This is excellent

Savvy to a Fault: Coming to Terms With Imperial Power

Well worth reading. It's becoming increasingly apparent that the machinery of the American state has a life entirely apart from and unresponsive to the ballot box, and to the framework of government envisioned in the Constitution. How one effectively combats that is unclear to me. The linked essayist and others, like Arthur Silber at Power of Narrative, suggest that participation in the various rituals and processes of our nominally democratic republic - like voting, for example - are not only fruitless but imply an endorsement of the system itself. Non-participation, they seem to argue, is the only effective opposition. More and more, I'm inclined to agree.

Evidence of the sickness within

The slide continues. In this country, one feels that the ingredients for something nasty are being assembled. Torture, the degradation of the discourse, widespread unemployment and poverty, despair. It's not clear when the tipping point will be reached, or if we've already passed it, but things seem like they will certainly get worse before they get better.