If one picks almost any issue found in the contemporary political system in the United States, the motives of one component of the process either support it or oppose it because of ulterior antecedents - to say it differently by motives which they openly deny having.  I have cited many examples of this in the past.  For Health Insurance Reform see Health Care, Race and Treachery and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Oregon: A Case Study of Greed and Exploitation; examples on Climate Change include Polar Bear Story, Globally Warm - After 2050 and The Waters of Puget Sound.  There really are too many examples to mention but the range of issues goes from Foreign Policy and issues like war and peace to partisan political attacks against elected officials that are disconcerting and in some cases the collective insanity expressed is frightening. It just couldn't happen here could it?

The United States today is one of the few advanced technological countries where a significant portion of the population reject science, scientific research and the scientific method itself as bogus.  Creationism is one example and the denial of evidence supporting Global Warming is another.  The beliefs of Creationism are founded on ignorance while denial of the observable evidence supporting Global Warming is based on entrenched economic interests that see the acceptance of data supporting Global Warming as a threat, that is, a threat to their economic class.  See, for example, my article The Already Wealthy.  

Denial of reality is a part of the overall rejection of scientific research.  As Dana Milbank observed,

It must be very lonely being the last flat-earther.  Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, committed climate-change denier, found himself in just such a position Tuesday morning as the Senate environment committee, on which he is the ranking Republican, took up legislation on global warming. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) was in talks with Democrats over a compromise bill -- the traitor! And as Inhofe listened, fellow Republicans on the committee -- turncoats! -- made it clear that they no longer share, if they ever did, Inhofe's view that man-made global warming is the "greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people."

That’s fine but evidence to the contrary just keeps rolling in.

The decade of the 2000s is very likely the warmest decade in the modern record, dating back 150 years, according to a provisional summary of climate conditions near the end of 2009, the organization said. The period from 2000 through 2009 has been “warmer than the 1990s, which were warmer than the 1980s and so on,” said Michel Jarraud, the secretary general of the international weather agency, speaking at a news conference at the climate talks in Copenhagen. The international assessment largely meshes with an interim analysis by the National Climatic Data Center and NASA in the United States, both of which independently estimate global and regional temperature and other weather trends.

To follow the process of denial of facts to where it logically ends produces ideological inconsistencies.  Such inconsistencies both lead to and originate from a mechanism of behavior which frames the world strictly in terms of outcome. Kant rejects this idea, according to Kant, good outcomes could result from accident.  The reason Kant didn't accept this is found in his belief regarding categorical imperatives.

(1) Act only according to that maxim by which you can also will that it would become a universal law.  (2) Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end.  (3) Act as though you were, through your maxims, a law-making member of a kingdom of ends.

To Kant, what was good is as much defined by intent as by action, that is to say, action is preceded by "good" intent.  Personal motives were not considered as a valid justification for action.  Only universal intent is considered. 

This is still relevant now.  One political party is attempting to follow these precepts today with the other is intent on playing the role of obstructionist and use the fears and uneducated beliefs of the masses as a base to exploit.  What they are attempting to gain is, shall we say, unclear. As C. Wright Mills noted in The Higher Immorality:

There is no virtue in starting out poor and becoming rich. Only where the ways of becoming rich are such as to require virtue or to lead to virtue does personal enrichment imply virtue. In a system of cooptation from above, whether you began rich or poor seems less relevant in revealing what kind of (person) you are when you have arrived than in revealing the principles of those in charge of selecting the ones who succeed.

Those opposing the majority party and its ideas today in the United States have arrived where they are by negating the formulation by Kant and gladly accepting what Mills calls The Higher Immorality.   Clearly careers are made and great wealth has been accumulated in the process of cooptation without discernable virtue.

Is this the kind of political system a majority of Americans want or is it only a small number who hold great wealth and power that sustain this system?  A better question would be do most Americans truly understand - or care - how it does or, increasingly, doesn't  function? 

Take Global warming.  Many feel that Global Warming is a hoax perpetrated in a conspiracy by those who oppose the continued use of fossil fuel energy sources. 

If they are wrong and Global Warming is real, the following describes what could occur in the United States.  

1. Global warming is unequivocal and primarily human-induced.

Global temperature has increased over the past 50 years. This observed increase is due primarily to human induced emissions of heat-trapping gases.)

2. Climate changes are underway in the United States and are projected to grow.

Climate-related changes are already observed in the United States and its coastal waters. These include increases in heavy downpours, rising temperature and sea level, rapidly retreating glaciers, thawing permafrost, lengthening growing seasons, lengthening ice-free seasons in the ocean and on lakes and rivers, earlier snowmelt, and alterations in river flows. These changes are projected to grow.

3. Widespread climate-related impacts are occurring now and are expected to increase.

Climate changes are already affecting water, energy, transportation, agriculture, ecosystems, and health. These impacts are different from region to region and will grow under projected climate change.

4. Climate change will stress water resources.

Water is an issue in every region, but the nature of the potential impacts varies. Drought, related to reduced precipitation, increased evaporation, and increased water loss from plants, is an important issue in many regions, especially in the West. Floods and water quality problems are likely to be amplified by climate change in most regions. Declines in mountain snowpack are important in the West and Alaska where snowpack provides vital natural water storage.

5. Crop and livestock production will be increasingly challenged.

Many crops show positive responses to elevated carbon dioxide and low levels of warming, but higher levels of warming often negatively affect growth and yields. Increased pests, water stress, diseases, and weather extremes will pose adaptation challenges for crop and livestock production.

6. Coastal areas are at increasing risk from sea-level rise and storm surge.

Sea-level rise and storm surge place many U.S. coastal areas at increasing risk of erosion and flooding, especially along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts, Pacific Islands, and parts of Alaska. Energy and transportation infrastructure and other property in coastal areas are very likely to be adversely affected.

7. Risks to human health will increase.

Harmful health impacts of climate change are related to increasing heat stress, waterborne diseases, poor air quality, extreme weather events, and diseases transmitted by insects and rodents. Reduced cold stress provides some benefits. Robust public health infrastructure can reduce the potential for negative impacts.

8. Climate change will interact with many social and environmental stresses.

Climate change will combine with pollution, population growth, overuse of resources, urbanization, and other social, economic, and environmental stresses to create larger impacts than from any of these factors alone.

9. Thresholds will be crossed, leading to large changes in climate and ecosystems.

There are a variety of thresholds in the climate system and ecosystems. These thresholds determine, for example, the presence of sea ice and permafrost, and the survival of species, from fish to insect pests, with implications for society. With further climate change, the crossing of additional thresholds is expected.

10. Future climate change and its impacts depend on choices made today.

The amount and rate of future climate change depend primarily on current and future human-caused emissions of heat-trapping gases and airborne particles. Responses involve reducing emissions to limit future warming, and adapting to the changes that are unavoidable.

Enough on global warming?   It is then easy to conclude that the U.S. government because of the obstructionist minority, has turned its institutions into a non-functional entity.  Needed legislation is becoming more difficult to get enacted as in the case of the Senate, a feeble 1% of its members can prevent legislation from passing.

And even more profound perhaps is that a sizable percentage of the public doesn't have a problem with that.   In many ways, they could be looked at as the cause.  When lunatic fringe legislators continue to be elected based on the paranoid fears in their constituents they exploit, it is little wonder that important issues that face the United States as well as concerns that endanger the entire planet are subjected to the moral equivalent of carpet bombing.  I’ve delineated specific cases of this elsewhere.

There are three issues facing the United States right now that should be seen through a lens of consensus.  One is global warming and climate change.  The second is health care reform and the third is continuing high levels of unemployment in the U.S. economy. 

Yet it isn't happening.  There is no consensus, there are elected members of the U.S. Congress who deny the problems that face the entire planet.  The U.S. is alone in that regard, every other country, even developing countries, have leaders that recognize the threat;  this denial of reality is rooted either in mental illness or ulterior motives.   Just to be clear, the largest "ulterior motive" there can be is individual wealth and a person or legislator who has individual wealth will go to unbelievable extremes to preserve it.

The same can be said regarding health care reform as many members of the U.S. Senate represent corporations instead of the American citizens they are obligated to serve who happen to lack adequate heath care and whose lives that are shortened as a consequence.

The third issue is unemployment.  The opposition to this is predominantly ideological.  Their problem is the failure to grasp the most elemental concepts of state capitalism.  They still think about “free markets” although the individual most responsible for its resurgence over the past 30 years has recanted much of what he professed during that time.  To deal with unemployment, the U.S. economy requires additional public sector spending as a stimulus to the lagging growth in jobs.

The obvious conclusion is that there is a reality denying culture in the United States, unwilling to face problems that could affect their lives; additionally there are reality denying politicians whom they elect.   The largely belong to a single party, a party whose members do not want to solve problems - even when it was their neglegence that created them.  Thus when something like public sector spending to create jobs is advanced, they present a halucinary diatribe about the federal deficit. 

The problem though is that the U.S. Government is unable to act with any degree of urgency on these and other issues because of the relatively small number of  people who continue to be reelected whose chief contribution after taking office is to oppose any kind of change.  Change in the status quo, even in a crisis where all else has failed, is viewed as undesirable and usually labeled as a threat to entrenched interests.  And many Americans are so ignorant  and uninformed to believe this propaganda. 

The equating of anything the federal government is involved in as "socialist" is an example.  One wonders how these people continue to survive?  Generation after generation they continue to fight a battle that has ended everywhere else in the modern world.

Well there is a simple way to put an end to this and reduce the deficit and stimulate job growth at the same time: increase a broad range of taxation primarily on the very wealthy.  A good idea would be to force corporations that contribute to global warming and exploit the environment in other ways out of existence through aggressive taxation and direct expropriation of capital. The funds obtained through the expropriation of capital from those corporations that have acquired great wealth by destroying life should be used to eliminate poverty in the United States and the rest should go to helping the so-called developing nations retrieve the wealth that was taken from them through centuries of imperialistic exploitation.

Is this likely to happen?  No and that is the point.  While everything I've detailed is easily proven to be true, it can also be easily denied by many and since there aren't immediate consequences, everything will just continue on as it has.  Nothing changes when reality can be plausibly denied. 

But this can go on for only so long.   At some point  the physical consequences of what is real are going to become evident to everyone.  

Bcause of that I'm glad that I was born when I was and probably won't be around when all of the really negative consequences of corporate fascism begin to occur.  Some folks though have created a time capsule for future generations.  It is in the video I've attached.  It is more of an apology than anything but unless many things change in the next 30 years, the future may not be in a terribly forgiving mood.