“Cheer Up, America, There’s Brighter Days Ahead!”
Just not in this lifetime.
By the time, and if, the democrats gain any significant control over congress and they actually do make better choices for ‘we the people’, your lifetime will be over. So, good luck to our children and grandchildren. And even then, these people, politicians and enthusiastic wannabe leaders alike, are basically cut from the same cloth and will be working within the same system making, breaking and bending the same laws and rules of engagement.
Power corrupts. No one is exempt. Follow the money.
I know I sound like a pessimist, but how can you not be as you look around at what has happened to America. This soap opera beauty pageant called ‘The White House’ is a tribute of our democratic system of voting for our leaders and public officials.
Donald Trump is not your problem. He’s the current manifestation of a long developing flaw in the American democratic system. The flaw centers on the most fundamental tool of our democracy. Voting. It only works if everybody votes. Otherwise, its a back-room poker game.
The voting system worked when there was a sense of urgency in America. When people were connected by an immediate common cause, a clear and present danger, working in one unified direction. Strong leaders emerged from this collective turmoil, and people recognized who the true leaders were.
Voting worked to its full range and magnitude in 1776. It was downhill from there.
We know names like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Abraham Lincoln from our 3rd grade history lessons, and throughout our lives. Then Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Truman and JFK. All the heros on the pedestal of history and of whom we celebrate their triumphs, birthdays and death days. Presidents Day.
We revered Paul Revere. Will the next generation revere Paul Ryan? How about Paul Manafort? Nuh-uh.
How about Milton “Mitt” Romney? The fish-like flip-flopping Romney wants to be president so bad his teeth hurt. He’s announced his candidacy for senator taking over Orin Hatch’s turf in Utah. He’s on a moral crusade to save the world from amoral con men like Donald Trump. But Romney is really just a con man of a different color, isn’t he?
Take Jared Kushner (please!) or Ivanka Trump. These privileged nepotistic neophytes are running the country! They are the face of America to the world and foreign powers. I thought Jared was going to resolve the Palestinian/Israeli peace issue. He says he wants to serve the American people, work in our bet interest ..solve the gun crisis problem ... Kushner should be in jail with his father for financial fraud, money laundering, collusion with foreign governments (Russia), and possible treason against the United States of America! He is so deep in financial debt I can’t imagine he can concentrate on anything but staying out of prison.
Foreign governments have complained about the kid being too inexperienced and manipulatable. Just imagine, they don’t like dealing with him because he’s too easy. Where’s Rex Tillelrson? Can you imaging a foreign power saying that about former Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright?
And the rest of the cast ...Hope Hicks ..Rob Porter ..Kellyanne Conway ..Anthony Scaramucci ..they are all failing like a cheap pair of sox. And it stinks.
America has slowly descended into a quagmire of corruption, deceit, treachery and incompetence the likes of which the world has never seen. This is hard to say and to be swimming upstream in a paradigm set in stone 250 years ago, but it’s true.
It could get worse.
Ever since the transformation from a national pride and sense of urgency to national ignominy and complacency, the American public, through the voting process, the only process we have, has produced a largely substandard drove of politician wannabe leaders.
You see, hear, and read their words daily and they say nothing. They do nothing. They avoid confrontation like the plague, whereas they should be leaning into it like a hood ornament! Where is the vanguard? We only hear of petty party bickering, congressional vacations and recess, committee meetings to form committees, and sub-committees to form oversight committees to conduct a “thorough investigation”. Government shutdown? WTF?
Meanwhile, our public school system is turning into a shooting range, the world is laughing at us, the Russians and Chinese are licking their chops, and the only way to bring a politician down is to embroil him in a sex scandal.
America voted for this. It doesn’t matter that most of America does not vote, or the mental capacity of voters in these non urgent times of show biz, consumerism and media entertainment may not be an accurate assessment of good thinking. It’s just the numbers that mater. Gerrymandering prevails and dead people are voting. So, as a result 30% of the eligible voting public can elect a U.S. President. In my town, 15% elected a mayor, and that was mostly his neighbors, business associates and local developers who were in his (her) pocket. The rest of the town just doesn’t care as long as their lights work and the garbage is picked up. Otherwise, the sentiment is just, ‘let them do whatever it is they do. It doesn’t matter, it’s always the same’.
I asked the mayor of our town why she and her predecessors wanted to be a mayor ... what made her think they would be good leaders? I asked if it was ego, the salary, something to do ... She acted like she was never asked that question before, or never thought of it before. She stumbled a bit, then shrugged her shoulders with a puzzled look on her face and answered as if asking a question, “...service?”
15%. Friends and neighbors.
I have seen the enemy and it is us.
John Kushma is a communication consultant and lives in Logan, Utah.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-george-kushma-379a5762
http://newsbout.com/a/John+Kushma
