Originally Published: August 5, 2014 by rustacus21 | Edit
… The actual breakdown in our devolving, dis-appreciation of our nations Democracy is literally in our misunderstanding of the actual mechanics of its operation. The phenomenal impact of education cannot therefore, be overstated. And yet, it was and remains Congresspersons like Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan, who argues against the most efficient tool of prosperity and self-reliance – Public Education! This should be the conversation Mr. Ryan could be having with his most active and ardent constituents, as well as those he derides, in garnering their comprehensive support for a whole and enlarged educational systems, producing citizens with the competence and knowledge to continue our leading edge in conducting unbiased, affirmatively advancing Civil Society… ideally!
The advance of a civilized, mature national culture is otherwise, virtually impossible, without the will of the majority of this or any nation’s citizens, to see it implemented fully. To grasp the reality that, in this country, it was prohibited and in some cases, criminal, that Women, Blacks, ALL children, Hispanics and Asians (among other non-White, non-adult, non-males), at one time or another, were completely forbidden from attaining a proper, formal education, and is at once, shocking and appalling to our modern sensibilities, but was unofficial law once upon a time in America.
These unofficial customs by which conservatives operate, out of which their actions emanate, are what have the greatest significance, in the argument for smaller government which, by design, not only removes the instruments of vocation and intellectual skills development, but the future of diverse, competent and energized leadership in coming generations, from all walks of American life – instead of just the elites who can afford to buy seats – as is the custom currently – at the national leadership table. Taking this a step further, we can literally see that instead of luring or in the case of Mr. Ryan, forcing the attention of voters inward or exclusively on the self, Mr. Ryan’s industry is narrow and quite limited in scope, but could be better utilized by prompting his states’ as well as his national constituency, to think at an enlarged scale, to consider issues of prominence, and of far greater magnitude, than just themselves and their families. This is, in fact, the purpose of Democracy, is it not? In doing one for each other?
The destructive influence of working towards diminished government is no greater exemplified than by its initial push in 1980 and how thereafter, manufacturing and industry, made their exodus stream out of the urban centers of the nation – first to the surrounding suburbs and away from vital public transportation hubs, and then, off-shore, effectively destroying employment opportunities in and around cities across the nation. As the single most proficient tool to, as Socrates described, live a life of excellence, the productivity gained by the individual, the community, the region and the nation, from the endeavor of skilled ‘work’ efforts, invigorates the whole of the human, as well as the industrial (business, technological and economic) environments far beyond measure. And in doing so, living a life for optimum fulfillment of self AND society, we inevitably get back to the foundations of our very instructions, dictated by our Democracy and embodied in ‘OUR’ Constitution, we are in fact, in an continuous process of instructing the world on the most thorough means of edifying a society at every level.
The Alchemists Of Terror
But even as we peel back the layers, or ‘substance’ of Paul Ryan’s propositions, from tax cuts to job creation, to the inner city culture of shunning work, we find ‘all’ of his arguments flawed, or to use his own logic, exhibiting a laziness which impugns his qualifications to even hold elective office! Had he done the necessary research, he would know that tax cuts to only the wealthiest American’s, while doing much for the individual, do nothing for the nation as a whole. Trumpeting the mantra of balancing the federal budget, Mr. Ryan would surely have run across an August 8th, 2006 Congressional Budget office analysis, titled, Without The Tax Cuts, The Budget Would Be Balanced, which found that by excluding, eliminating, or even preventing the tax cuts implemented during the years of 2001 to 2006, by 2006, again, projected revenues, while naturally assumed to be higher by the conservative Bush administration, had to naturally be re-adjusted to the realities, that the 2001 estimates of the coming years, were unrealistic over-estimations of the economic actualities of the impact of limited, demography-specific and narrow tax-cuts, on the broader economy. Tax cuts initially sold as broadly impacting all income demographics, were shown to be exclusively aimed only at the most wealthy Americans and again, were not only responsible for a massive ‘debt’ increase, but created ‘additional’ costs in interest payments, as a result of borrowing in order to cover revenue losses every year since the enactment of wealthy-exclusive tax cuts for the duration of their occurrences.
The selling points allude to broad employment and economic benefits, but in reality, tax cuts to only the most wealthy – exclusively – leaves an economic hole in the broader economy that is left for only the remaining tax payers to compensate for, fiscally. Keeping in mind, that 2006 was the front edge of the eventual recession – turned Depression – by 2008, besides job losses, the inevitable increases in taxes on the Middle Class and working poor was never – EVER discussed in ANY public debate within the context of equity of taxation, as the economy slid and then, would crash at the conclusion of the nightmare Bush years. But we’re still reminded continually that as spending remains high, ‘something’ must be done to cut wasteful spending on programs aimed at the hardest hit American’s, who were victimized by the conservative legacy of miscalculation, error and the inability to perceive reality in ‘real-time’.
But why this obsession with cutting taxes anyway, specifically with its impacts so detrimental to those least able to stand such devastations? That so many American’s are in denial of where to go to ‘fix’ their understanding on such issues, would it help if we begin at the opening paragraph of the Constitution, addressing ‘ALL’ the nation’s citizens and winding up at Article 1, Section 8, which ORDERS US to ensure Congress “… lays and COLLECTS taxes…” from not just some citizens, or ONLY the Middle Class and Working Poor, peoples, or to exempt some people, like the rich, or to even create a new, fictitious class of (corporate) persons, shielded from the rights and obligations REAL American people are accountable to, but all American’s, collectively, share in ‘total’. An indiscriminate sharing which prevents even the slightest potential of criminal mischief or violations of law, which places greater burdens on the very few, or vast, immense benefits for the many, or even any conceivable imbalances in between. But this is exactly where our deviations have caused us to stray away from the letter and intent of every law emanating from our Constitution.
Unwittingly, we have allowed this fraudulent tax initiative to digress through the heart of the vast economic disparities responsible for the current distresses grown out of the inequality we are, by now, all too familiar with. So why have ‘some’ people, such as those majority voters in conservative districts nationally, chosen not to hold their representatives accountable for continuing to lie about such benefits being dispersed broadly, in the face of evidence to the exact contrary? Why, if the truth that wealthy only tax cuts create NO JOBS of measure or significance, has been proven over and over as the lie that it is, does the contest still center every election year, upon such falsehoods still? With all the broken apperati and various mechanisms needing repair, do we still amble in bewilderment every two and four year election cycles, focusing on the ludicrous, while completely ignoring the critically imperative? At the expense of finding excuses to irrationally wasteful with our time and resources?
For a people with barely a basic understanding of the Constitution, it’s astounding that they would give deference to those who would use it as a weapon against the ignorance of the oblivious? And while reading is the best cure, it is the very last option. The answers, oddly enough, are found in the pages of the text advocating originally for the implementation of the Constitution, from 1787, through 1788, the ‘Federalist Paper’. From the very first essay, readers will find stark warnings against the naked deceitfulness of current members of Congress, such as Darryl Issa, John Boehner, Trey Gowdy, and yes, even Paul Ryan, among many other conservatives. Taking even New York Congressman Michael Grimm, who is currently under indictment, facing various criminal charges, having physically threatened a reporter, over allegations the Congressman used the power of his office to solicit payoffs in exchange for political favors, it was not his knowledge of or alignment with the edicts the Constitution, Bill of Rights or even the most critically important knowledge of the dispassionate use of the implements necessary for assisting in the overhauling of government, to the point it was originally aimed, when President Bill Clinton had officially restored our entire governance systems and structures, as of January, 2001, but instead, bungled into dilapidation by fellow conservative, George W. Bush, in subsequent later years. No, it was rather, his verbose, outlandish, public displays, which entertained more than informed and now have left the job of ongoing renovation at a near stand-still, with the help of the afore-named conservative politicians, who have opposed the steady, but often disrupted restorations by President Obama and Congressional/Senate Democrats and Independents.
The sensationalisms that accompany so many conservatives obviously distracts from their being evaluated on merit, skill and expertise – all of which are lacking in nearly every single conservative in the House of Representatives and the Senate. Being at odds continually, with the duties of their offices, means that their incompetence makes them subject to immediate expulsion, according to Article 1: Section 5, Paragraph 2. This brings us again, to the question of knowledge on the part of the citizenry, if their wisdom exists at a degree which will allow they themselves, to perform as they should and rid the legislative body of such members all too happy to collect wages for work not performed, while impeding the process simultaneously, of the very necessary duties of repairing a severely broken nation. In each case, we are facing a dilemma of whether competence among conservatives, is the real issue, at either the legislative level or the voting arena.
The lack of such necessary and deep understandings therefor dictates another worrisome quandary, which brings us to the current breakdown in our national reverence for law and order. This breakdown has now become the precursor to the corruption that is now very nearly inherent to our democratic system. The re-introduction of massive amounts of money has become the primary tool now being used to destroy the Constitutional system of governance. The regulatory law authority, embodied in the Supreme Court, has equally lost it way, as the conservative majority seems to lack even a clue, as they preside over a court that currently rules merely on the basis of rubber-stamping verdicts which align closest their own ideological conclusions
Test after test, produces still more failures. Money being poison to such a system of Democracy as ours, has left the nation fraught with skepticism and increasingly annoyed with the irratic behaviors and mixed indications that law is arrived at on a whim than by precedent or paradigm.
The vast majority of citizens still haven’t taken seriously enough, the implications of their neglected mandate as director or our nation’s Democracy. Without the essential understanding that fundamentally, our operative system is Liberal/Progressive, the citizenry remains wedded to a propagandized spectacle of conservative aggression and intimidation, as if some game show or reality TV. Even Liberals have relented, making Progressives pensive, as to whether they truly have allies in the case that their unity may be as essential as it always has been, in menacing times as are being faced now. The power of conservatives is therefore, manufactured by the seemingly indestructible battering-ram of money, not even realizing that the structure of which Democracy is forged is of a far more durable alloy than they (Liberal/Progressives) can imagine!
Stay And Fight Or Take Flight?
The climate of partisanship and factionalism is a storm we’ve seen many times before. While this current circumstance seems daunting, it is by no means guarantees an irresolute outcome. Too many American’s have taken to the forests seeking a safety that is only transient. They forgot the tools by which survival in the wilds of a structurless culture cannot build a solid, permanent assembledge of which our Civil Society is created. Without strict adherence to the rules and guidelines our society is structured upon, our elected representatives bear an even higher compliance threshold of obedience to the law and our constitutional commandments. Ignoring these dictates means that corruption and abuses of office forces the citizenry to decide collectively, acting on behalf of their Constitutional mandate of managing a vital, transparent, principled Democracy will be enough of an inspiration for those who fail in the face of challenges, bringing them back – with tools of their own, gained through years of perseverance through the daunting terrorization of the last 14 years at the hands of conservatives.
As roughly 10 million Americans remain jobless in the aftermath of what has now been arguably, the most severe Depression, if only by virtue that those who caused it, are still in positions of power and refuse to obey calls to yield to any laws being placed over them. Voters of every stripe understand this and agree, as was the case in 2010, with the advent of the misguided T-bagger initiative. Fake and hollow, it now is collapsing under the weight of its own hypocracy. As an abuse of the tottering state of the institutional and psychic edifice left of the corrupt years of 2001 through 2009, some Americans were ready for any hint of relief – even if it was obviously counterfeit! A quick look into the genesis of the T-party says all we need to understand, that it was a typical backlash against the need for greater regulation and strict oversight, in the aftermath of a predictable Republican crime wave in a moment of crisis and confusion in the nation. What the attacks of September 11 did was merely disorient. Conservatives then saw an opening and shot the gap, as is known in football. They realized that by exploiting public fright, they could intimidate and bully until the public got wise. That was 2006, when the scam was beginning to unravel. As the people slowly began tearing down the paper-thin monolith-like structures which hid our real structures, tools and civic labor-force, the real battle was here – not in Afghanistan, Iraq or any of the other diversions responsible for unnerving and terrifying the public, with just a mention of pavlovian catch-words and scare tactics, which immediately sent the populous scrambling from the safety of our natural cover of Democracy-constructs.
This was the environment in 2010, when nearly 60% of the voting public didn’t bother to even show up. By then, Barack Obama was the boogy-man and was conjured up readily for the sake of psychically stalking the fear that had been engrained in a still skittish citizenry. What the nation needed was more hands on the renovation process, with an indiscriminate and daring spirit, to stand shoulder to shoulder with all other Americans, and declare that whether Greens, conservatives, Progressives, Libertarians or Liberals, it was ‘ALL OF OUR DUTY’ to help rebuild our nation, after having been intentionally torched by conservatives – even those conservative and Libertarian voters, whose votes for the broad anti-Democracy, anti-Liberal/Progressive factions, intentionally tried to corrupt, defile and ultimately, try to destroy our resilient Democracy structures.
We saw this all before in 1994, when the scam was post-Reaganisms of joblessness, deficits and recession, but no sooner did the hysteria rise and the propaganda pour over the nation, the recession was over in 1995 and we never looked back. Even with the phony Monica Lewinsky scandal, America wouldn’t even think about abandoning the President in the midst of a savage, medieval inquisition, trying to halt the greatest economic, technological and institutional comeback (which again, followed another intentional Republican-engineered economic disaster) in the nation’s history. But this time, the target was a Black man and all the profiling, mythological and stereotypical disparagements were still fresh in the minds of the fearful, terrified by the spectre of Arab hordes overrunning our borders – even if in our imaginations! But the effort of frustrating this President was easier because he was not the same Black man as a Paul Robeson, a Martin Luther King, a Malcolm X, a W.E.B. DuBois, or a Cornell West, who grew up in the surrounding forests, cutting the wood, drawing the foundations, pouring and laying the brick, and designing the window, out of which predominant Caucasian American culture would gaze out, and non-White, non-male, non-wealthy American culture would peer in for the first 84 years of the Republic, and then, fighting into the house of state, every step of the way, until ‘nearly’ fully in in 2008 and as a Black man-by-half, not fully appreciating the fullness of complete diversity, as was the case with President Clinton, who made it a specific point to ‘blend’ his administration in the same way that our nation had begun to witness to, in Little Rock, Arkansas, by order of a conservative President Dwight David Eisenhower, President Obama appeared obligated to factions responsible for his ascent to his own personal promised land.
But if conservatives like Mr. Ryan, who aided and abetted in the halting of progress in the rebuilding of an attempted demolition of our Democracy the eight years previous, while offering no solutions, no hands in the rebuilding, while talking in double-speak, telling the nation of his care and concern for the victims of the attempted sabotage, while instructions and money from the architects of the failed demolition kept him stoically on the sidelines, the message in 2010 should have been that he wasn’t tearing down ‘Barack Obama’s’ America, and as was the case in 2012, that more American’s were committed to the job of ‘restoration’ and in 2014, the job is now, for the full renewal and preservation, into perpetuity, of our Liberal/Progressive Democracy. While anticipating the injury to the legacy as President, conservatives weren’t hurting Barack Obama or his legacy, but rather America, on a continuous and broad scale, beginning in 1963, with the overthrow of a government, but also a future we are in fact, witnessing right now, at this very moment. A future that will be encompassed by Polyarchal Democracy, in which greed and corruption and nepotism and graft, and yes – sabotage, will be outlawed, by the express, emphatic command-consent of the overwhelming majority, with desperado’s like the Koch’s, the Perkins, with banking and fossil fuel industry influence no longer instrumental in elections, but remaining completely in check, as uninvolved observers.
The suffering of the American people was in a sense, by their own hands, so it’s still up to ‘WE, the people’ to defend ourselves and our Democracy structures, with the tools we will to ourselves and our progeny. But thinking that it’s all about money, conservatives are still wrong, as the same money that controls Ryan, McConnell, Rubio, Walker (of Wisconsin), Cruz, etc., is still pressing Democrats like the President, Majority Leader Reid, Landrieu (of Louisiana) and others, in order to continuing chipping away at the foundation, that still needs to be protected in the meantime, but needs more permanent materials, laws, policies, processes and people, like more conservatives, Libertarians and regular citizens, on the fence, but needing to advocate more vigorously for jobs, the neighborhoods kids and their Public Schools, the elderly and keeping costs moderated for their condo’s and retirement communities, for students and getting their loans back under regulatory control of an impartial, equitable government regulator, so that upon graduation, they can afford a family, a home, a car, and a loan payment, for R&D, so that the new technology that can be built in outer space, will accelerate renewable energy research, rocket propulsion advances, discovering what is happening to the Earth, from space observatories, so we can better tackle Global Climate Change, but most importantly, removing money from the political system so that efficient and functional, more accessible governance will be our increasing legacy. That we no longer have to look over our shoulder in fear or wonder, if we have to head for the woods for exploration or sanctuary?
Evidence litters the landscape where our ancestors have ventured and as we continue to explore the Earth, we continually finding evidence of cultures after meeting their dead ends. This is where we are unique, being able to observe and contemplate and then prepare… but for what end?
Democracy is a tool box waiting for professional to amateur carpenters (the American & world citizen) to simply open it and apply their talents. Getting to work with constructing an original, sometimes necessary component, is all that Democracy requires, in creating safeguards, proactive entrances and stairways, even emergency exits – if ever necessary.
Our tool makers – out elected representatives, come with a specific skill set, that requires trust on our part. But we have to be certain not to confuse trust with foolishness, because the making of tools and their use implies that they have a broad utility meant for all in Civil Society. That is a responsibility that shouldn’t be taken lightly – by either maker or user, of the implements of making we carpenters of Civic Culture far easier. We see evidence uncovered every year of some culture unknown that left their mark, only to then disappear from history. Our current fate is trending in this same direction, with the challenges of Global Climate Change and the driving force of energy production as the consumption being engine driving human civilization. All of our skills and innovation must now be put towards again, the perfect tool set that not only keeps our societies whole and functional, but prevents us from competing for the final dwindling pockets of petroleum and useful air and water of which is continually defiled as a consequence of our consumption. The race is now against the clock, to fix our problem of destroying our environment, before it unravels, leaving us a irreparably harmed planet that will take perhaps 10’s of thousands of years beyond the lifespan of our species, to recover. A testament of which only the dust bin of history will hold for observation of a future species wise enough to avoid our destructive errors…
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