Simmering I

October 28, 2007

I need to take a break. I need to let my pot simmer. I have added a bunch of ingredients and they need to cook down, blend. I won’t know what I have or am until then.

I have been politically sleep walking. I want to thank our President, Mr. Bush. He did shake me hard enough to wake me up. It took some doing. The dream I was in was far better than this nightmare.

For most of my political life, presidential contests have offered little or no choice. Congressional choices have been a little better, but not much. These “contests,” filled with sound and color, are much like choosing between two different styles of jeans. I cannot tell if either candidate has a relationship to my interests which I see as the nation’s interests.

I am not sure I see any difference in the race to 2008.

When I look over the long haul, my experience, it dawns on me that the opposing candidates have more in common with each other than they have with me. They represent less of my interests than the interests of others.

I have decided that politicians are those attention getters we all grew up with in grade school classrooms. They will do what is necessary to do what they do. When they get older, this means campaign financing. Dollars replace clapping and cheering. They will be attentive to the loudest clapping, the most dollars. To balance this playing field, their source of campaign funds as with their salary must come from me, John Citizen. That is one very important answer. There is no other way. There will still be work to do. Of late, there has been a lot of talk about how teachers should know what they teach. It is equally reasonable that we ask politicians to know the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and what a democracy is.

I am outmatched. A single citizen. In a nation where corporations have the legal status of citizens. I am not rich. Never will be. In a nation where private dollars fund political contests. Because corporations can off shore their headquarters and flow of money and responsibilities to the United States, equity, fairness, and patriotism mean that I should be able to do that also? I do not think so. Not only that, but I think if corporations want to play they should stay.

I can understand how Captains of Industry, with a thousand or a hundred thousand employees, might see things differently than I do. I can understand how they might inadvertently – in their legislative initiatives, in their employee practices -- overlook the welfare of single citizens. On the other hand, when knowingly and with intent, they introduce legislation giving themselves an unfair advantage, combine with other industrialists for the same purpose, employ legions of lobbyists to catch and hold the ears of my representatives, or engage in practices that divide the citizenry, including physically attacking parts of it in many different ways, then I must be opposed.

To the above must be added some of the very rich and some of the less rich.

I problem is that the public discourse of public issues ended some time ago. Our news is managed. It is well managed and it does not represent my interests nor the interests of most I know.

I know we, the citizens, are losing. It is like a war, a war on many fronts, and yet not all of the opposition know they are fighting. Some don’t know they are being fought. Few know they are losing. Few want to say “War.” The issue needs reframing. What if a small powerful part of society decided to declare war on the rest of society? What if the rest of society did not know it? Who is the enemy? How would the battle be fought. Who is winning? Losing? Who are the combatants?

They are winning and taking no loss, and since they are winning and taking no loss, there is no hurry.

Who are we and who are they? And why should I care either way?

When the Captains of Industry (I think they would prefer Generals) increase their salaries by factors of ten and their employees’ wages are stagnant, is this simple greed or is it greed plus a desire to distance themselves from their employees? Or is it distance from their employees-as-a-class. What about gated communities? When President Bush feels free to lie to Congress and the American people to justify a war is he telling Congress and you and I where to go? When he pardons an office staff member who was in instrument in illegally revealing the covert identity of a CIA officer, endangering her and her contacts, what does this say about how he sees the expendability of his staff versus us workaday blokes? When he calls the rich his “base,” does that identify his class as he sees it? When he tries to bring oil contracts to his friends by sending an ill-equipped army to Iraq – forgetting that he already had another war going that was unfinished – what does that say about who he sees as his class and how they are treated and who he sees as peons? And what of the tax breaks for his friends? Does he care for the workaday folks? No, it is war on the cheap. Inadequate body armor, inadequate medical care, inadequate armored vehicles – All Katrina Moments. On the other hand, his friends at Halliburton had no-bid contracts, felt free to lie on their justifications for payment, have sought immunity from investigation, and they deliver gasoline with water in it and deliver water no soldier should drink. It is this matter of who obviously is cared about and who is not. A man who lives in this kind of world and who is so arrogant is very dangerous. He could consider a coup. He could consider introducing a viral infection to the general American populace. He could consider staging an attack on American. He bounds are quite narrow, reflecting his class, and I and the majority of Americans are not members.

It is interesting that most members of Congress also are not members. Yet they do not appear to be threatened. Do you suppose they are still asleep?