In many ways our government has represented us, sometimes in ways we could all be proud of and sometimes in ways that we may have felt were antithetical to our American heritage. Whatever our leaders were doing, whether we agreed or disagreed, they were always the face that this nation presented to the world, and we always financed it with our taxes. This was true, not only of our national leaders, but at all levels of government whether they were above board or corrupt.
There was usually an acceptable balance between the good and the questionable, given the frailty of human beings, that was workable and which we did not mind subsidizing with our taxes.
At present we are in a place that makes me very uncomfortable with what my/our tax money is financing in the world.
Let's take stock:
1. We have a Supreme Court seemingly bent on imposing some arcane morality, apparently for our own good, while holding themselves above any ethical consideration.
2. We have a Congress that at its best in the past several decades has been dysfunctional and is now not even functioning at all while one party is having an internecine squabble over who gets to wear the fire-chief's big red hat.
3. We have a president who, while supporting many very important programs to resuscitate a democracy that serves the ordinary citizen, is also blindly following some idealized macho Super Cold-Warrior calling, supporting a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, being confrontational with China over Taiwan and other economic issues, and now supporting Israel's attempt at a final solution by eliminating the Palestinians; by killing them, annexing the last remnants of the original Palestinian homeland, and/or pushing them into other Arab nations as refugees. Meanwhile he is turning his back on any possibility of diplomacy.
4. And with a mainstream media as an echo chamber for the official party line, providing very little room for objective reporting or alternative views.
5. Meanwhile we are sending billions of our tax dollars supporting wars and confrontations allowing for even more to go into the pockets of the oligarchy that supports this direction, billions that could be used domestically to deal with environmental change, infrastructure and necessary social issues.
6. All of this while ignoring the huge international issue of environmental change, rapidly becoming a total disaster for humankind, and also ignoring the immigration problems our environmental, political and economic choices are creating.
7. All of this "In our name and on our dime".
I have rarely questioned personally paying taxes to support our government. But it is too much to ask that we stand by while watching such foreign adventurism eating up billions of our tax dollars while lining the pockets of the already too rich in this nation and ignoring the much more urgent human needs globally as well as right here at home.
I am incensed to see how our/my tax dollars are being squandered, not only on such foreign adventurism, but also on such a sad excuse for a government, not to mention a spineless mainstream media. And I can no longer accept that this goes on "in our name and on our dime".
