I’m having trouble finding words these days. The U.S.A. has three branches of government and it appears as though the Legislative branch, the one with ‘the power of the purse’, is completely ceding its role to the Executive branch. For much of the past 30 years, since the appearance of Newt Gingrich in ’95, the House and Senate have often done little, primarily acting as a foil to the Executive. But the current Congress has rolled over in fear of the Executive.

We are soon to be a satellite state of Putin’s Russia, it seems, as we are in the process of shutting down all defenses against foreign election interference, against Russian cyber attacks, and ceasing support of Ukraine’s fight against Russia’s invasion. Congress is simply allowing the Executive to eliminate and rewrite decades of foreign policy, now in favor of autocrats, against our own system of representative democracy; so clearly we are now a corrupt system working to benefit the richest among us, and a system driven by spite and vengeance.

The past weeks have displayed no concern for the open presentation of corrupt moves, most obviously executed by Musk, but he is not the only criminal here. We have the health of Health & Human Services responding to a measles outbreak not with advice to get vaccines, but to try cod liver oil. We have a Treasury Sec’y changing statistics so that the past is rewritten., and that present are misunderstood.

Social Security, a system we’ve all been paying into for decades, is at risk now along with Medicare and Medicaid. Tariffs, the Executive’s favorite word, are now causing a trade war that is making the world’s economy shudder–let alone damaging relationships with countries around the world. Cutting taxes of the most wealthy. And the focus on the distraction of ‘wokeness,’ whose definition has little clarity, except what I imagine is “opportunity for the other.”

The lies, the lies, the lies. They are shameless, and unending. And the Republican party is seemingly without any sense of either responsibility or conscience. I read despondent emails, texts, and posts, and I am without any positive responses.

The decline of our governmental system is rapid and, when the Judicial branch continues its slide back to the 1930s, will be complete. I know longer fear where we’re headed; we are here, and I am frightened by my own country.