When I let my defenses down, I always have to admit to myself the deeply uncontrollable love I feel for America. I am not a patriot: I do not love the country as a nation; I love it as a group of people: of democratic, emotionally-motivated citizens. What a ragtag bunch of almost country bumpkins we are– even those of our alleged sophisticates, living in New York, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, the cities where I have lived for the past 30 years.

Compared to the subtly refined citizens of Western Europe, we are indeed a rough ragtag bunch of people. After all, our ancestors were a small group of wealthy land, and eventually slave, owners who organized their poorer neighbors [our ancestors] into a fighting force to drive the British from our new country. OUR PERSONAL POOR ANCESTORS were primarily the cast-off poverty-stricken from England’s jails. The literal majority of us probably come from this original “criminal” stock.

I write mostly about how utterly stupid [there is no more accurate word] I believe we Americans have become, as the immensely wealthy of the country have, through their economic power in politics and religion, turned us against each other. They have accumulated massive political control of our government. Whether Liberal or Conservative, they achieve their political offices almost exclusively from donations from the wealthy. The same wealthy who earn their wealth from our labor as we work for them too cheaply and buy the products they produce or import at too high prices.

The 2016 election will be important only if one thing happens: if we common ordinary Americans realize we have been turned against one another because a group of politicians have acquired their jobs from the wealthy, and have abandoned the needs of us, the people in the streets.

We need to find and support a President in 2016 who comes from the poor. One who will support an economic revolution from the bottom. Until vote one in, there is not going to be any economic progress for the rest of us in America. It’s that simple.