Rules of Engagement

Once upon a time, prefacing or concluding a rigorous and passionate debate our political leaders would amicably declare, 'I respectfully disagree with the gentleman / gentlelady on the other side of the isle". The minority respected the will of the majority, and the majority welcomed the contributions of the minority. Each side graciously listened and considered the opinions and ideas of the other. They communicated, collaborated, compromised, and accomplished many great achievements on our nation's behalf.

Yes, there have been several ugly, divisive, even bloody conflicts over our nation's history, but overall, we have resoundingly succeeded in forming 'a more perfect union'.

Over the last few decades our political process has evolved, rather devolved, into equal parts of disgust, hate, and dysfunction. Since the conclusion of the Reagan Republican Presidency and O'Neil Democrat Control Congress, our republic has fallen into a tailspin of contentiousness, uncompromising, and power-hungry loggerheads that have gotten progressively worse and is now damaging to our nation's cohesiveness and mutually shared ideals.

After Reagan came Bush I, after achieving the one of the highest Presidential approval ratings in history during the gulf war, he lost the support of his party's core constituency for failing to keep his 'read my lips' promise of 'no new taxes'. He lost his election for a second term, but our nation's cohesiveness was still intact, until the Clinton Presidency.

During the Clinton Presidency the politics of personal destruction came to fore, and to the highest degree. The Republican Party became known as the 'human resources' party before the Democrats reclaimed that title in recent years. The country wasn't ready to hold accountable and terminate a superior for having a relationship with a subordinate in the workplace. Even though that subordinate was 27 years younger and an intern, he was reelected, impeached and acquitted.

Then came Bush II and his disastrous undeclared war on Iraq that had basically only one objective, to hang Sadam Hussain by the neck, who was rumored to have placed a hit on his father, Bush I, as retaliation for the first gulf war. The attack on 9/11/01 and subsequent invasion of Afghanistan set the table for the Iraq War. Many from the opposing party saw through this stretch scheme, despite their success at the United Nations, but eventually led to the breakdown of our nation's ethos of 'politics ends at the water's edge'.

Our nation's political parties have now become engaged in a cutthroat war of character assassination and personal destruction. And public, indiscriminate attacks of the opposing party's Commander in Chief, which had always stayed between the parties behind closed doors and stopped at the water's edge.

Then came the Obama Presidency and its Chicago style politics, meant to quash the opposition via legislative, legal, and administrative means and transform its jurisdiction, our republic, into a single party state. Just like the Democrat Party had succeeded doing in Chicago, Illinois, New York, Massachusetts and countless other municipal, county, and state jurisdictions by legislating, regulating, and gerrymandering themselves in permanent power. Only recently has the Republican Party wised up and matched these undemocratic methods of assuming power to begin grabbing and locking down political jurisdiction.

The weaponization of the administrative state against the Tea Party, the Catholic Church, Crossroads GPS, Citizen's United, and countless other conservative and Republican aligned organizations who opposed nationalized healthcare and liberal policies was disgusting. Then, the capricious, far-fetched, contrived, tenuous, and false accusations they propagated and subsequent indictments, charges, and prosecutions upon assuming upon the political minority is nothing our country has ever witnessed in its history.

Donald Trump is certainly an ill-mannered, inconsiderate, insulting, self-absorbed, obnoxious, arrogant, inarticulate bully whose worst trait of all is making it utterly impossible for those who agree with him to actually like him.

Today, the respective parties have created a political duopoly of RepubliCrats who have succeeded in splitting our citizenry into two warring camps, hate-filled, vitriolic, uncompromising,

The 2016 election of Chef Donald Trump, and the food show presented prior to the roll out and implementation of our nation's new menu proposed . An array of recipes and ingredients concocted, procured, sliced, diced, skinned, aged, marinated, mixed, blended, stirred, boiled, baked, fried, arranged, composed, plated and served via enteral feeding tube down the throats of our nation's under-informed, single-issue oriented, mostly distracted, busy, uninvolved, but well intentioned and good-hearted citizenry.

Prior to 2004 Donald Trump was a non-descript, vanilla, ho-hum, unoffensive, NY billionaire and publicity seeker with whom I was vaguely familiar. I was not a regular patron, or even an infrequent customer, of his weekly broadcast of 'The Apprentice'. Although his name and celebrity did become more prominent in my consciousness, by osmosis, and due to the TV show, it's advertisements and the public relations appearances.

Well holy Mary of God... I had no clue, nor did anyone else inhabiting this earth, that Donald Trump would move in, rent, do a gut rehab, and renovated every sq-ft of everyone's brain living on earth. This once nondescript NY billionaire real estate developer has literally flipped our political parties, and political system upside down. His effect, impact, and success of transforming our federal government is yet to be determined.

I'm sorry, taking the long way home to my actual point but stay with me. The political duopoly that our two-party system has created and rigged into permanency, squeezing out the possibility for any third, fourth, or any number of other political party to participate has resulted in our current state of affairs. Yes, of course, Donald Trump has exposed this flaw, to the Nth degree and ingeniously, flaunting, exploiting, exposing, and leveraging the flawed, corrupt organism that our federal government has become.

This non-descripted New York Rockefeller Republican' led coup d’état and seized control of the Republican Party and has since flipped it into the Democrat Party a la the nineteen seventies and eighties. Gebhart, O'Neil with hefty shot of Reagan on top.

percent of every individuals brain shattered the political alliances transformed the American Political of this raving, uncompromising maniacs polarized camps of become increasingly polarized to the point that we have reduced over the last few dec If you watch cable news, for every two hours watching FOX NEWS you must watch one hour of MS NOW, and vice versa. And for each book you read authored by Galbraith, Engels, or Klein you much read one written by Rand, Freidman or Hayek.

As a side point, I have no idea why MSNBC changed their name from 'MicroSoft National Broadcasting Company' to MS Now, it's an NBC news outlet. Wouldn't NBC Now have made more scense?

Anyway, the point being to enrich your mind, open your eyes, understand all opposing viewpoints, find the value in another's argument, and . Otherwise, you must refrain from posting, commenting, or sharing any type of political propaganda on social media, if not, you will be tagged, recognized, and identified as a blind, ignorant, stupid, idiotic, partisan, trolling, zombie, dunderhead. Not to mention, that you will be subjected to the disgusting, unacceptable, vitriolic hatred from the countless other blind, ignorant, stupid, idiotic, partisan, trolling, zombie, dunderheads. In fact, this may be a tad extreme but do the country a favor and refrain from voting in our elections.