America is imploding

In the United States, you are more apt to be killed by the police than by a terrorist.

America is on the verge of a mental, social, economic and environmental breakdown.

The police, once called peace officers, are now a paramilitary force that shoots first and asks questions later.

One of the latest incidents is the killing of Miriam Carey last week in the nation’s capital.

Police twice fired at the unarmed 34-year-old mother with mental problems. First, when, refusing to stop her car, she drove away from the vicinity of the White House and led police on a high speed chase toward the Capitol. The second time, when her vehicle became stuck on a small grassy island divider near the Capitol.

You can say the police didn’t know what they were dealing with, but surely when they surrounded her car near the White House, they could see they were dealing with a young woman who made no moves to give them the impression she was armed. Worse, they didn’t see she had an infant in the car, who luckily wasn’t harmed but is now motherless. So was it necessary to kill her?

This is one more incident in a long lists of incidents where police have shot or Tasered people to death. Remember the 92-year-old woman in Georgia police shot to death in her home after they broke in on a bad tip that she was dealing drugs? How about the 93-year-old man, also suffering from mental problems, whose family called police for help after he barricaded himself with a shotgun in a bedroom and refused to come out? When he fired through the door, the police blasted him away. How about the man who had gone over to his next door neighbor to water his lawn, then was sitting on the neighbor’s porch holding a trigger hose sprayer in his hand? The neighbors thought it looked suspicious and called police. The police, thinking the man was holding a gun, blew him away.

The list goes on an on. When the police aren’t killing innocent people, some with mental disabilities, citizens are killing each other, either deliberately or as innocent bystanders.

Something is terribly wrong in this country. Police and citizens are on edge and are likely to slip over it at the least real or imagined provocation.

Eighty members of the US House of Representatives are holding the country hostage because they demand to get their way. These clueless, irresponsible ideologues have not only shut the government down, rather than pass a budget bill or a continuing resolution, but are now bent on having the US default on paying its bills unless their ransom demands are met—and those demands go much further than repealing the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare. They are even in denial about the consequences of their actions.

Worse, these 80 members of Congress and a number of their Republican colleagues in the House and Senate hate the government and want to destroy it and turn everything over to their corporate masters who funded their election campaigns. Never mind they took an oath to uphold and defend the US Constitution. Is this insanity or what?

These same members are part of the clique foisting more pain on average Americans to further enrich their corporate and banker buddies. They have money for wars. They have money to give their rich masters more tax breaks. They have money for subsidies (welfare) for Big Business that keeps offshoring more jobs, Big Armaments Makers, Big Banks, Big Ag, Big Pharma, but no money for the people or to repair the country’s crumbling infrastructure. But the people’s social safety net? They have cut food stamps (now called SNAP). The want to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. As for Obamacare, as bad as it is, they want to kill it. As for single-payer health insurance, forget about it. Education? Privatize all the schools. Decent paying jobs? Two or three part-time, minimum wage jobs might help a person pay his/her bills.

Clean water? Clean air? Productive soil? They don’t give a damn about the environment and don’t even mention climate change. All they care about is repealing regulations so their rich masters can make profits. On with the hydraulic fracturing (fracking) that pollutes the water, air and soil and kills people. On with the Keystone XL Pipeline to carry Canada’s poisonous tar sands oil to US ports for export to other countries.

Yes, America is imploding on all fronts, which may explain the behavior of the police who are fearful of the people and the people who are fearful of each other.

If the government defaults on its debts come October 17 or however soon after the Treasury runs out of money, there may be a silver lining in it because, one thing is sure, the American empire will be finished and, once the dust settles, we can rebuild a decent and fair country for all.

Bev Conover is the editor and publisher of Intrepid Report. Email her at editor@intrepidreport.com.