Checks and balances, motherfuckers!

This week I have been listening to the audiobook "We Were Eight Years In Power" by Ta-Nehisi Coates and it's had me thinking extensively about the systemic injustice cooked into the very foundation of America. Very little of it was new information, but it was freshly upsetting to hear about the different racial inequities that have been very intentionally orchestrated at all levels of government, from municipal to state to national levels. 

I listened on my drive to work one morning I thought about how the three branches of government were created to limit absolute power. I think I literally said aloud "Checks! And! Balances! Motherfuckers!" because I was feeling really spicy about the fact that despite the good intentions of this system, our government it pretty warped 250 years down the line. Because while we theoretically have checks and balances between branches of government to cover creation of laws, execution of laws, and evaluation of laws, what we really have is a ruling class of very wealthy people who are generally not interested in protecting the masses. I do think many elected officials are doing their best. But I don't think the majority of them care deeply about much more than appeasing the electorate enough to retain their status and power. And it's just really fucked up.

I was also thinking a lot about a tiktok video I saw many months ago where someone was reminding the viewers that it's OKAY to scrutinize the politicians who represent you, even when they belong to the party that you identify with. It is okay to hold them accountable for the decisions they make on behalf of their constituents while in office. And in fact as part of the public who has elected and employed them to represent us, it is actually our job to hold them accountable because if we don't nobody is. Again, as it turns out the checks and balances thing is deeply questionable at best.

So I was thinking about how fucked up it is that our government can just decide to send billions of our dollars to the Middle East to fund a genocide and there's essentially nothing we can do to stop them. Like, that's kind of insane? That we're just being held hostage in complicity on this one with our own money and by the people we have chosen to give power to. And it's not like this is the first time this has happened; there's so many instances from the Vietnam war, to various US-backed coups and governmental ploys in Latin America and the Middle East throughout what can reasonably considered recent history (I'm not sure where the line gets drawn on recent history, and arguably very little of American history would be disqualified, but within the lifetime of people currently alive feels pretty recent, ya know?). 

I don't have much else to add here. I guess this is more of a rant than anything productive or insightful. But it's what has been roiling around in my brain all week and I am reminded anew of the centuries of disenfranchisement that Black people in America have endured, of the myriad hurdles the white majority have placed on a group of people who have never had a reasonable chance to get ahead or honestly to draw even with their oppressors.