I am not a Crook

No. This is not entitled Georgia on My Mind. Or A Rainy Night in Georgia. Or even Sweet Georgia Brown. They’ve been done. To death, I’m sure. I’m thinking more along the lines of I’ve Heard That Song Before. Or maybe, Do Nothing ’til You Hear From Me. Cause It’s Been A Long Long Time. Since the days of Richard M. Nixon, my previous candidate for “President I’d most like teleport to another galaxy.” If you weren’t around for Tricky Dick, he said exactly that on November 17, 1973. When He Was President. During the Watergate scandal. Which seems like child’s play now. Somehow, I even miss Nixon. He might have inhabited his own Tricky Dick World, but at least he knew–or admitted under prodding–that a lot of his fellow citizens thought he was indeed a crook. And since he was a lawyer, we’ll leave it at that. It would sort of be like Trump saying “I’m not nuts.” Or Rudy Giuliani saying “I’ll follow my conscience.” Right. Amusing, but plainly incorrect. And absurd on the face of it.

You watch this stuff going on in Georgia, if you watch anything connected with politics, with mounting disbelief, disgust and despair. Gee, Georgia has not one but two Senatorial Crooks. Come January, both are going to be involved in a runoff election. And not just any runoff. Why should anyone care what goes on in Georgia with David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler? Ordinarily, washing your trash can would be more edifying. Or worthwhile. But this isn’t just any runoff. Or any crook or crook aspirant. These guys are really unpalatable, even for a Party of Unpalatables. And on their reelection or rejection, a lot, a whole lot, is a stake.

If you’re reading this rant, you know that if Perdue and Loeffler both lose in their runoffs, the Senate will be 50-50. At that point, the VP casts the tie-breaker, and presumably, she’s not going to forget who brought her to the dance. This means, horror of horrors, it gets a lot easier for Joe Biden to get legislation through. While we all know the Moscow Mitch has made a habit of blocking everything that comes his way as Majority Leader, he won’t have that burden any longer. Oh, my. Socialism is on the way, right? Sure.

Under ordinary circumstances, I might agree that voting for a “divided government” is not necessarily a bad thing. But then, that sort of assumes that the division is about keeping the President honest. That worked real well with Agent Orange and his Gangster Regime, didn’t it? Maybe we need to try something different. Like a government that can actually do stuff that makes us all better off. Not just a few wingnuts fantasizing about their right to play with guns on your front lawn, or America’s Top Fifty Families who have more money than God. I know all about government failure. I am an economic historian. But now I think it’s time to turn the page on a very bad chapter in American history. It’s called market failure. And even in America, it may be time to admit that that when a crook calls insider trading “the American Dream” (see Kelly Loeffler and thrice-recounted Georgia), it’s time to blow the whistle. I am not a crook is a nightmare, not the American dream.