Summit

The President of the United States will be holding a televised domestic political summit today on the Health Care Reform Bill issue. That's right, a summit. You know, there are always international summits occurring somewhere in the world on some issue. Celebrity politics in luxury accommodations usually. More camera lights than heat.

This summit has all the same theatrical trappings. I think it is a brilliant maneuver from the beleaguered and obstructed White House. But, I wonder if it will play like a Sarah Palin rally. Another gladitorial hate binge for the detached and deluded masses, who cannot see the obvious and immediate value of getting a reformed health care system started in the U.S..

Populist politics have reached a nadir. The lowest common denominator of mass intelligence threatens to rule or paralyze the government.

Here's my idea of how to break the gridlock:

The government itself should construct a polling system with adequate checks and balances. All legal citizens of the U.S. should be allowed to register for an account on the site by providing basic identifiers. We should all get an ID number, not linked to our SSN, and a password.

The site would contain all the current bills before Congress. Congress would be required to post the bills in plain English, bulleted or itemized for easier comprehension. You know, like a readable Web site anywhere else. City libraries could be funded to provide access to citizens who do not have Internet access at home. They could also do regular tutorials on the use of the Web polling method.

Each of us who takes the time to register and actually read the bills could cast a vote on the Web site. It would be essential that this data NOT be identified by geographic region, gender, race, ethnicity or sexual identity. This would preclude the site's use by lobbyists and PACs to scurry from place to place to subvert the educated popular will.

Congress could resolve to ignore all other various polls, many of which are polluted by corporate interests, when considering legislation. In other words, they could resolve to listen to the dynamic and direct voice of the people. The lobbyists and PACs would have to listen to that voice as well. This would most likely send feedback to their corporations and organizations to provide better services to the people.

Summits seem to me to be relics of the aristocratic governments of Old Europe. They promote the image of benign oligarchy. I feel the U.S. needs a healthy dose of intelligent and informed democracy. Old party politics and corporate domination of elections will not cut it any more. The people are indeed getting fed up with being patronized and exploited. It will only be a matter of time before their anger surges upward toward those who have caused the gridlock in the people's business. Why not channel their interest and their anger into a constructive tool for true democracy?

Matewan

The Matewan Massacre in 1920, as depicted in John Sayles' 1987 film, Matewan, represents the struggle between corporate power and human rights. Any American who carelessly condemns socialism as evil should perhaps take the time to see this film, which is readily available in video rental shops or from Netflix.

The Matewan story speaks for itself. However, I believe the neoconservative movement within the Republican Party in the U.S. still represents the powers of blind greed and materialism which cause poverty and human misery in too many American lives today. Today's free-market capitalists are the descendants of the coal magnates who used economic subjugation and violence to maintain their profits.

They work through trading rooms on Wall Street, while their minions slash payrolls with massive layoffs, export jobs to easily subjugated labor markets and manipulate U.S. government officials to avoid regulation and taxes. They begrudge universal health care for their own population. They prop up wealthy banks and insurance companies, while those duped into buying into their schemes are turned out of their homes. They are the new aristocracy, Social Darwinists who feel they are inherently better than those they exploit. They are about winning, not about sharing.