Soapbox

Spring of Hope, Winter of Despair

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,
It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness”

These famous words of Dickens could have been written about America today. Never has the future of the American people held more promise. We stand on the brink of technological and social breakthroughs that could defeat disease, hunger, poverty and injustice. America is the driving force behind the development of medicines that could save the lives of millions of people and ease the suffering of millions more. Our scientific advances have enabled us to grow enough food to feed all of our citizens and much of the hungry around the world besides.

But never has that bright promise been more endangered. Despite America’s vast wealth, many of her children still go to bed hungry every night. Our ballooning deficit threatens to wipe away decades of work combating poverty and reducing welfare dependence, and could even destabilize the world economy. A rising intolerance disguised as piety threatens to deny some citizens their basic civil rights. The widening gap between rich and poor, insured and uninsured, is polarizing this country and increasing class division.

As America ships more and more of her jobs overseas, our children languish in under-funded schools, and those that do obtain a college education may not be able to find a job that rewards their hard work.

A rising tide of hostility and aggression is engulfing not just the country but the world, dividing traditional allies and crushing fragile detente as terrorists attack the innocent and America declares her right to engage in “pre-emptive war”. This empire-building disguised as national security is seen as a major threat by Arab and muslim nations around the world and so it merely adds fuel to the fire of terrorism, rather than truly protecting America. Playing and preying on the fear and anger of the faithful, the government insists that it is right to send our sons off to a war we don’t understand, because God wants us to fight. And who among us is willing to argue with God?

Dissent, as vital to American democracy as rain to a harvest, is now condemned as “helping the terrorists”. Anyone who questions administrative policy, even one of the administrations own advisors, will be accused of weakening America, endangering the nation and even treason. Those who question authority in today’s America are set-upon and discredited with innuendo, distortion and outright lies.

The executive branch of government is insisting on maintaining unprecedented levels of secrecy from the rest of government and from American people. At the same time, a wave of federal interference disguised as fighting terrorism is denying states’ rights and invading the lives of ordinary citizen on the merest whiff of suspicion.

Teams of White House lawyers have spent many taxpayer-funded hours devising a strategy by which the president has the authority to break any ratified international treaties and neither the courts nor the congress has the power to stop him. Giving this supreme and un-checked power to the exeuctive is surely a violation of the intent, if not the letter of the Constitution and is more akin to a monarchy than a democracy.

The president himself has declared the unprecedented right of his cabinet and close advisors to claim exeuctive privilege and resfue to answer questions or turn over documents. This despite the fact that these people are not the executive and, moreover, were not elected to office, but appointed. This further consolidates and insulates the power of the president, upsetting the system of checks and balances.

The Supreme Court, the final arbiter of democracy in America has gone on record as saying that the American people have no actual constitutional right to vote in presidential elections. If this is so, and the states themselves have no rights to pass their own laws, then the people truly have lost their voice and America has lost her way.

“How lonely sits the city that was full of people!
How like a widow has she become, she that was great among the nations,”
~Lamentations 1:1

America is the leader among nations, with vast natural resources, personal fortitude, a strong yet charitable heart and the mightiest army on earth. With all that at its command, America can be and indeed has been the greatest force for good and change that the world has ever seen. And yet she stands today as a pariah among nations, having broken almost every treaty ever signed and insisting that our might makes us right, and rules apply only to the weak. Our leaders chose power over empowerment, unilateralism over diplomacy and insist that our way is the only way.

And where is the press as all this is happening? The so-called fourth estate, whose job it is to turn over rocks and bring light to the shadowy places which those in power would like to keep secret? The people we rely on to tell us when a leader makes promises and fails to keep them, or attacks another person with lies rather than facts?

The press has remained largely silent, except to parrot the statements Republican leaders give it to make. Real investigation is discouraged. The White House punishes those who ask too many questions by cutting off their access, and “right-thinking” is rewarded. Even many major newspapers are reluctant to report on any story that seems critical of the president unless they see that one of their mainstream brethren have broken the ranks first. When everyone is waiting for someone else to go first, the truth becomes an endangered comodity.

In the case of the Medicare bill recently passed, many major news outlets actually ran canned, phony news reports made with actors which the White House supplied rather than have real reporters investigate the true story. The result: the White House was able to mislead the public about the true cost of the bill for months, long enough to ram it through congress.

In November the American people are faced with more than just another presidential election. This contest involves the man whose political machine was skillful enough to out-maneuver the rightful winner in 2000 and claim office. As the election nears the country is being force-fed electronic voting machines that have not only been proven easy to tamper with but leave no verifiable paper trail, so that a recount this time is virtually impossible. The owner of the company that makes these machines has said publicly that he will do “whatever is necessary” to see that George Bush is re-elected?, yet the machines are purchased by the thousands.

What has become of the political directive to avoid even the appearance of impropriety? That apparently went out the window of the plane that flew Antonin Scalia and Dick Cheney to their infamous duck-hunting trip and hasn’t been seen since.

What has become of separation of church and state, of popular sovereignty and the will of the people? One man, one vote? They have apparently been trampled under the divine right of one man and his advisors to rule.

It is time for the people, who are after all the conscience, the heart, the very soul of America, to remember their place in this great land. We are not the tools of those in power: we are the fuel that drives the great machine, the blood that pours through the veins and gives life to the dream of liberty that American democracy represents.

We have not just the right but the duty to make our voices heard, no matter who would bid us be silent. We must insist on openness and accountability from our leaders, or to see to it that they are our leaders no more. This is our sacred obligation, to exercise the rights that so many gave their energies, reputations and even their lives to obtain for us.

To be quiet when we want to ask questions, to shrug and accept what we know is wrong is to turn our backs on the very foundation of democracy. That foundation is the right of the people to chose their own form of government, even if that choice is not what those in power would wish it to be.

“For we must rise up from the ashes of this world spun out of control.
We must not succumb to the darkness, we must not let it into our souls.”