0828

August 28, 2022

 In bed @ 10:14, up at 4:15, yecch, 3/4 pss, 2 glasses of red.  Woke up thinking The Second Coming and 'what rough beast slouches toward Bethlehem,' published in 1921, could have been published in 2021.  One of the op-ed pieces in this morning's WaPo: "Is The United States Headed for Civil War?" "It’s easy and logical to conclude that the United States today stands as close to the edge of civil war as it has since 1861. A broad variety of voices — including Republican and Democratic politicians, academics who study civil strife, and extremists on both ends of the spectrum — now accept the idea that civil war is either imminent or necessary."

    I've been trying to imagine how it is that so many Americans can loathe their government and I'm finding it's not too hard.  I think of the CFR, Code of Federal Regulations, 50 subject-area titles, each in one or more volumes, each divided into chapters naming the issuing agencies, each chapter divided into parts and subparts, each further divided into sections and subsections.  The last page count I could find for the CFR was 175,268 in 236 total volumes.  The Federal Register is issued daily with new proposed regulations, executive orders, notices, etc.  Then we have state-level regulations and local municipal regulations.  The Internal Revenue Code alone, as sold by the GPO, fills two volumes totaling 2,652 pages.  IRS regulations, 'revenue rulings,' and various 'clarifying' issuances add tens of thousands of pages, all part of federal tax law.  Commerce Clearing House publishes its Standard Federal Tax Reporter at about 70,000 pages.  Every so often there is a futile move to simplify the tax code, never successful, in part because finance and the economy are so complex now and in part because the tax law is the 'stock in trade' of legislators.  Lobbyists work ceaselessly for their clients to get legislators to slip favorable tax legislation into bills.  Steve Bannon rails about the 'deconstruction of the administrative State.'  This is but a small part of what he rails against.  

    The much bigger reason, I have long thought, is simple racism. 

    Two little mice in the basement. A dilemma for me.  Maybe more tomorrow on civil war, racism, and the mice.