Institutions

 "That damned Trump has ruined the FBI," I said recently, to my own surprise. 

In my family we haven't cared for the FBI. Like most police forces, it exists, in part, to protect the powerful and keep white trash and minorities down.  So why do I, descended from Kentucky hillbillies, care if the FBI gets degraded?

For many reasons we need police, and we need a better kind of police. 

I've argued that most of us have a liberal streak and a conservative streak.  Two human impulses. Maybe two names for one mixture.

Right now we are caught in a struggle between those who like our system well enough to want to keep it intact (but slowly changing) vs. those who want to smash the system and adopt a new one. The proposed new system will work like a corporation with a CEO whose word is law. Like an army with a general or a football team with a coach. Like a Fascist state. Like Lucky, Bugsy and Meyer. 

Our current, awkward system is held together by imperfect institutions.  But it has democratic aspects. Keeping that system requires supporting the institutions that create it.  

Politics has taken a strange lurch. 

“And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”