Last week we mentioned the efforts of the ruling class to control the nation’s narrative by using the patriotic card, holding Fourth of July parades that simplify and glorify our way of life, a nation led by a faux billionaire who is the very embodiment of the classic charlatan.

Look it up: charlatan.

“A person falsely claiming to have a special knowledge or skill; a fraud.

Synonyms: quack, mountebank, sham, fraud, fake, humbug, impostor, pretender, masquerader, hoodwinker, hoaxer, cheat, deceiver, dissembler, double-dealer, double-crosser, trickster, confidence trickster, cheater, swindler, fraudster, racketeer.”

Bingo bango. Hits the nail on the head.

As I look at the State of the Nation in 2019 I also realize that Donald V. Rumpt isn’t the only charlatan in town. He might be the headliner, the master of ceremonies, but this nation is full of folks who’ve claimed a special association with the working class while ripping us all off at the same time.

The economocracy, that odd blending of our democratic state with the economic state, has become the Big Brother of the times, the creature that has made us the richest nation on earth while at the same time slowing our efforts to confront the problems that plague us as a people. We deal with the industrial agricultural complex, the military industrial complex, the health care complex, climate change and the environment, racism, education, transportation and infrastructure and energy by looking at them simply as economic issues rather than moral and social justice issues that also cost us dearly when we fail to deal with them.

And we are failing to deal with them.

Climate change? If it costs the economocracy too much in the front end, in the quarterly earnings report, we just won’t spend the time and money to confront another of the pressing issues of the day. Sorry folks, the economocracy comes before democracy in this day and age, just like it did back in the era of the robber barons.

Do poverty and income inequity happen in a vacuum or are they the result of a failure to address the issues of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” that will impact us all in the end?

We are far from the Lincoln ideal of the nation working toward “a more perfect union.”

I described the notion of the Constitution as the road map for the people in crafting a civil society. The road map doesn’t guarantee a fair and just society, it’s simply a way to govern ourselves in what ever way we see fit. How we govern ourselves, when much of the population feels governance to be a burden, remains a fleeting notion when we have such luminaries as Mitch McConnell pulling back on the reins. The free marketeers hold sway at this point, the Washington swamp is full of industry lobbyists hiding out in cabinet positions. Where is the meaning of the Constitution to be found when you have a fossil fuel advocate masquerading as the head of the Environmental Protection Agency. Rumpt and his minions have successfully changed the name of the department to the Environmental Pollution Agency. Energy policy headed by flunky Rick Perry? Education is in the capable billionaire hands of Betsy DeVos. Born-again and fake Christian Mike Pence sits loyal as ever in the wings as a stand-in for the Jimmy Swaggert crowd.

Seems as though the Constitution isn’t worth much more than the paper it’s written on when you have a bunch of charlatans like that determining how we act in a civil manner to govern ourselves.

Praying to the economocracy to solve our problems is what those charlatans do and they do it well, all the while claiming to have a “special knowledge or skill.”

Yes, we’ve been schmoozed by the charlatans and there are plenty of them to go around.