Someone asked me recently when it happened?

It started with Newt Gingrich and his Republican Party when he first shut down the federal government in 1995 and then again in 1995-1996.

Gingrich, of all people, marked the death of the old and the beginning of modernity, the beginning of what I call the Death of the Republican Party *tm (1994-2019). This coincided with the dawn of the internet in 1995, actually. This Death of the Republican Party spans the NeoCons and runs the gamut of Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, Birthers, the House’s Freedom Caucus and delves all the way down to today’s Trump: ignoble pandering to the ignorant masses while lavishly letting loose the corrupt and the immoral.

That’s when the reality of “trickle down economics” or “supply-side economics”, as put into place in the 1980s, began to see its ill-fated results. It was a great hollowing out of our federal government, a lessening of the state and a lessening of our community. I’m no longer from the government and I’m no longer here to help.

That’s when Congress — both the House and the Senate — lost most of its support staff (thanks, again, to Gingrich) and started to use outside consultants. Congress got dumb. K Street lobbyists grew in power. Money entered ever-more-so into politics and policy-making. Luxurious corporate board seats were made available to retiring politicians. K Street consulting positions were given to former CEOs. Skilled oversight laxed. Wolves tended the flock and foxes guarded the coop. Corruption abounded. The gilded one percent sheared the golden fleece and whisked it away to their Mossack Fonseca bank account, skipping taxes along the way.

This is when began continuous war, a perceived uninterrupted and evolving existential national-security threat to the fundamentals of the U.S. state itself. The foundations of our City on a Hill were, apparently, being threatened by 15 young Saudi men. This is when began continuous war. Troops rotate overseas, troops rotate home, ongoing threats, ongoing wars, none of them declared by Congress. No methodical policing to find those 15 Saudi men, just continuous large-metal war. Once they were found, then the perceived threat evolves again, keeping the same D.C. clique in power, the rich sending the poor off to die.

The tiny segment of U.S. citizens who join the armed forces are chewed up and spat out by the filthy suit-wearing snakes, snakes who send the poor off to die for a flag and a myth. Nonetheless, that tiny percent of us who do join the military is still schizophrenically both praised and wrapped in the Stars & Stripes at home, but then also bitterly ignored and ill-treated by our institutions at home. The gilded one percent avoid the stench of volunteering for the military like the stench of a hoipolloi plague. The rich sit in court-side center-field home-plate $1’000 seats to watch the lucky few from among the poor receive short-term million-dollar paychecks to bash each other to death for entertainment.

That’s when it became acceptable to curse at the downtrodden, to slavishly pine for gold-leafed glitz, to ruin your neighbor as you get worse off, and to blame it all on a swarthy-skinned, Roman Catholic Other [who works for you, mows your lawn and serves your food] who’s being encouraged along the way by a pinko feminist snowflake cuck [who designs your software, handles your finances and creates your media].

That’s when it became acceptable for those among us with mental health issues to freeze to death in the winter, for the weakest among us to die ignoble deaths without ever having the chance to fulfill our right to life, liberty and happiness.

That’s when it happened.

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