Welcome to the Robber Barrens
     If you are among the small minority of voters who bothered to turn out for the allegedly democratic midterm elections,  you are two systems out of date.
    Democracy was always more of an ideal than a reality in America.  George Washington and the founding fathers were rich men, ever worried that the rabble would rise. So they gave us a  plutocracy--one with democratic and civilized elements, but a plutocracy nevertheless.
    More recently, we have moved on to kleptocracy. What else would you call our polity given that the authors of the Wall Street and Iraq/Afghan/ISIS war ripoffs, the greatest financial and military frauds in history, have not been brought to justice but rather to greater wealth and power? Or that elections, the public expression of a free society, have become an increasingly private,  secret and highly profitable business?
  So the voting was about which bunch of kleptocrats we wanted to rule over us. There were the Reps, who won big time this time.  They’re divided into two factions, one that wants to make the government a more generous and efficient servant of the rich and corporate, and another that wants to burn down Washington.
    There are the Dems, also bifurcated. The leaders of the party likewise aim to indulge the larcenous wealthy. The rank and file, however, would also do something to help the middle and poorer classes--so long as it could be done without disturbing business as usual. The issue on which both Dem factions agree is that their first duty is to exterminate any and all political expressions to their left. To this end they are readying to declare the truth-telling Senator Elizabeth Warren, one of their own, as, at best, a tad extreme and, at worst, the new Nader of evil. This to clear the way to the White House for Hillary Clinton, who never met a stockjobber or jingo she didn’t like.
    Though I’m sure they would have preferred to remain in power, if only for the perks, the Dems are not so forlorn in their shameful defeat. They now have a ready excuse for their do-nothingism and they can hope that the Reps will mess up enough so that the voters will bring back the Dems in 2016.    
    There is one huge fly in the ointment. If theAfghan/Iraq/ISIS War is one of the all-time military screw-ups, an even bigger and potentially cataclysmical one is the stupidly self-destructive decision by this nation’s warhawks to again challenge Russia and China, two countries, unlike our other targets, perfectly capable of evaporating us.
    Who will rein in these murderous fools?