“Banks have done more injury to the religion, morality, tranquility, prosperity, and even wealth of the nation than they can have done or ever will do good.” -John Adams
We still teach citizenship in our schools, don’t we?
So where were our politicians and business people? Didn’t anybody tell them we all share a responsibility for making our forefathers’ vision work? Didn’t anybody tell them it was about America first? Didn’t anybody tell them to get along we must accommodate ourselves to other people’s views, to dissent?
Don’t the magnates who buy the politicians’ votes have any civic responsibility to make the system work? I guess the answer depends on work. The system works for them, not us. And they are not us because they’re better than us. Is that it? Is that what we don’t get? They can buy the system because our forefathers were wrong and the magnates know how to make it work better?
And what about the politicians who are so quick to blow boozy kisses at our forefathers? Don’t they feel any responsibility to answer to the people and not the money bags? You know the answer.
Some of our forefathers were worried about parties and corporations. History has proven them hair-raisingly prescient. Corporations have amply demonstrated their belief that citizenship is for saps. And parties have lost their moral compasses in the pockets of the corporations. It may be said almost that we don’t have parties, we have corporate stooges disguised as party members.
Instead of a government that works we have 24/7 politics, like cable news, around-the-clock trivia, lunacy and fear-mongering.
The spectacle of one party refusing to approve the appointees of another party is commonsensical proof that our politicians have abandoned all pretense at being democratic and republican, because the sine qua non of a democracy and republic is that it should work, not that this or that ideology should prevail.
The politicians who call upon us to do our patriotic duty, the politicians who wrap themselves in the flag so that they can tar anyone who disagrees with them are not patriots. They’re not democrats or republicans, they’re performing liars. They’re calling upon us to do our duty for a system they’re destroying. A president must be allowed to appoint his cabinet and civil servants. The voters must not be thwarted by gerrymandering and laws that make voting difficult. The system must not be betrayed in the back room where a handful of ideologues choose malleable candidates.
But the President is being hog-tied, the voters are being thwarted, and the system is being betrayed. So we can only assume that when our politicians sat in those citizenship classes they thought they were smarter than their teachers, just as they now think they’re smarter than the rest of us because they wormed, wangled and lied their way into office.
Del’s book, Far From Algiers: http://upress.kent.edu/books/Marbrook_D.htm
New review of Far from Algiers: http://www.rattle.com/blog/2009/05/far-from-algiers-by-djelloul-marbrook/
Artists Hill, Literal Latte’s fiction first prize: http://www.literal-latte.com/author/djelloulmarbrook/
His blog: http://www.djelloulmarbrook.com
His mother’s art: http://www.juanitaguccione.com
His aunt’s art: http://www.irenericepereira.com
