Who or what is America’s next bogeyman? The answer to this question could easily be you, or people like you. For many, it already is you. Nobody, though, would have guessed energy-saving appliances and low-flow showerheads.

Who will take the blame when the eradication of diversity, equity, and inclusion; the erasure of Black history; the extradition of brown human beings, including, unfathomably, Indigenous people; the expulsion of transgender people from society; and the banning of books, fluoride, and vaccines don’t lower grocery prices, do not cure bird flu or measles, and fail to stop wildfires, flooding, drought, school shootings, infrastructure deterioration, and aerial accidents?

Certainly not those who relish pointing their hateful fingers at people they don’t like or things they don’t understand.

Two things, in combination, can save us and the biodiversity we share this sphere with: a strong public education system and good government. We no longer have either, because our two-party system is utterly self-serving.

Those now ruthlessly in charge, backed by the filthy rich, have spent the past four-plus decades patiently and relentlessly destroying public education. This alliance of power-hungry zealots (MAGAs, federalists, and Christian nationalists) and its coalition of racists, Nazis, homophobes, and dissemblers now has its sights set on obliterating social safety nets and environmental protections.

For instance, the new czar of the Environmental Protection Agency wants to end contracts agreed upon by the Biden administration to distribute $20 billion in grants to fund renewable energy and transit projects in marginalized communities. The Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund was created last April to fund home-energy retrofitting, weatherization, off-grid renewable energy, and other initiatives in communities that lack access to financing.

Denise Cheung, a veteran prosecutor in charge of the Department of Justice’s criminal division in Washington, D.C., resigned this week after she refused to open an unfounded criminal investigation into the EPA program.

The current regime is attempting to freeze any funding linked to climate change and environmental justice. The wannabe king’s orders have held tens of billions of dollars of funding for renewable energy projects and conservation initiatives across the country, even violating a court order that required the funding freeze be lifted. He also intends to force New York City to end congestion pricing, even though the program is working as intended. The program reduces traffic in Manhattan and raises money to upgrade subway train and bus systems.

Why? The answer is obvious. Has been for decades. The fossil fuel industry spreads its cash around. The Koch family and other deep-pocketed petroleum power brokers hold too much sway. (Plus, the Mad King is a wanker.)

The Army Corps of Engineers has cited the regime’s claim of a national energy emergency to speed up permits for new methane pipelines. The move will likely reduce opportunities for the public to weigh in on the impacts of fossil fuel projects. This manufactured crisis is also likely to sidestep the National Environmental Policy Act, a 55-year-old law that requires federal agencies to analyze the environmental effects of major projects before they are built.

Meanwhile, tech bros have pushed cryptocurrency into the middle of the table.

But there’s also something even more sinister at play. The zealots want to keep most of us — even their collaborators — poor, powerless, sick, and uneducated. To accomplish this, the deplorables create scapegoats, usually people of color.

Ronald Reagan waltzed into the White House with a tale about a “welfare queen.” The “Bedtime for Bonzo” co-star scripted this menace as a Cadillac-driving, unemployed moocher from Chicago’s South Side, a not-so-subtle nod that the woman was Black.

“She has 80 names, 30 addresses, 12 Social Security cards, and is collecting veteran’s benefits on four non-existing deceased husbands,” Reagan repeated over and over again. “And she is collecting Social Security on her cards. She’s got Medicaid, getting food stamps, and she is collecting welfare under each of her names.”

The woman was real and so was much of her story, but hardly typical. She was a criminal — like the current occupant of the White House and all those insurrectionists he pardoned — rather than a representative welfare recipient. But Reagan chose to paint everyone on welfare with a single bigoted brush, to portray Black Americans as undeserving thieves of taxpayer money. They and the welfare system were the reasons you couldn’t get ahead. Someone or something you despise is always holding you back.

(The U.S. government spends about $1 trillion on social safety net programs, from child nutrition to housing assistance. Welfare assistance accounts for about $15 billion. Nearly half of welfare recipients, 43%, are white, followed by Hispanic, 26%, and Black, 23%. These figures fall in line with population demographics.)

Bogeymen need to be created, whether it is a Black woman driving an expensive car, brown hordes marching toward the U.S. border, or a transgender woman using a bathroom. Some group/groups/is/are always to blame for our troubles, and they must be punished. Divide and then conquer.

Two decades after Reagan’s death, this devastating psychosis continues. This coup didn’t happen overnight. This era of open grift, graft, and brutality has been brewing for years. Democrats help stir the sour concoction.

The Fascist-in-Chief is purging the government of DEI programs and services that hold the playing field level for Black Americans, other people of color, women, and religious and gender minorities.

For example, the Indian Health Service faces losing 2,500 employees in new federal layoffs. The cuts would further strain the agency responsible for providing health care to 2.5 million Indigenous people and Alaska natives. The Department of Justice reportedly removed a report from its website that laid out recommendations for tackling the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women.

The concentration of wealth and power is the sole mission; a billionaire-run enterprise the fever dream. Corporate welfare over social welfare. Destruction over preservation. Cruelty and exploitation without fear of consequence.

Meanwhile, as the ongoing oligarchical coup goose-steps onward, the other party in power meekly posts their concerns on social media — run by the very brogrammers trying to rape and pillage the public trust — and begs for campaign cash. Do something first. Also, your last presidential contender raised more than a billion dollars.

A few, isolated Democrats responded to the ongoing crime spree by feebly attempting to get into federal buildings that are being invaded by an unelected oligarch and his gang of teenage gamers. They gave up when stopped by some rent-a-cops. They didn’t persist.

They could have gotten arrested, detained, or at the very least thrown out. They should have caused some “good trouble,” in the name of the late John Lewis.

The many complicit members in the Democratic Party, which is lurching right, could have shown up en masse, both U.S. senators and representatives, to make themselves heard, and perhaps even respected. Instead, they leave the protesting and pushback to single parents, working families, senior citizens, students, environmentalists, and people from the communities under attack.

There’s little balance in government. There’s no elected left flank, most noticeably at the national level. The climate crisis, environmental protections, universal health care, affordable housing, and genocide are issues that make our corporate overlords uncomfortable. Best to do nothing more than make speeches (for the record, you’re beginning to sound like Charlie Brown’s teacher) and show some concern on X, where it will immediately be deemed inappropriate and removed.

Democrats watch as Republicans trash our wobbly democracy; stack the courts with ideologues; accept bribes; demand tribute; vilify science, knowledge, and expertise; and gut consumer and environmental protections. It’s like watching the Washington Generals play the Harlem Globetrotters, except these Globetrotters have only two Black players and they don’t play.

This rigged game will end with the less fortunate, public health, and the natural world in intensive care. We need new players who care more than just about themselves. Elected office, after all, is about public service.

Note: By the way, the Putin suck-up polluting the Oval Office, who won the popular vote by 1.5% and failed to secure a majority of the popular vote (49.7%), doesn’t have a mandate to turn our country into Little Odessa.

Frank Carini can be reached at [email protected]. His opinions don’t reflect those of ecoRI News. He is a registered Independent.