For the first time in many, many years across republican and democratic administrations, the US Presidential elections are poised for real change. There are so many broken processes, vacant ethics, criminal negligence, and greed that the mariner will not bother going into detail. Every reader, both democrat and republican, has their own list of grievances.
What is different this year is the state of Federal and State governments. Governance is in complete disarray. Following is the set of opportunities that exist for the 2016 election:
Whoever is elected in the states may well have an opportunity to draw new boundaries for congressional districts in 2020. If state legislatures have an infusion of democrats and independents, perhaps the intense abuse of districts to assure conservative voter majorities can be curtailed. Many other voter options are in play as well: modernization of state and Federal laws for who can vote, how they can vote and where they can vote; God be praised if congressional redistricting is removed from party influence.
If your Federal representatives have a seat on the science and technology committees, retrieve their voting records and consider their records carefully voting for the candidate that does not defy scientific indicators. If your federal representatives have seats on agricultural committees, consider their records in a similar manner. The same is true for infrastructure, banking, ways and means and commerce. Today, there is an organized republican resistance to any new rules, regulations or budget allocations that change the status quo for fossil fuels, energy, utility grids, environment, economy, taxes to reduce debt, minimum wage Social Security and Welfare, insurance fees, and health costs.
How the reader addresses these issues is to make every conceivable effort to participate in local politics – especially, ESPECIALLY attend your caucus or primary voting process. The reader’s vote and opinion are significant and will trickle up the ballot all the way to voting for President in November. In Iowa, one isn’t necessarily aware where the caucus will be held; location is minimally advertised to dissuade the riff-raff. However, it is easy to learn the location; one must make a small extra effort to know. More than any recent election, raising your participation a notch or two for this election season can pay off.
In recent posts, the mariner has focused on the fabric of our nation. That fabric is frayed, even missing for many citizens. The mariner has mentioned the nature of chaos – that there is no reason or foresight in chaos. But chaos can be brought under control if enough citizens insist on moral and statesmanlike leadership in the society. As a citizen, it is our time. It is beyond our time. Do your duty to heal your culture.
Ancient Mariner
The lower class, by and large, did not enjoy democratic franchise when the Republic emerged; most of them have obtained it by now, but no one has ever encouraged them to exercise it.
And perhaps this is inevitable as long as our education, medical, judicial, and employment policies ensure a frustrated, unhealthy, insecure, and barely-literate lower class …
Current policy is clearly directed at crushing down the lower class, presumably to make room for all the middle-class people who will have to fit in down there over the next ten years.
Tammany Hall notwithstanding, the labor union and the church have been the major institutions through which the working poor have found effective political involvement. I guess I don’t have to tell the Skipper how seaworthy those two establishments are looking lately. There hasn’t really been a post-Reagan replacement for either; I think demographic shifts are partly to blame, as the “lower class” is much more culturally and economically diverse than it was sixty years ago, with fewer perceived common interests (and nobody wanting to identify themselves as “lower class”, of course).
What I shall call “five-figure America” (see, that way I can include myself without having to identify with the “lower class!”) came out of the woodwork for Barack Obama. I really enjoyed that election (2008). But with uninspiring candidates, murky-to-the-point-of-undefined policy platforms, the intellectual din of $billions’ worth of advertising every election, the incessant focus on divisive but largely socioeconomically irrelevant ‘culture war’ issues, and the self-interested corporate media controlling the conversation like some kind of democracy cartel … I share your concern for the future leadership of our country.
Hear Hear! Change is in the wind….
Skipper