The USA is over.
The proof is in the reaction to the election by people in leadership positions, elected officials who reflect the will of the people who elected them. Apparently, near half of the country opposes the election of the president elect and are unwilling to accept him as the country’s leader. A good number of people, myself included, could not accept as leader the elected president who was Donald Trump.
The divisions are so very deep that there really is no union, too little of real importance that unites us. We no longer just disagree amicably about issues but about the very way in which we make decisions, the very rules of disputation. We do not agree on what is true or how truth is derived, certified. So how can we unite as a democratic society, as a humane and sane democratic society? We cannot and we really have not for a very long time because, in order to be united, we have allowed as acceptable ideas and behavior neither sane nor humane, the denial of basic rights to multitudes and the degradation, dehumanization, torture, mutilation, and destruction of real human beings trying to live their lives as human beings. How many hard-fought agreements in our governing bodies, even in the deliberative bodies that created the master plan for this country, allowed for compromises that compromised the humanity of certain groups of people?
So how can we be united? And how can we accept the results of our fellow citizens choices without accepting what is immoral, idiotic, and cruel. I viscerally felt the noxiousness of elections that put the likes of Trump, Gomert, McConnell, Cruz, Nunez in office. What of that horrible humane being named Inhofe? What of Strom Thurmond and George Wallace? I accept the fact that they were fairly elected but cannot help but question the legitimacy of a system that would allow them to lead. I do not find the system effective in producing good and decent leadership, leaders who would at least serve to demonstrate how good citizens participate in sensible and properly humane debate, debate that is guided by principles related to the common good and the good of the whole.
What we have not is not a politics regarding sensible disagreement one issues of important to the common good and the good of the whole. It is about how the decision-making process should operate and, at this moment in history, half of the nation’s “leaders” are determined to disrupt any decision-making process that may lead to what is good for all, the best possible for the most. They are destroying the process that is at the very heart of democracy by using it to make decisions in favor of the few and not the many.
So, some other decision-making process of what currently is in place and those in opposition to the results for the latest election reflect the fact that half of the country does not want to participate in the democratic decision process as it was set up, the other half showing similar sentiment last time a presidential election occurred. NO ONE RESPECT THE PROCESS. Therefore, democracy is dead. To restore it will not be an easy task.
2 replies on “The USA is Over”
In response to FB post asking for consideration of Yang agenda:I did read of and about Mr Yang and do think human centered anything is better than what we have now. The trouble with capitalism and the mind set it produces is that it ultimately leads to something less than human centered because it is, by nature, accumulation of capital centered. What is produced is always monetized and, yes, maybe it can be done so that some of that money goes to produce good, but incentive is always going first and foremost in the money and not the good. Democratic socialism would have it so the good comes first and people are paid for doing good things which also produce wealth, wealth distributed so that all benefit prominently, not just the owner and landlord classes, capitalists who earn by taking a share of profit created by labor, that share always considerably more than it should be, the result being the push for higher productivity and lower wages. Not my cup of tea.
Damned right. This is basic to sane and humane society, the only kind of society sane and humane people should tolerate. That they are willing to do with what we have and consider it great or even good is a problem. I think we need to consider how “citizenship” is taught as something other than accepting what is and, instead, being able to participate thoughtfully in that process of creating a more perfect society with every personal and political decision one makes.