Many folks actually believe our elected “representatives” — quotation marks are warranted since they don’t in fact represent us at all — listen to us. To put it mildly, this is a bit naive. The simple truth is, it’s completely refuted by the facts.
Granted, these professional politicos put on a good show. They all have at their disposal the best handlers, who tell them how to gesture and when to smile. They have the best speech writers money can buy, who twist words into incomprehensible but delightful-sounding gobbledygook, smearing just the right among of cake frosting on often the most insidious acts of blatant treachery. We buy into this three-ring circus because we foolishly trust these clowns.
We think that if we call their offices enough times, routed into the digital black hole of automated message machines; that if we attend the rare town hall meeting when he/she has found time between lunches with lobbyists, and fundraisers blessed by deep-pocketed corporate benefactors; if we sign online petitions, that add to the growing pile of tens of thousands of similar petitions; if we organize rallies and protests which while unreported by the media we’re sure will attract some attention; if we write letters to the editor of our hometown newspapers, which in all probability won’t get published but whose message will, we believe, still somehow magically get communicated; surely all of this effort will make a difference and we’ll see some good, positive changes take place.
Talk about a disconnect! Talk about willful denial! Talk about delusional thinking!
Look around, folks. Could it get worse for those of us with some humanity and decency? Look at all levels of government. We have a card-carrying member of the .1% in the White House, lapdog puppets of the rich and powerful in control of both chambers of Congress, Republican majorities in all of the state legislatures, and Republicans also as governors of the majority of the states.
What does this mean? What can we expect?
Aristocrats and their pay-for-play toadies in high places are elitist and anti-democratic to the core, they are relentlessly greedy and insatiable, and will use their power to further enrich themselves at the expense of the rest of us.
How will this end?
The ultra-rich have been and will continue to plunder our nation until there’s nothing left to plunder, then they’ll move on to other countries — it’s quite evident that the process is already well underway throughout Europe and Asia, funneling vast amounts of wealth to the already ultra-wealthy via hyper-capitalism and the neoliberal juggernaut.
Here’s the straight talk, though it’s probably not what you want to hear.
None of what we’re doing works because . . .
The people we vote into office are not listening. Not to you and I, the everyday citizen.
It’s that simple. We don’t need to analyze this any further. Sometimes it’s just exactly what it appears to be. If someone is laying in the middle of the street with six bullet holes in their head, brains scattered across the pavement, and a note pinned to their back which says, “I told you to stop hitting on my wife”, we don’t need an autopsy to see if maybe what the poor slob had for lunch caused his death. Or whether maybe he’s allergic to his new wristwatch band.
Our legislators are serving the rich and powerful and ignoring the needs of everyday folks like you and I. Period! It’s right smack in front of our eyes. This is not a rumor or a piece of conjecture. The Princeton study by Professor Martin Gilens and Professor Benjamin Page in 2014 was unequivocal in its findings.
“Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.”
This means we are now forced to take DRASTIC ACTION.
I happen to know something that works. Because it works with all public figures — movie stars, pundits, sports celebrities, priests, ministers, rabbis, military leaders, pillars of the community — and always works especially well on politicians.
Public shaming!
Some folks might be squeamish about humiliating so-called respectable and responsible men and women devoted to public service. Don’t they deserve better?
No, they don’t!
They’ve sold out themselves and our political parties to a ruling class elite which is selfish, heartless, ruthless. They made their own bed of nails, now let them sleep in it. They made a bargain with the Devil. They chose to align themselves with evil over selfless and honest service to the people who elected them to their wonderfully cushy jobs in Washington DC. IT IS OUR PUBLIC DUTY TO CALL THESE PEOPLE OUT ON THEIR TREACHERY!
So . . .
Here is how we shame them, how we make it clear that we are fed up with the games, the deceptions, the double talk, the con. This contract reflects what polls tell us by impressive margins what the vast majority of Americans want done. And we put it to our politicos straight: Will you sign or will you refuse to sign this contract before the next election?
Dare any elected representatives stonewall us? Refuse to sign? Him-and-haw and make all sorts of ridiculous excuses about why they don’t want to raise the minimum wage? Say they can’t get behind fair tax policies and closing tax loopholes? Balk at providing decent health care to every U.S. citizen, refuse to cover the 35 million people now who currently without coverage? Opt for having the elderly slip into poverty and hardship because fixing social security and Medicare might upset Wall Street hedge fund managers? Insist that more young men and women should come home in body bags so we can protect oil, gas, and mineral interests in Afghanistan, Syria, every other place we’ve bombed recently? Take the position that our electoral system is just dandy the way it is, that the evisceration of the democratic process by Citizens United and the corrupting influence of big money is just the way things have to be? Declare climate change a lost cause and suggest that our children’s children will just have to adjust to mass starvation, resource wars, and all of our coastal cities joining the Lost Continent of Atlantis, because some of our politicians were too dumb to make it through high school science class?
Here’s what I say . . .
If our current congressman can’t step up to the plate and play their very best game for the home team, they should be shamed, booed, reviled, scorned, humiliated, vilified, mocked, ridiculed, condemned, excoriated, burned in effigy! That’s if we’re in a good mood.
Let them stew in the cauldron of the bad publicity they heap on themselves, then rot in a big foul steaming pile of their own wickedness, after we haul the garbage to the dump!
Now not everybody will agree with everything in the contract I’ve offered here. There will be individuals who don’t buy into every single item. This is a work in progress and not written in stone. But the simple fact is, reputable polls tell us . . .
Most people buy into most of it.
Thus we have here the perfect device for drawing a line in the sand and asking candidates who are looking for our votes . . .
Are you on our side or not? Will you sign this before the election in 2018?
Of course, the ultimatum inherent in this approach doesn’t stop here.
Actually . . . it starts here.
This is the starting point for us everyday citizens taking control of the narrative, making a bold decisive claim on power that rightfully and constitutionally is ours in the first place, and putting all the smooth-talking, double-dealing incumbents on notice — we can call it ‘electoral probation’ . . .
We’ve had it with the games. We’re watching your every move. Shape up or ship out!
In my next posting, I’ll explore how the above candidate contract will either get our elected officials to clean up their act, or if it looks like that won’t be happening, will be used in the coming election to flush them out of Congress.
Life In Japan: Clouds of Pollen in the Spring
“The awareness is spreading like clouds of pollen in the spring.”
That was a comment I made on a progressive website about the worldwide demonstrations, street protests, and rallies celebrating this year’s Earth Day.
I must confess that until two weeks ago I had a highly prejudiced understanding and appreciation of pollen. I associated it with red, runny noses, puffy, squinting eyes, an annual epidemic of misery among a sizeable chunk of the population. This limited and highly negative view was shaped by thousands of ads for over-the-counter remedies which had been embedded in my brain, probably from my first days of watching TV as a child.
Of course, a little basic biology is a powerful corrective. We find that pollen is the delivery mechanism of male sperm cells for plants. Pollination is about reproduction. It’s how vast landscapes are turned into breathtaking fields of flowering plants, a floral explosion that here in Japan transforms the whole country into a beautiful garden stretching sea to sea.
My awakening, however, did not come from a text book. It came — as is quite common these days — from my lovely and truly brilliant Japanese wife.
However, I mentioned casually to her that is seemed a little hazy that day. We’re downwind from the China mainland, which hosts many coal-fed power plants, heavy-industry factories, and the like, so I just assumed it was the usual dust and smoke blowing our way from our Chinese neighbor.
“No, that’s pollen,” explained Masumi. She directed my gaze to the face of a forested mountain we were passing. There was a huge puff of what appeared to be smoke, but not really the color of smoke, or the way smoke looks rising from burning debris. No, it was a cloud of pollen, which was being released in that section of the forest, I assume from the floral undergrowth beneath the trees.
Thus began my quick education and new respect for pollen. That cloud was the promise for the continuing regeneration of the awe-inspiring bouquet we and others across Japan were now enjoying.
Okay. I believe in balanced reporting. So let me explore the other side of this story.
Some folks are allergic to pollen. Those ads for over-the-counter remedies turn their misery into cold, hard cash for the manufacturers of these palliatives. Point taken.
I would surmise the notion of beauty for such champions of greed is skyrocketing returns on investments and a bulging portfolio of winning stocks. I seriously doubt either of those has much of a fragrance though I may have on occasion heard someone say: “That person smells of money.”
For these individuals, flowers are “beautiful” depending on how marketable they are and what sort of profits they produce. With no sense of irony, they would deem the distress of those allergy sufferers as an opportunity to turn a profit. The more misery these folks have to endure, the better the prospects for some fat returns on pharmaceutical stocks.
We’re told that this is the new way to look at the world. Those old valuations — meaning just the basic use of our senses, and gauging the world around us by the joy and delight we feel in our hearts — are passé, and have been replaced by the new tools of capitalism, the free market, and the now dominant neoliberal paradigm.
Yet, the Earth day protests and celebrations convincingly offered a very different message. That message was loud and unambiguous. Treating the Earth as a factory for man-made goods, narrowing the contribution of human beings to merely producing and consuming those goods, subjecting everything from happiness and love to the value of a human life, only to the metrics of economic worth, reducing all of the potential for human creativity, ingenuity, compassion, nobility, vision, altruism, excellence, and achievement, to mere numbers on a spread sheet, is suffocating the human race, exterminating the human family, eviscerating the human spirit, and destroying the planet.
I’ve made my choice. It took me a while to come around.
I’ll take my chances with the clouds of pollen.