Like everyone, I have a lot more time on my hands these days.  I’m saddened by suffering, the heartbreaking loss of life, unhugged loved ones and the rug-pulling end to the equilibrium I took for granted by assuming my government, at least for the big, catastrophic stuff, had my ass covered.  This government, the Trump-at-all-cost government, is the poster child for how to fuck up a beautiful dream.  So, here’s what I think was the intended, maybe lost to us forever, alternative.

In a world overrun by make-believe royalty, blood thirsty marauding hordes, and religious fervor and fundamentalist intolerance, a rag-tag bunch of immigrants sailed off to the New World, (hardly new to its actual native dwellers…a rant for a later date), in hope of a better life.  Upon arrival, they were greeted with overseer abuse akin to that which they’d fled and eventually rose up to overthrow their overlords and invent a more inclusive, mutually beneficial form of government.  After great debate, most of which was between wealthy, aristocratic, bewigged, historically-aware pundits, the Constitution of the United States of America, a Republic, was drafted and ratified.  Although not perfect, it was pretty damned good.  It contains such radical thinking as all men being created equal, separation of church and state and freedom of press and speech.  It has language indicating a promise to provide for the common welfare and assure that Americans would all be treated the same in the eyes of the law.  It set up a tricameral system of an Executive branch, a two-house Congress and a Judiciary to assure ample checks and balances between an Alpha leader, direct representatives of the citizenry and a panel of legal scholars…so far, so good…right?  It hedged on a few important points like being bound to a slave-driven, (oops to that “all men created equal” line), economy and women’s rights or trusting in the one-man-one-vote idea when it came to Presidential elections, but, all-in-all, a pretty decent beginning.  Even 232 years later, I can still say almost anything I want, and no one comes knocking…excuse me a minute…someone’s at the door…just Amazon…phew.  Human nature being tragically flawed, we’ve grown and backslid, triumphed and totally missed the boat, but the underlying idea of a country based on freedom and the nurturing of individual creativity and aspiration spawned our rapid ascension to world prominence.  In my fantasy version, we would have recognized early on that, “all men [and women] created equal” was the key to our envisioned utopia.  Co-existing humans, unencumbered by their differences and using their diverse talents to benefit one another, is Constitutional Democracy in a nutshell.  The reality is, although on the scorecard of all countries on Earth, we rate, item-for-item, better than most, we have mucked much of it up; the church thing, the minorities thing and the women thing for sure.  Had we insisted on the intended idealism that manifest in bits and pieces as a magnetic pull toward the “American Dream”, I believe our present-day reality would be war-less and terror-less, less bigoted and misogynistic and ecologically more Edenic.  Instead, we have become the worst version of the best idea and as a result of the bad choices that led us here, we find ourselves governed by an irrational cadre of greedy, inhumane fucktards that, in the haze of a world-wide pandemic, are making choices that are exacerbating the deadliness of the virus on a path to devastate the planet for generations.  In my fantasy, where we pull together for the good of all mankind, we quickly beat down Covid-19, and there are no holy or unholy wars, no one is unsheltered or hungry, the air is gloriously pure to breathe, the seas are pristine, the polar ice frigidly glistens, fossils and the fuels they create remain buried and those who threaten the resultant World Peace, (you can see them zigging and zagging and lying their asses off every day on TV), are instantly banished from the gene pool.  Come on…it’s my fantasy.