I have now watched all the hearings on the January 6^th attack on our Capitol or as I like to call it “The Insurrection”. I am not a young man. I have lived through the Civil Rights Protests, the Vietnam Protested, Watergate, the Iranian Hostage situation, the Iran Contra Affair, the Impeachment of Bill Clinton and many more scandals here in America. I have never seen anything that is like we have today. Our Country is a mess and the whole world is watching us continue to be a mess. We are a Country at war with our self. How did we get here so quickly? During the Obama Administration we were well respected around the world. Today the world is just shaking their heads wondering what in the hell is happening to America. I am asking the same questions and daily, I search for answers. The easiest answer to say is Donald Trump but I think it is more complicated than that. He is part of the problem though. Donald Trump expects loyalty to him and not the Country. The Pledge of Allegiance does not say I pledge allegiance to Donald Trump. We pledge Allegiance to the United States of America and those words ring hollow to too many people. There were people back in 2016 that predicted that this would happen. That Trump would not want to leave the White House. That Trump would want to destroy our Democracy. I ask the question why is Trump ripping apart this country that he is suppose to love and why are so many willing to help him?

I remember watching movies where a Country is run not by the people but by Corporations. Movies like I Robot or Network. These were fictional movies but is that what we are seeing slowly happen today? If the truth would have been told and reported properly, would Trump ever been elected? If Corporations like The Koch Corporations, Publix or Home Depot had not been given the power over politicians by the Supreme Court with Citizens United maybe we would have a different outcome today. I just went through one of the worst hurricanes in the history of our Country and you still have Republican Politicians promoting oil and coal. People have died, some drowned in their own homes. The storm surge was measured as high as 15 feet in Ft. Myers Beach and we still have people with the attitude “Drill Baby Drill” even though climate change is real. Corporate profits are put in front of people’s lives and that is not an overreaction. Southwest Florida will never be the same but many in the Republican Party don’t care. To make matters worse is that many in the Florida Republican Party don’t care either.

A Corporatocracy is where Corporations Executives run the Country. Is this what we are slowly becoming? Just look at the power that a Rupert Murdock has to influence public opinion or Elon Musk. Who is controlling the information that we are seeing and who wants to control more of the information that we will see in the future?  Knowing the truth is a huge part of freedom and the lies and misinformation from the right is meant to take our freedoms away from us. Yes, without the truth you have no freedom. When the press is being attacked by a political party I know that it is my responsibility to search for what the real truth is. If we would have had the same media that we had when Nixon was President Trump would have never even gotten the Republican Nomination in my opinion. Today’s News for profit instead of News for the Truth is a huge problem for the Country. The supply chain issues are a World Wide issue. Inflation is a World-Wide issue. To be told anything else in my opinion is a lie. We are led to believe that it is a Biden issue instead of the world-wide issue that it is. The fact that we have a news organization like Fox News that caters its news to a certain audience instead of the truth just helps create the huge divide and, is one of the reasons why this Country probably will not survive. I hope that I am wrong but as the free thinking intellectuals and liberals are attacked and more and more people are incorporated into the collective and your freedoms will be less and less.

In Florida Marco Rubio is up for reelection and I have to sit back and wonder what in the hell has he done for his State? To be honest with you the only thing that I have seen is Rubio do is promote Rubio. Climate change is a real serious problem in Florida. In fact, it probably is the most serious problem that Florida is facing today and for the foreseeable future. All the Republicans seem to be real quiet about all the suffering of the people in Southwest Florida. The poor have been hit the hardest and it seems that the poor are the very people that are being helped the least. Rubio likes to quote a lot of Scripture but when it comes to really walking in Jesus’s footsteps he would rather walk with Pontius Pilate, aka Trump. Money did not rule Jesus but money rules the Republican Party and Marco Rubio in my opinion.

Ron Johnson is up for reelection in Wisconsin. Here is a man that was warned by the FBI that he was being used by the Russians and who does he blame? Why he blames the media and the FBI. The two groups whose job is to protect our democracy from the very thing that Ron Johnson let happen. Ron Johnson was used by a foreign power, in my opinion, and he blames everyone else. It is all too apparent there are many Republicans that do not want to govern; they do not want to protect our democracy, or our Republic. How could any sane person vote for Hershel Walker? Do you really think that he will bring any original thoughts or ideas to the Senate? You know damn well that he is put there to so he will do what he is told by the real power behind the Republican Party, the billionaires with the money that now want the power to go along with it.

Sometimes I just want to scream “How in the hell did we get here”. In my opinion we are becoming more and more like Russia than the bastion of freedom that we are suppose to be. I watched the Jan. 6th hearings and look at all the people in the FBI, Secret Service and all the other agencies that sworn an oath to our Constitution that just completely ignored that oath. I have listened to all those Republicans talk about the Constitution while at the same time working to destroy the very thing that they took an oath to protect. One thing that I don’t see is accountability. The lying and the misinformation that Republicans like Ron Johnson and Marco Rubio only weaken our democracy. We cannot be a World leader when people do not have enough faith to follow us. We cannot be a World leader when Europe feels that they can’t depend on us. We cannot be a World leader if we desert democracy here and abroad.