The 2010 Elections: Full of Sound and Fury,
Signifying Nothing
By John W. Whitehead
11/1/2010
- “The spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers will
become corrupt, our people careless.” -- Thomas Jefferson
The day after the 2010 Elections, what some have described as a
“political earthquake,” will be no different from the day before. At
least not when it comes to the real problems that plague average
Americans like you and me.
Sure, the Democrats will have lost some vital seats and the Republicans,
powered by Tea Party activists, will have gained enough to claim a
“comeback.” But the government as we have come to know itcorrupt,
bloated and controlled by big-money corporations, lobbyists and special
interest groupswill be largely unchanged. And “we the people”overtaxed,
overpoliced, overburdened by big government, underrepresented by those
who should speak for us and blissfully ignorant of the prison walls
closing in on uswill continue to trudge along a path of misery.
With the surveillance state now in place, government agents will continue
to track our whereabouts, whether it be through our computers, cell
phones, GPS systems or mobile scanners sent to patrol cities and
neighborhoods. Americans will still find it hard to pay their mortgages
and get jobs. Travelers will continue to be subjected to a bureaucratic
nightmare in airportsbody scanners, aggressive patdowns, random searches
and inhuman regulationssimply because they want to fly from Point A to
Point B. The office of the president will continue to expand far beyond
the borders of the Constitution, aided by an inept Congress that fails to
provide oversight to the president and the numerous bureaucratic agencies
that periodically terrorize average Americans. Aggressive war spending
which has put the government on the brink of bankruptcy will continue to
bleed us dry, all the while the military industrial complex continues to
direct both foreign and domestic policies.
The family structure will continue to break down, deepening the already
gaping spiritual void. Marriages will continue to splinter as children
face a schizophrenic world lacking any true moral compass or leadership.
And the schools, which no longer teach young people moral values or their
freedoms, will continue to impose a draconian uniformity, conditioning
American children to live in an Orwellian state.
With roughly 25 lobbyists per Congressman, corporate greed will continue
to call the shots in the nation’s capital, all the while our elected
representatives will grow richer and the people poorer. And elections
will continue to be driven by war chests and corporate benefactors rather
than once-touted values such as honesty, integrity and public service.
Just consider: $4 billion were spent on the elections this year, yet not
a dime of that money will actually help the average American in their
day-to-day struggles to just get by.
In other words, next week won’t be any different from last week or the
week before, because the sad truth is that nothing taking place on
Election Day will limit the emerging police state or alleviate the
suffering of the American people.
Yet it was not always this way. There was a time in our nation’s history
when a person’s vote counted for something more than merely the illusion
of participation. There was a time when the people’s referendum at the
ballot boxes brought about a change in the way government did business.
That is no longer the case.
Most Americans today work 40 or more hours a week, five or more days a
week. They juggle family, work and finances. Distracted by an
entertainment culture, lulled into a false sense of well-being by a
consumer culture, and ignorant about their rights and the workings of
their government, they are ill equipped to understand, let alone
confront, the political and social issues that are ripping at the fabric
of the republic. Even those who are marginally engaged in politics or
energized by zealous talking heads on TV are buoyed by a false optimism
(one manufactured by the profit-driven corporate media) about their
ability to impact the political scene. For these few, politics has become
their religion, and they’re hoping for a messiah to wash away their
troubles and transform the nation. And that’s the greatest deception of
all, because there is no political savior and simply going to the polls
will change nothing about the way Washington does business.
The powers-that-be want to divide us. They want us yelling at one another
over politics so that we never unite against them. They want to stir
Americans up enough so that we think that what happens on Election Day
will change things. They want us to get out and vote, and proudly wear
our “I Voted” stickers and urge others to do the same. And then they want
us to go home and rest easy, believing that we’ve done our part and that
it’s now up to them to do their part. And that’s where it all falls
apart, because voting is the very least that we are called to do as
citizens of this republic. In fact, voting is merely one small stop along
the way.
So what’s the answer? There are countless tomes written on the nature of
government and the duties of citizenship. And while we are certainly
guilty of abject civic illiteracy, that’s not really the root of our
problem. The problem, as I see it, is that we have allowed ourselves to
be enchained by bureaucracy, corpocracy, consumerism and militarism for
so long that we have forgotten what it is to be free.
Great leaders throughout history have understood that freedom is not
based on which party is in power or what laws are enacted but on a
universal understanding that what we call freedomtrue freedomis a
spiritual state that is innate. No truly free people would allow
themselves to be branded and tracked like cattle or probed by strangers
or sold to the highest bidder. Yet to be able to stand up for your
freedoms and object when they are being threatened or violated, you first
have to understand what they are and where they come from, keeping in
mind that everything being done by the government today is aimed at one
thing: to disconnect us from our spiritual rootsour freedom
roots.
And what are our freedom roots? Thomas Jefferson sets them forth with
eloquence in the preamble to the Declaration of Independence: “All men
are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of
Happiness.” And “whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of
these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to
institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles, and
organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to
effect their Safety and Happiness.”
Great dissenters like Martin Luther King Jr. took to the streets and
conducted civil disobedience against a government that wouldn’t listen.
He knew that it takes more than voting to change the way government
works. As King said, “We must see the need for nonviolent gadflies to
create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the
dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of
understanding and brotherhood.”
Are you willing to be a gadfly? Or are you going to continue to play
their game and passively sit on the sidelines and wait for the next
so-called “political earthquake” to shake things up?
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