In Silent Rage Against the Dark

The American People: Tasks, Trials, and Aspirations

The political class has failed in its sacred trust.  Our Founders would be ashamed of them.  All the same, only one aspect of the organism of our public life can heal what this political class has broken - only ordinary citizens can do what needs to be done next.

The primary task of the American Citizen, in the present, is to heal the divisions.  The political class has neither the interest, or the capacity.  We need Statesmen to lead America, and there are none on the horizon.  As a consequence it is up to us to lead ourselves.

The News is often more fascinated with the divisions, and certainly the political class exploits them.  We are divided into Republicans and Democrats.  Choice and Right to Life.  Black and White.  Rich and Poor.   A long long list of outrageous un-togetherness. 

Real citizens get up in the morning and go to work, and school, along side people of other religions, races, political beliefs and all manner of differences, while not making war on each other.  It is only a few religious and political leaders that seek to make us fear the different.  Most people, and certainly not the American young, see nothing more than just another different human being, whatever their sexual orientation, or favorite intoxicant.

When we buy groceries, do we refuse to get in a line with people of a different color, or seek out a clerk of a different race?  Do we refuse to be waited on by persons of another color, or apply a religious test first?   Do Christians only get their car repaired by Christians?  If our doctor is a Muslim, or a Jew, do we find another, or do we just judge them by how well they take care of us?

The real world of Americans is not naturally that radically divided.  As much as possible we work together, and we often play together.

Sure, ... there are problems.   The world is not perfect.  But only self-serving squeaky wheels talk endlessly about black lives matter, or white privilege.   Only politicians want to keep all Muslims out of the Country, or send all the Blacks to jail or Asians to college or Latins back across the border.

We depend upon our neighbors.  If there is a practice, it is about being kind to each other.  Avoiding the temptations to friction.  Making our social interactions work.  These are the social ideals we live by: Work hard, play by the rules, and mind your own business.

On some level the majority of ordinary people recognize in each other just another struggling and striving human being.  That’s the real silent majority.  Why are we silent?  Because we don’t complain.  We don’t whine.  We just do our part as best we can.   Oh, and ... we endure the craziness of the squeaky wheels, because we are just too busy doing the heavy lifting that makes America work.

Sure, ... we’d like things to get better.  And, sometimes, we vote.  Keep in mind that a lot of folks don’t vote because they no longer believe.  

For the Founders there were not supposed to be political parties.  They knew that political parties would divide us against each other, when the most preciously needed activity was to work together.  What is our motto? “Out of many, one”, or ... E pluribus unum.  The political parties don’t serve the People, although every lie they speak implies that.  The political parties serve themselves, and their own hungers for wealth and power.  Ordinary people are just a tool to be used at election time to gain an advantage.

Always with the political class, the political parties, the self-serving media, and the corruption seeking corporations and religious, - the goal is get their personal and narrow agenda ahead of the common good.  Most of those complaining and whining don’t understand the real America.   They don’t see what the Founders accomplished, or if they do, they want us to not remember.  Not remember that the primary political power in America is the people.

the crime against the children

In the recent movie “Spotlight” we saw the hold religion, politics, business and “old boy networks” had on the city of Boston.  Horrible and terrible crimes was being committed against children, and no one was doing anything about it.  The people who should have been acting responsible did not so act.  They took care of themselves.  They protected the Church, and the Church thought of itself as more important than the thousands of victims of one of the most destructive crimes that can be committed: sexual childhood abuse. 

The whole situation was organized all the way to Rome.   It was known at the top and at the bottom.  This was not the only organized criminal and immoral activity recently uncovered in America.

The so-called housing crises, that finally became exposed in 2008, was out there for any to see, were they willing to bother to look.  Yet, there was a collusion of the financial corporations, and the U.S. Government at the level of the Secretary of the Treasury and President Clinton.   Organizations that were meant to be watchdogs, such as the SEC, the various rating institutions, and even the financial media, didn’t watch.   They were to busy making money.

the crime against the military

At one time America had the finest armies in the world.  Then came the Bush II administration and two vanity wars ... one in Iraq and and another in Afghanistan.   The Republican Party, which claims to be the more fiscally responsible party, borrowed hundreds of billions of dollars  to finance those wars.  And that was just the merest offense the People.

The deeper offense was instead of creating a draft, and having to justify to the American Public the need for more soldiers, they called in the National Guard units, and sent them again and again and again back to totally unnecessary wars.  Now, too many of our warriors - the children of the American People - wander the streets of our Nation, homeless, suffering PTSD, and never receiving the medical protection required of the Veterans Administration.  Suicide rates among these totally devoted soldiers is at its highest level.

That too is a crime against the People, done mostly to protect the oil interests of international businesses, who get tax relief offshore, and plunder the Third World’s peoples for cheap labor in the creation of shoddy goods.

the money crime
(see also the movie: "The Big Short")

Using a monetary system, which hides its reality from nearly everyone, our government colludes with businesses to provide fake and useless education to our young, leaving behind massive debts.   What do they hide?  They hide that the Federal Reserve, which is a private corporation, uses their private banking system to pour fake money (no real value) into the economy, via these student loans, all in order to increase the fake money in circulation.   In fact, all loans create the money at the time of the loan.  Nobody in banking loans money already on deposit (which is what most of us are “trained" to believe by our economic “religion”).  Loaned money (everyone’s credit cards, for example) is made up money pumped into circulation in order to keep the commercial economy alive.  

People who understand this know that there comes a point where such a process no longer works, and that’s where the modern world’s economy now is - collapsing because of the biggest bubble of all - the finance bubble of fake money.  This at a time when our rapacious approach to the environment is ruining the Earth, destroying agriculture, changing the climate, bringing healthy air and water to a near condition of no longer existing.

The people claiming to be able to run the American government have no idea at all about what to do.  They are lost in out of control jungle of competing special interests, and not listening at all to the American People - the people they have been elected to serve.

Nothing civil grows in the current environment of angry speeches, lies, and false promises.

The Roman Church did have a decent idea or two.  One was that the Laity of the Church, was a community that could be called the Body of Christ, and through which spoke the Holy Spirit.  Something similar exists in America.

The American Spirit speaks through and into the hearts of ordinary Americans.  Not in an overly intellectual way, but through our singers, poets, and story tellers.  What those folks have to say are far more important than any policy wonk produces in the White House, or Congress, and or the NY Times.

America isn’t about an ideology, which has to be sold to the America people like so much soap, with just as many lies.   America is about freedom, and equality, and brotherhood.  Right now the political parties, and the corporations hold the American people in the way any tyranny holds down and uses its people.

We may well have to fight another war to get rid of the tyranny of elites, who believe their lives get to be better, and hold our children hostage to fight their unneeded wars, and at the same time pile up debt upon debt on our children’s children’s children.

This is not right and the oligarchy that tries to rule us all needs to turn around and figure out right now which Way the ship of State really needs to be directed.  It is obviously not to be directed anymore for the benefit of the 1% of the 1% and their cronies.

There is a more fundamental force in American, than any central government, banking institution, or massive corporation.  It is the hearts of the America people, and they grow weary with all the bickering and backbiting going on in the Press and in Congress.   Very weary indeed.

The people need leaders who led toward peace, not war.   We do not want to fight each other.   We want to help each other.  It is that simple.

America has always been great.  It is great now.  The reason ... ?  Because ordinary Americans endure all manner of fractious and useless interference in their lives, and still go to work and raise the children.  America is great because black people and brown people, and countless others endure horrible abuse and then still soldier on anyway. 

The elites pour endless unnecessary self-serving complications on to our lives, and we haven’t yet burned the house down.  Keep in mind that the key phrase is “haven’t yet”.

The Constitution begins “We the People” because we entrusted limited powers to a central government, requiring only one result: manage the big things, and leave the little things to us.  In carrying out that sacred trust, the elites have failed, each year doing more for themselves and less for the real needs of what is the very ground of our shared lives - ordinary people.

Capitalists don’t make this country what it is.  Political parties don’t make this country what it is.  We the People are the cause of all the good we share, and if the elites of wealth and power don’t wake up, and start properly taking care of our needs, then ... well, history teaches doesn’t it?

Not getting this?  Let me make a partial list: fire fighters, police, teachers, shop clerks, garbage men, janitors, elder-care workers, hospital orderlies and nurses, grandmothers raising their grandchildren, delivery men, waitresses, nuns, priests, church goers, crossing guards, prisoners being the slaves of corporations, carpenters, bricklayers, snow plow guys and girls, school bus drivers, law clerks, warehouse workers, secretaries and other administrative assistants, homeless people (who endure our lack of care), ... and on and on and on ...

Every single day we go through our lives and run into other hard working (or maybe not so hardworking ) people, performing needed services, and most of our discourse involves words like: “hello”, “goodbye” “please” and “thank you”.  We  make eye-contact.  We say “have a nice day” and in reply “you too”.  We are grateful to be helped, and glad to be able to help.

This is the real America ... the bedrock of a nation.  What America is, is those seamless social interactions that don’t run afoul of “I’m going to sue you”, or road rage, and gestures of the middle finger.   We, the bedrock, get along.  We mind our own business.  We are good neighbors.  We take care of ourselves and our own. 

Mostly when we talk about politics we make a sour face - we share a disgust.  We are forced to make choices we would rather not make, and since the ballot doesn’t say “none of the above” if we want to vote that way, we just don’t vote at all.

The American People want something.  They want the political class, and their cronies in the 1% of the 1%, to do their jobs, just like they do.  Get up in the morning, go to work, treat everyone with kindness, or get out of the way.

This Country belongs to “We the People”, not to naysayers and the selfish.  To them we say: Join the American people, the extraordinary ordinary and instead of being part of the problem, become part of the solution.

We have to work together ... all of us.  We need each other.  The Citizens need the politicians, and the news people, and even the financiers.  We just have to resist the temptations to serve only our own interests.  That’s the human dilemma.  JFK nailed it decades ago: Ask not what your Country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your Country.  The Constitution does not begin with the word “I”.  It begins with the word “We".