As I watched Senator Warren recently on Rachel Maddow’s NBC show, I was struck by how elated she seemed to be bashing Trump and proclaiming her campaign will change things.
As an Independent, I find both our Democrat and Republican approaches to the state of the nation, with their primary obsession stalking Trump or the other party, contain few innovative proposals to correct America’s many ills.
Even from Warren, I have not yet heard concrete concepts advanced about what to put in order, and how. I hear no solutions from the other “acceptable” candidates either. Mostly, I hear just very sophisticated griping about how things are.
How do they intend to actually eliminate the income gap between rich and poverty stricken? What plan? How do they propose to solve immigration and the other multiple issues of the day? What strategy can they initiate to unblock the political logjam we face between far Left and far Right?
America is locked into a quarter of a millennium of accumulated thinking that has us all paralyzed by archaic ideas. It is similar to the paralysis that permitted the Roman Empire to collapse, and Germany of the 1930’s to create Nazism.
Little discussion exists between the Left and the Right about creating some combination of Capitalism and Socialism to insure that each and every American has a share in our economy’s jobs and income.
The super Socialistic leaning of the new Democrats is ill advised; and the Corporate toadyism of the Republicans is self-serving.
We’ve experienced two years of tomfoolery. Some down-to-earth ordinariness is in order. Upon reflection, a fellow like Ike Eisenhower, who was able to get along with almost everyone, would not be a bad guy to have on the scene today.
He was often criticized as a do-nothing leader. That was not true. Quietly, without public fanfare, he accomplished things. He it was, remember, who warned us of the military/industrial complex, which must be admitted by any knowledgeable person is what we live with today as the basis of our economy.
As I have said before, no ordinary American among us will be acknowledged as a candidate for the presidency by the media – unless wealthy, or already in command of millions of followers and voters. That voice is not allowed media exposure.
Our campaigns are all about money, not really about the common good of all the ordinary working people of America. One may even question the acceptable candidates’ motives for seeking the office. As a matter of fact, who in their right mind would really even want the office?
As it presently stands, the presidency is an almost impossible job for anyone. Corporate money puts everyone into his or her job, only Bernie Saunders avoided it, and the reaction to this fact has been renewed calls for full Socialism, which if not mixed with Capitalism has been documented by history to be an economy killer.
Where are we going to go from here? If we simply continue to get the same competitive, bash-the-other-candidates rhetoric we’ve been getting from those seeking the office to salve their immense egos and, hopefully, let them get rich too – well, then, I suspect the whole Corporate-dominated system will just continue to be our reality.
Citizens United, the Supreme Court ruling that gave the corporations their domination over our lives, must be reversed and funding of campaigns must revert totally to citizen control.
And that is going to take a citizen activism demanding a Plebiscite that allows them to choose to over-ride the voice of the Supreme Court. Can the American people gather themselves together in such a collective move?
How might that occur? Some sort of national buying strike might be required. Common demonstrations don’t much faze corporations. But if the American people collectively would organize and stop buying anything for a week, that would catch Corporate attention. Without our buying, their power is diluted.
A national non-buying strike? A national boycott of all goods and services? Does that sound radical? Perhaps. But not, I submit, as radical as a government that does not function. That simply shuts down when its president can’t have his way, disrupting the incomes of thousands and negatively impacting our entire economy.
