Essays for Our Time – “WE THE PEOPLE”

AMERICA IN TROUBLE

Most of us today  know the United States of America is facing economic collapse.  Many in our nation point fingers at the U.S. Congress, our President, the Supreme Court, our banks, and corporations, which have sent manufacturing and jobs to communist China and other nations where materials and labor are cheap.

No job, no home, no food, no help, no hope…and conditions for social unrest.

There are millions more, however, who already live under conditions of personal economic collapse.  Some lost good  jobs decades ago when Japan closed our steel industries.  More lost good jobs after the North American Free Trade Agreement was passed.  And millions more have lost good jobs during the past two decades.  Joblessness is the cancer driving our people to desperation.

Add to joblessness the problem of debt–in all levels of government, mortgage debt, personal debt, and credit card debt.  Then add in the speculation in real estate, and the gambling with average Americans’ pension funds, retirement accounts, and savings.

Do some math.  Joblessness + Debt + Lost Savings + Lost Retirement + Federal Debt Threatening Social Security and other social safety nets = Fact-Based Poverty multiplied by Fear, Desperation, Anger, and Hopelessness.

IS THERE ANY HOPE FOR CHANGE?

During the last presidential election, a resounding majority of Americans combined their feelings of hopelessness and put in office a candidate of hope.  In itself, the election of Barack Obama–a half-white, half-African man–demonstrated how hopelessness, linked to the hope he offered, overcame a history of racism in America.

I was proud of white Americans who present troubles overcame their past prejudices in search of a better future.  It was democracy in action.

 While he had the mandate of The People, Obama’s instinct for collaboration led him, in his own hope, to seek bipartisanship to work on the nation’s troubles.  The other party stated they were there to ensure he was a one-term president.  Thus we see what we have seen.

Obama kept his campaign promise for healthcare, by giving in to insurance company demands, then added his own trillions to the national debt. This promise kept was turned against him–the illustration, said the other party, he was another FDR, a socialist, a spend-thrift.

The TEA Party members of Congress were elected in response to the rising dangers, and against partisan and untrue accusations against Obama, such as those of the “Birthers.”  Racism, not truth, motivated such opposition, though few openly admit it.

The real strength of the TEA Party members is they refuse to be swayed from the fact our federal government faces default and bankruptcy.  Their factual basis for appeal gives appeal to their claim that, as outsiders, they are the only ones with the objectivity and neutral commitment to “make things right” for those they ask to vote for them.

What the TEA Party will not do is be just or equitable in its mathematical approach to cut expenses.  They will not cut any programs they favor.  They will support the corporations as “job producers” and and bankers as “capital resourcers.”  As good-hearted as the best of the TEA Party members are, they will be blind to what they finally will do with their simple math approach–that obscures the immoral forces who will sway them.

THE BASES FOR REALISTIC HOPE

The only hope I see is a legal solution.  The U.S. Constitution is our highest law.  All U.S. government officials, the Supreme Court, and the military, all swear or affirm allegiance to it.

Therefore, the only sure-fire-legal way to correct most of our national crises if through our highest law, the U.S. Constitution.  Any American who trusts the Supreme Court with our future has to be one who has benefitted most from that court’s recent majority rulings (which includes most of the population, as a fact, not a partisan statement).

SHOULD AN AMERICAN BE FAULTED FOR TRYING?

The readers will see posted here, from time to time, (1) essays addressing our national problems, seeking to explain how we are where we are, and (2) suggested “amendments” to the U.S. Constitution that seem–at least to an a man ignorant of technicalities, but not ignorant of graft, conflicts of interest, political abuses of power, etc–to be “on the right track” for average Americans to consider.

President Ronald Reagan once said, “All great change in America begins at the dinner table.”  This saying evokes positive images.  But with millions of lost jobs and repossessed homes, few people have dinner tables.  So table talk is at the shelter.

Reagan meant average people are the ones with the legal power for change in a constitutional democracy.

Reagan promised to address the $1 Trillion Dollar debt in 1980, then more than tripled it by the time he left office.  Reagan, much praised by so-called “fiscal conservatives” in the Republican Party, actually opened the floodgates for corporate profiteering during his administration, as did George W. Bush during his two terms.   Still, Reagan’s great rhetoric, his maturity, his stage presence, and his acting career, all served him well in justly being called The Great Communicator.  The quote above is an example of a fine quip with a point.

The draft essays posted on these pages are intended eventually to be book chapters.  The discussions combine great charter documents of freedom, such as the Declaration of Independence, presidential speeches and quotes, history, psychology, law, and many other interdisciplinary fields.  These all are brought into the discussions when they provide some insights into the great challenges we face today as a nation.

No single American can really do much more than ask others to think as much and as hard possible about the issues, then decide for themselves what they will or will not do.  The most powerful legal force is the vote of every single U.S. citizen.  What the individual vote is multiplied by the millions, then the American people can do, literally, anything they will, through the legal process for Constitutional amendment.

On that day, should it ever happen, American Democracy will be reclaimed and restored by those three words with which the U.S. Constitution beings:  We The People.

Please email me with your criticisms, corrections, and anything to improve what has been offered here in draft form.  JDW

More essays are forthcoming……