. According to The New Yorker:
Armed with funding from such billionaire conservatives as the DeVos family, McConnell helped take the quest to kill restraints on spending all the way to the Supreme Court. In 2010, his side won: The Citizens United decision opened the way for corporations, big donors, and secretive nonprofits to pour unlimited and often untraceable cash into elections.
Below are sites where you can read more:
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/04/mitch-mcconnell-corporate-donors
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/corporations-are-not-friends-people/618561/
In summary, I feel the Republic is frankly falling down into an abyss, and the days when we were free are done. Barring a miracle, I don’t know that we will even have a semblance of freedom by….never mind….too late…..
But what do you think? Please leave comments! And my apologies for only writing one post this week….my personal life has been crazy….
Tired Midnight Blogger (What Blogs at Midnight) 
Truth. Anyone who genuinely believes the United States are a functioning republic at this point is a fool. Money controls what happens. Aurum Est Potestas. On the note of flights; the people in power over us live their lives as blissfully unaware of their privilege in relation to us as we are our of our privilege to those poor poor slaves mining lithium for our batteries, poking their fingers with needles for our clothes, and harvesting cocoa pods for our chocolate. The human mind is admirably capable of adjustment to current circumstances, for better or worse. Once something is the norm for a happy year of someones life, they forget it was ever otherwise, once something is the norm for even one generation of humans, they forget it could ever exist otherwise. “How little the world would look moral without forgetfulness! A poet might say that God made forgetfulness the guard he placed at the threshold of human dignity.” (Nietzsche)
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I feel we have not been a functioning republic for at least a decade. Maybe five. Quomodo ceciderunt fortes. The privileged rarely care about the suffering of those upon whom their privileges are propped. I think it is rare for anyone to feel happiness, as you say, our minds adjust and it is the doom of men that they forget. My father picked cotton. I’ve heard it’s terrible. But while I have worked pretty hard, I’ve never picked cotton. To me it would be cruel, to him it was just survival. And on that note, Nietzsche has also said “Freedom is the will to be responsible for ourselves. It is to preserve the distance which separates us from other men. To grow more indifferent to hardship, to severity, to privation, and even to life itself.” Thanks for the comments, it gets boring always talking to myself.
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