Sam Smith
Let's review the bidding:
We are still engaged in our longest, and one of our most
pointless, wars.
The federal government is electronically spying on whomever
it wants and wherever it wants. It accomplishes this with the aid of a totally
un-American secret court.
Our current government has repealed or reduced funding for
more good programs than at any time in our history.
The Democrats haven't advocated a major, truly progressive policy
in several decades.
Our two most recent Democratic presidents have been the most
conservative ones in nearly a century.
Liberals have become indifferent to the sort of economic
policies that once characterized the Democratic Party. They have redefined themselves
as an elite demographic rather than as a political movement, one that has impermeable
faith in its own virtue, and holds in contempt those who do not share its
values or accept its hegemony. But given their small numbers, even their good
policies stand little chance of success.
The Democrats are planning to nominate for president a
candidate who was, according to an assistant special prosecutor, almost
indicted, who was in business with two friends who went to prison, and was a
partner with her husband in a number of sleazy deals.
Neither major party is showing much interest in climate
change and other major ecological problems.
Thanks to the Citizens United ruling, among other things,
our political campaigns and their results are controlled by corporations and
other sources of big money.
For the first time in over two hundred years, a cabal of
government, corporate and rightwing forces are engaged in a successful full
scale attack on public education, attempting to return it to a state once
marked by what were called public "pauper schools."
Add it all up and the American government has never been so
corrupt, misguided, incompetent and disloyal to the Constitution and to other
principles upon which the country was founded.
It is comfortable and common to lay the major blame on the
most reactionary Republican Party in our history and while this argument has
merit, it also serves to ignore and excuse factors over which other groups and
cultures have control, factors that that create an environment in which
political evil flourishes.
For example, the rise of gay marriage and abortion to the
status of key issues directly reflects the failure of Democrats to offer
anything more politically compelling - such as cures for economic inequity.
The influence of the Koch brothers on conservative
candidates is encouraged by the Democrats' willingness to be funded by similar
if less wealthy sources.
And if honesty is to have any chance of survival, it is not
aided by a Democratic president who repeatedly lies about such things as
electronic spying on citizens. By a president so deep into the false agenda of
government intelligence that he doesn't even bother to make believable arguments
to defend himself.
What has gone unnoted in the current miserable failings of
our land is the absence of voices with both power and integrity, status and
wisdom, influence and decency. With few such respected individuals and
institutions offering alternatives, it is small wonder that amongst the people
as a whole, concern and conscience have collapsed, giving way to the most
primitive forms of survival.
While America's liberal, intellectual and media
establishment may not be anywhere near as corrupt as the right, it has
basically surrendered to that right by failing to speak effectively in even
measured tones against it.
We live in a state of value disintegration worse than during
the depression, the civil rights era or the Vietnam war.
To be sure, then as now, real change was instigated and
agitated by those the establishment called radicals for having the gall to advocate
a more decent normalcy, but their success was ultimately heavily dependent upon
a moderately rational elite that helped
translate the message to average Americans.
As just one example, the church is now barely visible in the
movements of today. Where are the nuns one once saw at peace rallies, the
rabbis raising their voices for civil rights, or Episcopalian bishops offering
sermons on economic equality?
The same is true of academia and the media. Such once hot
spots of cultural intelligence and decency have become either silent or quiet
partners in corrupt disintegration. Our universities are so much on the payroll
of the military industrial complex that many have lost most of their honor. Our
professors are either too scared or too indifferent to give a hand.
The evils of the right are just major extensions of what has
always lurked in their agenda. But the apathy, fear and avoidance of an elite
that pretends to be our moral and intellectual leaders is unprecedented.
We will recover little by just attacking John Boehner and
the Koch brothers. We must replace the
Obama, the Larry Summers, the Bill Gates, the Tom Friedmans and Fareed Zakarias
with those who, while not progressive, at least have enough human empathy
and understanding to form a gateway
politics to a better America. We need those who are not cynical opportunists
and manipulators but who, while still behind the curve of the future, at least are
not – as our elite are today - de facto
co-conspirators with the most reactionary forces of our time.
