Defying The Precipice

There is not much that can be said of the last few years in America that has not already found its way into Presidential speeches, Congressional testimony, pundit-filled shows on cable, talking-head shows on financial networks, and blogs of every description and size. Since the beginning of the precipitous plunge of the nation toward Depression, there has been enough wailing, moaning, gnashing of teeth, and finger pointing to fill volumes. It has been fodder for politics, for industry, for banking, and for the news.

The jabbering, multitudinous and myopic, has left people at odds over what is to be done, provided political ne'er-do-wells the opportunity to ply us with their conspicuously anti-middle class screeds, and turned up the volume on the blathering to the point of obscuring the painful truth -- the precipice is still not that far away. The fact remains: people are hurting. Not the rich... no, their place in American culture is insulated from the vicissitudes of life by their avarice and the generosity of the rest of the citizenry in letting them absent themselves from paying their due. The people who are hurting are the overwhelming majority of Americans who are finding their pay cut, their hours slashed, their jobs eliminated or shipped overseas, and are left floating in a sea of debt they were told they could handle by banks and other agencies who were only interested in the money they could make. And this group, representing just about the full breadth of us, is barely hanging on.

The Uncivil War Begins

It is interesting to note that this year marks one hundred-fifty years since the start of the American Civil War, April 1861. What began with the bang and flash of cannon at Ft. Sumter, led to a wholesale change in the country that had formed not too far in the past. The sleeping dog of slavery, lying as it had at the feet of the Founding Fathers, tore loose from its chains, and wreaked a might vengeance upon the country. Families were divided and decimated. The poor fought for the rich. There was privation and disease, poverty and decadence. Dirty men fought and died while nattily dressed men harrumphed over the conduct of the war. A President, reluctant to end slavery, but given no choice but use it as a unifying cause, swept his foes from the field, only to have them exact final vengeance upon him. The last true shots would not be fired until the age of President Lyndon Johnson, who would enact sweeping Civil Rights legislation. Even today, the skirmishes are not truly over.

So as the anniversary day approaches, it is unsurprising that we find America at odds again, though the battle lines are not so neatly drawn as North and South. This pending war is being fought in the halls of legislation, in the medium of television, across the breadth of the planet via The Internet. It is a war that incorporates all the worst of human behavior, and at the same time, all that is forthright and true within our hearts. The sides are once more polarized, though it cannot be tied succinctly to one group. It is, instead, a confusing whorl of passions and prejudices, with battle lines so fluid as to be a jumble. If there is a constant in it, it is a fight between those who would look ahead to our destiny, and those who look behind, to pine for days passed. The tug of war between these forces may yet determine the continuation of our nation as the one conceived in freedom and liberty.

Electoral Follies

One begins to wonder if anyone will ever understand politics, and by that, I don't mean the give and take of governance, the “you scratch my back I'll scratch yours” complexity, or the general desire to work toward a common goal through earnest debate and compromise. No, I speak of the knock-down, drag-out, mudslinging, partisan divide that has usurped useful politics, relegating it to dim memory and dusty textbook. We are not in the age of statesmen and diplomats; we instead see self-aggrandizers, boot-lickers, sycophants, and power-grabbers grappling for control of a nation, heedless of the cost to personal virtue, comportment, or American society. They are more eager to draw battle lines and unflattering comparisons than they are to take stock of America's situation and take the appropriate steps to keep the ship of state afloat. They are the crew of a sinking cruise ship arguing over who should get credit for saving the passengers, even though the lifeboats are all in place and a panicked mob stands around them, awaiting action.

Inside Outsider

With every election cycle, comes the inevitable boasting and bluster that is partisan politics. Republicans claim Democrats are running the country into the ground with their rampant spending, even as they are attempting ridiculous and fiscally unsupported tax cuts. Democrats complain Republicans are busy saying no to everything, even as they are constantly waging war against the Republican Party rather than working with them. At the end of the day, neither party comports themselves well in the arena of governing responsibly. Both parties are more interested in scoring political points than in settling down and doing the hard task of running a large country.

So it is, that when mid-term elections roll around, so many candidates for office attempt to challenge the incumbents with the claims of being Washington, D.C. "outsiders," people not immersed in the rough-and-tumble of the nation's capitol. Sadly, these candidates inevitably become beholden to the national party organizations for funding, and the "outsider" tag is quickly stripped away as they fall in line behind their party, lest they lose the support they so desperately need to run for office. Once they take cash from the national party organizations, any air of independence is completely fouled with the stench of partisanship. Should they actually win and find themselves in Congress, they then quickly find out that they are expected to toe the party line, lest the goodies of Congressional membership be withheld.

Politics is no longer the realm of the people, but the realm of the party, and the parties in this country are beholden to special interest groups and corporations, who dole out huge amounts of money to elect candidates that will do their bidding. Members of Congress may harrumph and harangue, claiming they are not the puppets of others, but their election coffers are the surest sign that they have been bought and sold by those who would stack the legislative deck in their favor.

Even the nascent Tea Party is simply an offshoot of the Republican Party, a more vocal, more rambunctious, more morally conflicted version of its older sibling. Built upon the anger of fringe conservatives, wishing to rein in American society by clamping down on those things that are at the root of freedom and liberty in this country, it is no better or worse than the established parties. It, too, is rife with greed, corruption, ignorance, bigotry, and political payback. It represents an opportunity for Republican players and retainers to get around the party establishment, riding those conservative sycophants who are willing to avoid applying critical reasoning to their choice of candidates.

For American government to function at any level, it starts with the people, deciding that they will no longer be held hostage by small numbers of people deciding to determine their destiny. It is far too easy for any group to decide that they know what is best for all Americans, but as has been said many times, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, no matter how many that few should be. Personal conviction, religious faith, and political precedent should not rule; they should be factored in to what is required to provide for the general welfare of everyone in this country. The diversity of this nation means that all views must be considered, and compromise must be the order of the day. Eventually, though some may grumble, consensus must lead to rules and laws that all can live under without fear of coercion or corruption.

If we truly wish to live by the spirit of the framers of the Constitution, and do justice to the sacrifice of those who forged a nation, then we owe it to them to throw off the shackles of organized politics, and reassert control of our nation, a nation of, by, and for the American citizenry. Until we decide to sweep away the detritus that has piled up in the corners of our Congress, we risk watching our freedom being further eroded by forces that would rather preserve their power than preserve our liberty.

Principles In Motion

If there is anything that causes the government of the United States to function inefficiently, it is partisanship. While, technically, our country operates on a multi-party model, the fact remains that both the Republicans and Democrats have made it, so as to monopolize the conversation, and maintain their grip on power from the national level on down to the local level. It is monarchy gone amok, with two "kings," neither of which is able to rule effectively on their own, but incapable of sharing power effectively.

Worse, each party has taken the interceding decades to consolidate their message to the point that they stand in almost complete opposition to each other on most points. As such, members of each who lean a little toward the other party, the moderates, are castigated and considered outsiders, out of touch with the party base, and often left to twist in the wind. Anyone who speaks of bipartisan compromise is not being "true" to the party's "ideals."

It is maddening, in the extreme.

It is not possible to rule effectively through one set of principles. Any nation, any empire, that has neglected the wider spread of ideas, and disenfranchised portions of its citizenry, has paid the price for its arrogance in civil war, dissolution, and destruction. Many a high-sounding idea for government has inevitably crumbled under the weight of power-gathering and autocracy. Any government that does not represent the interests of all its citizens, and weigh those against the common good, is doomed to the compost heap of history.

Even now, one of the most successful democratic republics to exist, ours, is in danger of falling into this trap, as Democrats and Republicans hunker down behind bulwarks of tired, nonsensical rhetoric, and see fit only to lob epithets and talking points at each other. The shrapnel from these exchanges rains down on us, the citizens of the United States, in taxes that are spent on frippery and boondoggles, wars that do not actually protect us from anything, economic chaos caused by unbridled speculation coupled with an unsustainable model of growth, and the continued existence of poverty, disease, and deprivation in a country that prides itself on being one of the most modern in the world.

This is a trap of our own making. The Founding Fathers thought it important for the people to run the show, to elect the officials, to shape and mold the country. This is what they got for their trouble -- a polarized government and a weak, stratified electorate, unwilling or unable to accept responsibility for creating the nightmare that is the power structure in Washington, D.C., and unwilling to do anything about it. Even the election of President Obama, a hopeful sign to be sure, was not followed up with a wave of fresh thinking. Congress still stagnates in the fetid swamp of its inaction, more interested in carving up the country into personal fiefdoms, and making off with the cutlery, that standing up for the guiding principles upon which the country was founded.

It is not about who is right and who is wrong, who is fair and who is unfair, who represents the "true" American people; it is about governance, and providing three hundred million people with the services and support that can only be handled through a centralized, national government. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few; all Americans deserve equal protection under the law, equal access to the services that government provides, and an equal right to make their own destiny. Sometimes the government must overrule the cries of the people, where a policy is not in the best interests of everyone, even though that may be unpopular.

Instead, we have politicians who promise much, deliver little, and live off the fat of the land, even as their constituencies fill with the poor, the under-educated, the homeless, and the helpless. They make great shows before the cameras of "standing on their principles" and "looking out for the voters," even as they compromise those principles and pay little attention to their constituents, especially those who have not contributed to their campaign war chest. Apparently, unless you are on the donor role, your voice need not be heard.

We created this problem, we the people. The idea of a perfect union has been sold to the highest contributor, because our votes have become automatic instead of thought out. We complain about the state of affairs, but we choose not to examine the root cause of the problem: our lackadaisical approach to the responsibility given to us under the Constitution. We have ceded control of our country to lobbyists, corporations, special interest groups, and foreign powers, because we cannot be bothered to take an active interest in what our representatives do day-to-day, and we do not seem to be able to force the media to report accurately on the problems at hand.

Vote, or don't, but at the end of the day when your paycheck seems too small, when the bills seem too large, when what was once something you gave no thought to now consumes your every waking moment, look in the mirror and stare at the face of the real culprit in the shoddy affairs of state: you. If we do not stand up, do not demand justice, do not demand that out representatives afford us the services it is their responsibility to provide, and do so without pouring our hard-earned money down myriad rat holes, then we have no reason to complain about what happens, because the fault lies not in the stars, but with us. We determine how our government functions, and we have fallen down on the job.