While enjoying my morning routine of coffee and headlines, profound apprehensions plague me, knowing we’re lost and foundering. Not only as a republic but as a society. Is this awareness the new normal? Is it what we endure and where we abide? Or will we alter our course before this sinking ship of state drags us all under?

It may be too late.

I’m looking for similes and corollaries, but all I can find is space – as in the universe, but I imagine the ocean, standing at the shore, wondering what’s on the other side. We know the sea is finite; it’s a massive depression in the earth filled with water. On the other hand, as Einstein postulates, “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.”

I trust Einstein’s observations and theories, so I’m inclined to accept his conjecture as accurate. I, too, wonder about human stupidity. Mr. Einstein’s cheeky statement has merit. The available evidence bears witness and testament to his assertion. Why would we invent all these fantastic tools, practices, and rules only to forego their use?

I was looking over some polling data that shows alarming points, all dichotomies if you examine the partisan origins. They clearly show the bias of the carefully selected polled segments. If you ask registered partisan party members who they prefer in any survey, they will assuredly respond along party lines. So, if you ask a Marxist-Democrat-Socialist if they support Bernie Sanders, they usually respond in the affirmative.

When you ask a Republican if Trump is a great candidate, you receive a proportional positive response. These are loaded questions.

Polls are the thing partisans shove up our opinions to prove their premise or point and prejudice their constituency or any undecided voter. The Big Six (BS) corporate media play these polls ad nauseam to emphasize their preference. The term for this is gaslighting. Or… they’re blowing smoke up your – uh – opinion.

Clarification on the use of “opinion – I used the colloquialism – “opinions are like buttholes – everyone has one but knows the other’s stink.” Nuff said…

It begs the question… Where are we going?

As a republic, where are we going?

As a society, what’s our direction? We seem lost, adrift…

We have the most amazing navigational tools available. Why don’t we use them?

Personally… I feel abandoned by my country. This betrayal, especially by the people we hired to guard our most precious gift, liberty. It was why we founded this republic and why so many pledged their lives to support and defend it.

This Marxist-Democrat-Socialist movement is pissing on every sacrifice ever made to protect and uphold our Constitution. Recent actions and decisions show they’ve abandoned it altogether. They’re making it up because “Their Ends Justify the Means.”

Disgust doesn’t even approach what I’m feeling. Words fail me, and that’s an uncomfortable position for any writer. Admitting that I cannot describe my emotions illustrates my exasperation with our Murkan republic. I had moored my revulsion at the dock of indifference and strolled down the wharf, but… I’m back.

I’m mad as hell, and I won’t take it anymore! This commentary is the result.

I watch our captain, Bumblin’ Stumbli’Joe Blighden, sail our ship of state onto the rocks. Murka crashed into a seawall and is quickly taking on water. We’re sinking! I can’t entirely fault Bumblin’ Stumbli’Joe Blighden; it’s his navigators, you know, the people who pull his strings and give him partisan advice, but as the captain, he is still responsible!

But… and here’s the BIG butt.

Bumblin’ Stumblin’ Joe Blighden is just a “useful idiot…”

* Blighden is a portmanteau of Biden, one of the worst presidents in recent memory, and Bligh, one of the most reviled captains in maritime history. Blighden

Truth be told, Bumblin’ Stumblin’ Joe Blighden is most like Captain Francesco Schettino, who drove the Costa Concordia onto the rocks while showing off for a female friend on the bridge. Unlike Captain Schettino, Bumblin’ Stumblin’ Joe Blighden’s audience is the Democrat Socialist (DemoSoc) party, and there wasn’t room for all of them on the bridge or in his basement; they’re present, nonetheless.

Here is where Einstein’s statement about questioning the limits of human stupidity being infinite becomes relevant. Our actions to reelect and support these miscreants show how insane we expect narcissists to forego personal interests and embrace the republic instead.

Plato used the analogy of the Ship of State in his book “The Republic,” around 375 BCE. His dialog likens a republic to a sailing vessel, with the captain as the leader in both instances. The predominant navigational tool in the ancient navy was a thorough knowledge of the stars and the use of the astrolabe.

The astrolabe was a Greek invention in 225 BCE based on the theories of Hipparchus used to tell time during the day or night, to identify the time of sunrise and sunset, the length of the day, and to locate celestial objects for navigation.

A few short years earlier, in 206 BCE, the Chinese began using the compass for navigation. The Western World was a little slow to adopt this marvelous tool. We eventually picked it up in the 11th century. Boy… ain’t we sharp…

These astonishing tools are part of our maritime traditions and the instruments that enable safer travel, astounding discoveries, and the colonization of distant places. They also link metaphorically to our ethical and moral directions.

I’m not too elated with the colonization part, but that’s another essay. Our presence on this continent is a testament to the effectiveness and power of these tools, as is our reliance on the implications for our direction in founding this republic.

The “Moral Compass” idiom is a metaphor for one’s ethical values, based on the allusion to a compass that steers one in the morally right direction. Anna Marie Porter first used it in 1821, and Charles Dickens later used it in Martin Chuzzlewit in 1843.

We can thank Roger Easton, Ivan Getting, and Bradford Parkinson for the Global Positioning System (GPS). However, I fail to find references to a Moral GPS, nor can I find a parallel to a moral astrolabe, except possibly astrologically.

Now… Back to our program…

Ancient mariners would never consider leaving port without these phenomenal inventions. Yet, we have no issue ignoring our moral compass when we set sail, acting without thinking or following any captain’s example, especially one we should know as wrong, and would if we used our moral compass.

Personal experience and trust should enter the decision process at this point but rarely do.

Imagine being a sailor in 200 BCE, preparing for an ocean journey, looking across the water, wondering what you’ll encounter. As you gaze into the unknown, you realize that your life is in the hands of your captain. You invest your trust in this person – utterly… entirely! You know, trust your captain will get to and from your destination safely, or you’ll never leave port.

Doesn’t our cautious nature warn of potential pitfalls? Shouldn’t we heed its advice, or at least consider it? Is our faith in leadership so blind that it fails to recognize the risk of rocks just under the surface?

Murkan’s leap before they look. They follow any boob with a good story, media-cred, and a good campaign team gaslighting the way.

Where are we going, and why?

That’s what we must ask.

Wouldn’t you want to know before you embark on any voyage for no other reason than reassurance and to ease concerns?

When I was a younger man, I trusted implicitly – My faith was in the person in authority. I was raised in a traditional family structure with a father and mother; they were our family ship’s captain and first mate. I learned to trust them.

My family was the basis of my understanding and the foundation of my belief system. Consequently, I extended that faith and allegiance to the rest of my life’s encounters.

Trusting the wrong people was the real beginning of my education. I earned a master’s degree from the “School of Hard Knocks”; I graduated Summa-Cum-Lumpy!

As I aged, I realized that trust and respect were earned, not bestowed. These were some very costly lessons. My disappointment and discouragement eroded my blind faith in leaders as fewer people fulfilled their contracts. It wasn’t my parents but where I misplaced my trust.

I see trust as a contract. I pledge my allegiance, and you fulfill your captaincy – you lead, and I shall follow. What exasperates me is the outright breach of our loyalty contracts from the very inception. Their lies and deceit are prime examples indicating a faulty moral compass, a stuck needle.

We rationalized away our ingrained morality for a seemingly more effortless or expedient path; let’s not forget all the free stuff they promise, like Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity (DIE). It all causes immediate distrust and feeds my skepticism; as you already know, I am a Super Cynic.

“Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me!” ~ Sir Anthony Weldon, 1650

This wisdom comes from an Italian proverb. “He that deceives me once, it’s his fault; but if twice, it’s my fault.”

This axiom infers that we should learn from our mistakes, but when you examine this phrase through Einstein’s lens of insanity, it becomes an indictment of our culture. We make the same decisions, make the same choices, and perform the same tasks in the same manner but expect different results, and we are awestruck when the outcome is a repeated calamity or catastrophe.

Wash, Rinse, Repeat… QED: Insanity

We are, by definition, Insane!

Maybe we are simply stupid.

Or are we that gullible?

The amazing tools at our disposal are the US Constitution and a well-founded, centuries-old morality. We’re programmed to ignore them, but we do so at our great peril. Our rationale – The End Justifies the Means!

But here we are, on the rocks, taking on water because we deride our skeptical nature and follow Bumblin’ Stumbling’ Joe Blighden and the Bolsheviks controlling him. We older folks should know better, but you younglings were brainwashed, programmed, to follow the leader; the state-sponsored school – indoctrination – system sees to that.

The ideological brand is unimportant; the pure dogma is – absolute control by an affluent few – Plutocracy, government by the wealthy or ruling class, is. A study of wealth distribution shows that 1% of households hold 15 times more wealth than the bottom 50%.

Who calls the shots, and who steers the ship of state?

Who pays for their decisions?

It’s not just financial costs; there are other hidden expenses as well.

As the Plutocracy spends our money and prints more to exercise an excessive expenditure ethos, inflation rises, and we bear the brunt. As they create bigger and better ways to rape, pillage, and plunder Murka, we remain comfortably numb in our Styrofoam & stucco castles, detached from reality, grazing on heaping helpings of bovine excrement served up by the BS corporate media under the watchful and weaponized eye of Captain Bumblin’ Stumblin’ Joe Blighden.

Consider the ruling class in ‘Murka; you know, the Plutocracy. How many poor politicians are there?

The median net worth of the 535 members of Congress, the opposite of progress, is $1.02 million. The richest is Rick Scott of Florida, with $259.7 million. But dae is some mighty po’ folks up in der too – dairy farmer David Valadao, Clerk of the House, from California, owes $4.10 million. Now there’s a fine example of fiscal responsibility to crew our ship of state.

Just for the sake of comparison, only 2% of ‘Murkan’s are worth over $1 Million – those are the 1% we hear about, but only 724 of the 334,233,854 people are billionaires – of that same small and un-named few who run this country.

How does a fifty-year career politician like Bumblin’ Stumblin’ Joe Blighden own four multi-million dollar properties on a Senator’s salary?

This Laissez-Faire attitude to society and the law spawns the lawlessness and anarchy we endure today. How can you justify a five-year sentence of a Black Rapper for weapons violations, and Young Hunter, the crackhead Blighden, get a traffic ticket and a slap on the wrist for tax evasion and lying on a federal gun application.

Is this Equity or Equality?

It’s undoubtedly not Inclusion!

One wonders about the isonomy of this situation and its optics.

How can we expect the rank-and-file Murkan to remain law-abiding citizens, when Cap’n Bumblin’ Stumblin Joe Blighden pisses on the Constitution.

Few people notice that all the allegations, accusations, and substantiated wrongdoing set a poor example for the other 99% to follow. The BS Media spin and distort the facts painting a carefully orchestrated tableau of probity and propriety to gaslight these ethical and moral violations.

As the old saying goes: “99% of the lawyers give the rest of us a bad name.”

Too many cities write their laws in chalk, so they can easily erase and change them as needed. Some don’t bother writing them at all; it’s up to the Marxist-funded District Attorney to decide how much society can afford to lose supporting DIE. Crime is rising, and education is sinking with our ship of state. High school graduates can hardly read or write, so the answer is to lower the requirements and abolish grades as racist systemic white supremacy.

Teaching English in College is a product of Systemic White Racism in Murka, so now dem kids don’ needs to learn nuttin’ but how ta live on the gubmint teet. Cuz Uncle Sugga be takin’ care of the plantation – da new ‘Murkan Plantation…

‘Least we forget the lines between propriety and debauchery were obliterated when federally sponsored Drag-Queens teach our children to read, and Queers stride proudly through the street chanting… “We’re Here, We’re Queer, and We’re Coming for your Children” during an LGBTQIA+ Pride Parade.

Welcome to the new ‘Murka!
No moral compass…
No laws…
No conscience…
Mutable Guiding Principles –
Plutocratic Marxist Democrat Socialist leadership

We’re a republic where the Gay Pride Flag flies above and center stage, supplanting the American Flag in support of Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity (DIE).

Murka is no longer adrift; we’ve sunk to the bottom.

Because: The End Justifies the Means…

July 7, 2023

~ The Author ~
Charles R. Dickens was born in 1951, is a veteran of the Vietnam war, for which he volunteered, and the great-great grandson of the noted author, whose name he shares.

He is a fiercely proud American, who still believes this is the greatest country on the planet, with which we’ve lost control and certainly our direction. He grew up in moderate financial surrounding; we’re not rich by any stretch, but didn’t go hungry – his incredibly hard working father saw to that. As most from that era, he learned about life from his father, whose story would take too long to tell, other than to say that, he is also a fiercely proud American; a WWII and Korean war, veteran Marine.

Charlie was educated in the parochial system which, demanded that you actually learn something, and have capability to retain it before you advance. He attended several universities in pursuit of a bachelor’s degree, and chased the goose further to a master’s, and has retained some very definite ideas about education in this country.

In addition, Charlie is a retired blues guitar and vocalist – a musician. This was his therapy career. Nothing brings him as much joy as playing music, and he wishes that he could make a living at it… but alas… life goes on!