JUSTICE ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THIS

There will be much to reckon with, or we will inevitably repeat the nightmare

American political cartoon 1871

The same psychological dynamics that underlie our individual experiences underlie our collective ones as well. The laws of consciousness aren’t negotiable, anymore than are laws such as physics or thermodynamics. They simply reveal how things work.

Knowing these laws, you navigate your life more effectively. You’re working with rather than against the course of history. You’re more likely to generate the good and prevent the difficult. One such law is inherent in a common truism: when we don’t learn from history we are destined to repeat it. Whatever we refuse to process will inevitably return.

Something that continues to trip up the United States is how we rarely allow ourselves to atone for our country’s errors, to take responsibility for our mistakes, or to admit our character defects. While on a personal level we know the importance of doing so, on a national level there are reasons why we don’t. The forces that create our problems 1) don’t want us to admit them, because their plan is to do the same thing again as soon as enough time has passed; and 2) leaders are told by political operatives that “People don’t want to hear about what happened because it will make them feel bad. Don’t be negative! Voters ‘want to turn the page!’”

Over a million people died in the Vietnam war, for no good reason? Just end the conversation. Turn the page.

Over a million people died in the Iraq war, for no good reason? Just end the conversation. Turn the page.

DOGE ended up costing more money than it cut, laid off 300,000 federal workers, and severely diminished the functionality of government? Just end the conversation. Turn the page.

There’s a corporate adage, “Don’t complain. Don’t explain,” that’s now a common practice in the US government. It’s the opposite of the principle of restorative justice. In fact, it avoids justice altogether. We just skip over the fact that something terrible happened; most people have come to realize that the Iraq war was a criminal miscalculation, for instance, but it earned little more response from officialdom than “Oops. Yeah, we shouldn’t have done that.” So then it doesn’t rise to collective consciousness that someone should be held accountable for this. While over a million non-violent offenders linger in US prisons, people who have literally been responsible for the suffering and deaths of millions of people then get jobs at prominent think tanks and final send offs at fancy funerals.

Why do we tolerate this? Because, even though we know better, we’re going along with the charade so we don’t have to feel bad. How childish is that? Then our children grow up to be understandably cynical, given how obvious to them is our country’s hypocrisy. Our foundational principles, our American values, are drowned out by modern political corruption. And at a certain point, that’s all a younger generation sees. They only read about our ideals in history books, if they even do that; what they actually see is the corruption that’s all around them.

DOGE is a perfect example. Elon Musk came to DC on a ketamine-fueled rampage, did extraordinary damage to people’s lives, then he and his bro decided together that it really wasn’t fun anymore. He just went back to work at his company for a trillion dollar salary.

Scott Bessent, our US Treasury Secretary, said on one of the Sunday morning news shows last week that if someone doesn’t like inflation then what they should do is simply move to a red state, where inflation is lower. There is so much to deconstruct there, and all of it is awful. Secretary Bessent, with his $500M net worth, cannot conceive of it being difficult for someone to simply move to a different state. Challenges like “getting another job” or “moving costs” don’t even exist in his world. And this man is our top economic policymaker

Get the picture?

This administration is more than corrupt; it is a political disaster. It is an assault on our democracy, our planet, our faith in government, our relationships with other countries, and our economy. But in 2028, people running for the Democratic nomination will be encouraged to seem positive and upbeat! You know…ready to turn the page! It will be incumbent on We the People to demand better.

At the end of this political nightmare, we will need to do much more than turn the page. We will need the equivalent of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, at the very least. And unlike with the Iraq War, accountability for criminal wrongdoing must on the table. I remember when Gerald Ford preemptively pardoned Richard Nixon, saying that he wanted the long national nightmare of Watergate to be over. Ford was a good man, and I don’t doubt the sincerity of his intentions. But the opposite was true. The long national nightmare was never fully over, for the simple reason than total justice was never fully done.

We just turned the page.

If we do not hold the cabal that is perpetrating this madness accountable - for what is essentially, after all, an unconstitutional coup against our democracy from inside the government - then the forces they unleashed will remain an ever present threat. Generations will simply white knuckle it from one election season to the next unless and until this country faces what happened here. We must hold those responsible accountable, and commit to beginning on much higher ground than we were on when we allowed this to happen. Nothing less will fundamentally alter our course; even worse, nothing less will prohibit it from ever happening again.

In the words of Hunter Thompson, “the bastards never sleep.” We forgot that. We slept, and they didn’t. Now it’s time to end the nightmare and to course-correct. It will not be easy, and it will not be fast. It’s a very deep problem, and nothing shallow will even begin to fix it. What we have learned from being this close to the cliff will teach us a lot about backing away from it, and staying away from it. May generations to come never, ever become so forgetful again.