Sometimes, if you listen closely enough... -OR- I'll see your qualifier and raise you a scheme.

On This Week w/ Georgie Porgie

George Will: "The so-called Reagan Era began with Nixon."

Buried within the Chernobyl-esque sarcophagus of what have, inner-defensively, been coined: "The Nixon Years" lay the open sores of Modern America. Burying our mistakes was a luxury we'd enjoyed for 400 years. Our national fuggetabowtit excused everything from slavery to genocide, blatant racism to cyclical transfer of debt and risk in the name of national honor and dignity. The lofty end always trumped the questionable means, but the course was ever onward. Looking back was/is for suckers.

America's sin-eating demands national blinders, rationalization skills straight out of Compton, copious quantities of alcohol, mind-boggling special effects, Jedi mind-trick suspension of critical thinking and K's Neuralizer flashy thing.

There's nothing for which I, as a lowly citizen, need to answer. I am not the droid I seek. They don't let me drive the bus. At various times I have made formal apologies to the long line of wronged, abused, dismissed and forgotten victims of America's stampede. Its sacking and trashing of rights and liberties in the name of progress IS our history. If an apology and scape-goat were all that were necessary, I was more than willing to do so. That's just the kind of patriot I am.

Sadly, for my part, I can only take ownership of wrongs bestowed since 1972 and then only to the extent that I was not directly impacted by, nor did I lend my proxy to, what was done to and for us. I was against all of it. Short of immolating myself in protest, I did what I could, when I could, to stop the madness.

Which brings me to George Will's nonchalant and immediately glossed over admission of yesterday. Within his seven words is the key to unraveling what went wrong; when and why. Beneath the admission is the fragile O-ring failure that has haunted and driven us ever since.

It was a simple enough scam, in principle, served up on a platter that the right would never have conceived of, let alone supported. In the annals of history it has been called generically "The Great Society". It was to be an FDR style, proven approach, to fixing the nagging problem of haves and have nots in America. Then a funny thing happened on the path to implementation. LBJ's mandate of JFK's legacy fell to Richard M. Nixon for full implementation.

The national purse was at his disposal. He could appoint whomever he wanted to the newly hatched sub-divisions of the Washington Bureaucracy. He could make sure that the systems were designed and operated to fail miserably without risk to his own party. It was an open door for building the Republican dynasty. The massive influx of civil servants with a natural resistance to egalitarian ideals, the freedom to write and set the guiding policies and principles while establishing the infrastructure was Nixon's perfect storm.

All that has come since was predicated on a lie that has grown without conscience.
That is was LBJ who ushered in the expansion. That more money would overcome the reservoirs that were designed into the plumbing. That the victims of the scam were beyond helping, undeserving and ungrateful. With each succession of power, there could be no master of the beast. At best, perhaps, they might climb on, strap in and ride it pretending to steer. Along the way, each has been schooled in the futility of trying to fix any or all of its quirky works. Their attempts have provided comedy fodder. Revealing the secret would cause such a cataclysmic cascade of anger, panic and chaos, such a shuddering of the footings that complete collapse was the only possible outcome.

Such a dark cloud. Is there no silver lining? Funny you should ask. The big silver lining is that the revenues required to maintain the facade could go a long way towards reversing the trends. Given our collective ability to forget resides an opportunity to overlook the massive outsourcing, downsizing and streamlining that would pay huge dividends for our future.

The typical proffered solution is naturally backwards. The natural approach is to wield indiscriminate Claymores, axes, chainsaws... when a surgeon's touch is called for. A brigade strength surge of surgeons with discerning eyes, to be sure, but nothing that would fall outside of the available talent pool.

The aggregate supply of bodily, life sustaining fluids (read: CA$H)could be re-piped to bypass the diseased, necrotic, parasitic sections without risking the "health" (air quotes?)of the patient. There would be a glut of talentless bureaucrats on the dole, but they have people skills. I'm sure they will fare as well or better in the private sector. GS-7 thru GS-15 civil servants would get a chance at the kind of self-help they've said their charges are in need of. Adding their vigor and vibrancy to the private sector could revolutionize and rebuild our Civilian/Industrial base.
If not, we've got that whole collective amnesia thing as a fall-back contingency.