Welcome to the American Dark Age

Civil society broke down on January 20, 2013. When the bunting came down from Obama’s second inaugural, Sen. Mitch McConnell and his colleagues realized they failed to limit him to one term. Culture war broke out. Here’s what we got:

Government shutdowns are regular occurrences.

Billionaires get tax cuts and crop subsidies.

Our government is separating immigrant children from their parents.

Our government tortures people.

Political parties are reliant on billionaire donors.

Billionaire donors and their lobbyists dictate policy.

We spend more on the military than the next ten countries combined.

We waste billions reconstructing countries we should never have invaded in the first place.

Deficits don’t matter anymore.

Paying for a child’s school lunch seems unfair.

GoFundMe is a legitimate heathcare option.

Nationalist movements are on the rise.

A restaurant in New York serves gold plated chicken wings.

We have a fetishistic reverence for anyone in uniform.

Teachers are looked down upon.

Narcissism is on the rise, empathy is on the wane.

Supporting troops means supporting militarism.

The U.S. military has bases in 70 countries.

We are in perpetual war against terrorists.

Terrorists are what we call people who fight back.

People trying to protect their water supply are seen as terrorists.

We use aerial bombs to kill terrorists in dense cities.

We dismiss the civilian casualties as regrettable collateral damage.

We use drones, operated from across the world, to kill terrorists in the countryside.

The press has given up on war reporting.

Science is suspect, government is suppressing it.

We want to make it hard to vote, and easy to buy a gun.

The minimum wage hasn’t been increased in nearly ten years.

The ice caps are melting.

Capitalism is a theory of governance.

Life-saving drugs cost whatever someone’s willing to pay for them.

Christian Zionists run the State Department.

Israelis are committing genocide.

Multinational corporations pay no federal tax.

Corporate profits are being hoarded offshore.

The top 1% own 40% of the nation’s wealth.

Middle class real wages are the same as they were in 1970.

We get more tribal by the year.

The suicide rate is up.

It is offensive to say that people have rights.

Big pharma gave us opioid addiction.

Religious leaders praise men who have no morals.

NFL owners treat athletes like property.

Police beat and kill unarmed black men.

Black children are arrested in school.

There is no American unity.

Mass murder with automatic weapons is a regular event in churches and public schools.

In this country, today, there are over 1,700 monuments to people who fought to keep slavery.

Pedophiles are running for Congress.

The EPA is being run by the oil industry.

Soon, there will be more plastic than fish in the oceans.

Our technology is spying on us.

We are fueling sectarian war between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

Today, the mask is off.

These stories reflect the bleak reality of our times.

Welcome to the dark age.