The sorry state of America

Here's your daily does of outrage. 

First up, Scott Pruitt, who leads the Environmental Protection Agency. You know, the people whose job it is to make sure we have clean air and water?

Mr. Pruitt, according to the employees, who requested anonymity out of fear of losing their jobs, often makes important phone calls from other offices rather than use the phone in his office, and he is accompanied, even at E.P.A. headquarters, by armed guards, the first head of the agency to ever request round-the-clock security.

A former Oklahoma attorney general who built his career suing the E.P.A., and whose LinkedIn profile still describes him as “a leading advocate against the EPA’s activist agenda,” Mr. Pruitt has made it clear that he sees his mission to be dismantling the agency’s policies — and even portions of the institution itself.

But as he works to roll back regulations, close offices and eliminate staff at the agency charged with protecting the nation’s environment and public health, Mr. Pruitt is taking extraordinary measures to conceal his actions, according to interviews with more than 20 current and former agency employees.  Link

It's been our reality for some time, but if you step back and think about it, the idea that some people in America are against an agency dedicated to making sure we have clean air and water is absolutely crazy. Also, I work at a federal agency and the thought of the Chairman having armed guards is bizarre and frightening.

Next up, reason #704 why America has become a laughing-stock among even our allies worldwide.

[Trump is] … chiefly driven by an obsession with unraveling Barack Obama’s policies. “It’s his only real position,” one European diplomat said. “He will ask: ‘Did Obama approve this?’ And if the answer is affirmative, he will say: ‘We don’t.’ He won’t even want to listen to the arguments or have a debate. He is obsessed with Obama.”  Link

Yep. Any time you hear about Trump doing something particularly inane out of the blue? Odds are it's because Obama took the opposite position.

And finally, here's a Twitter story about how propaganda has deliberately put us where we are today.

This may be the scariest story of all. Because how do we recover from that?