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Einstein said of insanity that it is the action of doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
In my mind that’s exactly what this nation, this culture, has been doing for the past number of decades while expecting a different result.
We have ended up exactly where we should be, less educated, in a financial mess, prone to war, ignorant of the natural world, willing to embrace beliefs put forth by hollow moralists who describe a fairy tale future if only we’d leave the demons of progressivism behind. If you believe in cartoons you’ll likely find a favorite among Rumpt or Pruitt, McConnell or Ryan.  

With eyes closed we’ve been running in place and thinking we‘re really getting somewhere.          
Part of that failing motion may simply be an evolution of sorts, a natural manifestation of what happens when 320 million people sweep along in a direction determined by others without their knowing it. Like a nation of cows being led to pasture or the feedlot. It is the way things are. The sum of all the individual parts is larger than the actual math of each and every one of us doing our part. It is larger than all of us put together.

Until we realize that and take some action to stem or reverse that odd social evolution we will continue to grow backwards as time lurches forward.
We just haven’t put our thinking caps on very often.
There is no true conspiracy to control the masses any more than a maker of toothpaste wanting you to buy its product. There are a few bad seeds who wish to exert control but with eyes open there can be no conspiracy. There are those people who have deluded themselves into thinking that the New Conservative Neanderthal Party (NCNP) way of thinking, doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, is the best path to manifest the true meaning of the nation’s creed. There are the bad seeds who wish to proclaim an allegiance to democratic freedom while at the same time restricting those freedoms from others.

It’s an irony to believe in a freedom that accepts both majority rule and minority right while at the same time hoisting the flag of right to (not) work legislation or listening to religious zealots who will define marriage. In Minnesota NCNP members were even trying to get rid of corporate property taxes as an elixir for job creation when all it will do is dry revenue to a trickle so we can cut more services and close parks and get more motorists to fix their own potholes and see if we can get by with fewer teachers.   

Given time there will be more of those odd ironies of the not necessarily free and open society coming our way as we wander along expecting a different result as we do the same thing over and over.   
I’m an optimist, you see. I’m a member in good standing of the National Union of Friendly Americans (NUFA). I figure we’ve just been jiggered off a reasonable evolutionary path by our fallibilities as individuals living within a social structure we can’t always figure out or adjust to. Americans tend to move with the crowd, no matter that we think we’re all rebels of some sort. We tend to keep our eyes closed just like everybody else in this world and that’s not good as the pace of life speeds inexorably on, faster than we understand, fast enough that we don’t notice we’re doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

The NCNPs and the Rumptsters harken back to the past so often they pass themselves without noticing, stumbling overtheir iconic visions of Ronald Reagan along the way. They just love the notion of lowering corporate taxes and freeing up the free market to solve our problems even though that’s a good part of what put us in the present conundrum. They’ll call it reform but more likely it will end up as a tax cut.

According to Bruce Bartlett, author of Reagan’s 1981 tax cut, Reaganomics won’t help us now. 
Saying that Republican (NCNP) candidates and conservative pundits have it all wrong, Bartlett explained in a Washington Post column that while the tax cut was hoping to increase economic growth and unemployment, the top problem at that time was a “debilitating” inflation rate of 13.3 percent.
While the tax cut worked to reduce inflation dramatically and the economy started to turn around it still didn’t solve the problem of unemployment over his two terms.  
Bartlett went on to say that the economic situation in 2017 is completely different. Inflation is low. The top tax rate is half of what it was when Reagan came into office. Federal (and state) revenues are lower, yes lower, than they’ve been in 60 years. 
Bartlett said different problems require new and different responses. 
What he called “cookie-cutter economics” won’t work today, even though the NCNP and the Rumptsters want to do the same thing over and over again and expect something to change.
It won’t.
At some point I‘m sure someone in the right wing camp will come right out and say that patriotism or prayer will help the economy and solve unemployment and make our kids smarter. Just close your eyes, follow the crowd and have faith in America.
Do that over and over and over again and the crowd will believe things will change.
Crowd mentality.

Sounds like a another form of insanity to me.