Witnessing the proceedings in the House of Representatives over the last two days makes it apparent that Republican politicians are simply foreign to concepts such as cooperation and negotiation unless, of course, they are assured a victory. Compromise is simply an impossible tactic.
Democrats may be happy seeing this much chaos amongst their opposition. But they should not be. A divided Congress is an inefficient government and a waste of our tax money.
Here is a call for action that we all can and should relate to:
The things that affect some of us may, sooner or later, affect all of us. Maybe it is not affecting us now, but we cannot discard the chance that they will some day. And the best way to prevent that is to help the affected now, relieve their pain and suffering now, so that others can be spared that pain and suffering. Let's not, not for one instant, think it cannot happen to us; it can.
The topic of today's NY Times' "The Daily" podcast was the midterm House and Senate races, and the chances of either party to gain or lose seats in either. The basic message: it is looking promising for Democrats in House contests, and Republicans could increase their majority in the Senate.
A key point made during the analysis is what portions of the population each body of Congress is designed to serve. The House ends up representing more of the suburban middle class centers, while the Senate ends up representing more of rural America. The comment was that this is the way Congress was designed. In my mind, it means that Congress was designed to be divided instead of united. Thus, this means our country is a divided nation. So much for the "United" part.
I understand the importance of having separate functionality, where the Legislative, Executive and Judiciary share the role of running the country. It concerns me greatly when elected officials have made it possible to divide us as a nation. "Divide and conquer." How can we expect to make significant progress on issues that affect all of us if we cannot come together as a nation? And when we constantly fight amongst ourselves we allow those in power to take advantage of our inattention. This is how corruption can go on, undetected, for decades. This is how waste is allowed to become virulent, money going to projects that benefit a few at the cost of projects that could benefit the most.
It is time to look at our nation and become aware of the many ways we are pushed to be divided. We are separated by political party association. We are split into a myriad of religions and churches within each religion. We are separated by skin color, race, age, gender/gender identification, sexual orientation, socio-economic status. We are divided by neighborhoods, counties, school districts, towns, cities, states, countries, continents. Wedges are driven between us based on schools we attend, sports we enjoy, teams we support, and even branch of the military we align ourselves with. And the list of barriers built to separate us goes on. Who needs a border wall when we have built so many other walls around us?
Each of these divisions we are part of competes for resources. What would happen if, instead of competing, we would cooperate to achieve long-term, well-planned goals that would benefit the majority? Could we not reduce waste, improve efficiency, and have greater congruence among all concerned.
It starts by becoming aware of things that divide us, how these things got started, and who benefits from these divisions. In the end we will find that career politicians and their supporters benefit the most from these divisions. Then we must begin to tear the walls, the borders, the artificial lines in the sand that have been put there by greedy politicians that do not care about the well-being of the majority and only have short-term plans that damage our health, our economy, our sanity.
When a government no longer works for the people, people must work to change the government. In today's world, politicians may be the cause of the majority of problems with our government. Replacing career politicians with other career politicians will not solve the long-term problem. Perhaps getting rid of politicians will be a much better approach.
As George Carlin said: they (politicians) don't care about you [profanity warning]
For sometime I have advanced the notion that many parts of our government no longer work. They no longer work, that is, for the average citizen. They work just fine for the wealthiest and for corporations, but not for the rest of us. Congress works for corporations and the rich; the Supreme Court works for corporations and the rich; #45 is a corporation and a wealthy oligarch.
When government no longer works for citizens, then citizens must act. After all, government exist to serve citizens. At no point should citizens serve a government that is serving anybody other than the majority.
What can citizens do when their government stops working for them?
Historically, citizens have revolted and overthrown failing governments. In other cases, representatives are voted out and different representatives are elected. Unfortunately, the new representatives often become corrupted and the cycle starts again.
One solution, as in the case of the Chicago Police Department officer that massacred a teenager with 16 bullets, is to use the legal system to seek justice. Sometimes that works, most often it does not.
In this week's episode of "The TED Radio Hour" called "Hacking The Law" (the podcast is issued on Friday's and then airs on Sundays on NPR stations), the show producers introduced a variety of ways to hack governments to make them work for the majority of the citizens. Two of the examples presented:
The Bail Fund
In the United States, those of limited economical means are often jailed, sometimes for years, because they cannot make bail. A group of public defenders started a program to provide bail for defendants, thus substantially reducing incarceration time and also allowing many of the accused to go free when their cases were thrown out or they were acquitted. The statistics provided were astonishing and well worth investigating. This program has been so successful that is now expanding into 40 cities. It is bringing justice where justice did not exist because justice is not cheap, and many poor people cannot afford justice in our country.
In Ireland, there is an experiment to eliminate the archaic institution of elections for public office. Instead, focus groups are asked to serve to solve problems. The concept is simple (but difficult to implement). Essentially, common citizens would take over jobs currently held by politicians. There are established term limits, an attractive salary, elimination of long term corruption, etc.
It is definitely time to hack our governments everywhere, do away with the old, corrupted methods, and try something new. There will be mistakes, there will be failures, and there also will be successes and real progress. It is certainly a better alternative that the stench of incompetent, corrupted governments that serve the masters and oppress the people.
