Democracy is a cool word: It means,
simply, the power in government rests with the people.
That’s America of the past. America
today and in the foreseeable future is different, with a plutocracy taking
shape and forging the image of government.
Plutocracy is the ruling of a
government by the wealthy class. It is the government of the day, the
government that is making decision for you and me, the government that is ruled
by the rich individuals and corporations who push massive amounts of money into
the political process to control it.
We have a distinct separation of the
“common” folk in this country and the privileged class; a majority of those
money-holders are making sure that the division between the two classes remain
a chasm, a growing chasm, with the economically middle and lower class becoming
lower on the financial food chain.
The foundation of this country for
laid by the mental and physical labors of highly educated (for the time) men,
landholders and relatively wealthy individuals who wanted to control their own
destiny. The foundation was solidified by these believers in freedom joining
forces with Everyman, all believers in the limitless opportunities this country
had to offer.
Over the past 250 years or so, there
has been shifts in the individual political power bases of the legislative and
executive branches of government, but, mostly, those elected leaders worked
together to ensure that the principles on which this country took root were
sacrosanct.
Now, due to the philosophical
divisions inside both political parties, and the amount of rabid anti-Obamaism
exploding from the ultra-conservatives in the Republican Party, the gap between
common sense and senseless partisanship is as wide as any time in our history.
The Republican Party is being held
captive by a bevy of fledgling members, a corps of Tea Party aginners elected
in the past four years. These professional naysayers have pledged to run the
country’s economy and the nation’s future aground rather than work for
compromise on key issues: education, continued economic recovery, hand-up funds
for the nation’s poor and disadvantaged, the future of foreign aid, immigration
reform and right-to-vote issues.
No longer does the art of compromise
have a prominent place in political discourse; the legislative miracles
accomplished with Republican Ronald Reagan and Democrat Tim O’Neill are ancient
history. President Bill Clinton, despite his personal problems in the White
House, built a legacy of compromise with Republicans via the passage of the bipartisan
welfare reform act and the bill that unregulated the financial institution (not
the best piece of legislation to pass during his presidency.)
Clinton was not a political chameleon
as many opponents charged, then and now; he was a civil rights liberal and a
fiscal conservative…perhaps the last of that particular political species we
will see in our lifetime.
In a positive political environment,
Repubicans and Democrats prosper, as both sides use compromise as a way to get
at least part of individual party (and individual lawmakers’) agenda items
enacted. In today’s heated environment, which is a buttress of pettiness,
rock-hard immovable stances on key issues and political division is commonplace.
Civility is something found only in a dictionary; bile and bitterness flows
down the aisles of both houses of Congress like stagnant floodwaters.
As a people, we are into using
“labels” for individuals and ideas rather than look at different ways to build
a coalition of different ideas that would form the basis of compromise
legislation.
The overall political picture is
further clouded by deep-pocket lobbying groups and special interests that back
candidates based on single-issue stances rather than what is best pathway for
the country.
In a word, the present political
melting pot is a mess of unappetizing ingredients, heated over a coal-fire of
personal dislike and further fueled by a fear of being removed from office by a
demanding constituency that puts short-term interests over long-term national
gains.
Is it too late to stop the slide
that could end up with America as a non-player on the global scene? No, but
with the present crop of legislators, and with no way to get them out of the
way sans term limits, the present is looking more and more like the future.
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