Distractions

The current obsession with failed immigration policy is just another distraction from the real issues that are corroding the quality of life in American society. The focus should be on the unethical people who are making money off the backs of illegal labor. The focus should be on the 10% of the American population which control 90% of American wealth at the time of a crippling economic depression. These wealthy Americans are funding the politicians who are making policy. These Americans have decided they do not want to pay taxes to keep democracy alive in America.

Television and radio have become co-opted by that upper crust. They depend on them for their livelihood and are owned by them. Even "public" broadcasting has become the lap dog of the wealthy. More and more hidden endorsements and commercials are evident to regular listeners like me. More and more interviews that are really infomercials.

It is obvious that the wealthy of the U.S. are planning to walk the well worn path to Fascism and/or plutocracy. Merging of government and corporations is evident. The Reaganite poison is in the water. We are fighting wars for oil and natural resources. The poor have been duped into hollow patriotism. The wealthy have managed to turn the poor against government by propaganda on TV and AM radio.

Meanwhile, the money men have managed to take control of the government by managing to buy a Democratic presidency with a faux-Left, multiracial figurehead to soothe the few intelligent, truly Left-leaning Americans. Middle-class Tea-Party folks and Libertarians have been fooled into raging against their own interests in health care and good government.

It is difficult to rally support for opposition movements in a country devastated by a depression. The lucky are on unemployment benefits, which are used by politicians to sway their sentiments in favor of the status quo. The unlucky are scrambling for shrinking private and government resources to stay off the street. The unaffected are staying quiet and simply hoping they are not next in line for financial ruin.

The truth is clear. Too few have too much. Too many have too little. Hard work has nothing to do with the disparity. Class has become more and more entrenched and defined in America. It is class disparity which will continue to destroy American democracy.

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?

Democracy

Life is often a beauty contest. Perhaps this accounts for the snail-pace of human progress.

Our eyes are programmed for choosing sexual mates. Our brains, however, will decide ultimately what happens to the human species. A just, functional and happy human species will depend upon those who have the intelligence, compassion and inventiveness to apply science and ethics to daily life.

Democracy is a lofty concept. Mob rule is not. When democratic institutions are used by angry mobs to vent their rage, they cease to function for the good of all the people they represent. There is an ugly mood in the U.S. at present: A group tantrum by those who have become lured into superficial materialism by Wall Street and mortgage bankers. The American middle class threw away their own national dignity abroad, their own equity, their own privacy and their own power as laborers in the Bush era. What did they get? They got LCD TVs, polluting Hummers and barn-like mini-mansions, made of junk materials.

So, as these willing victims of the 'greed-is-good' con game rage at having to pay the piper, they look to vent their regressive anger upon the progressive politicians who are trying to help them clean up their mess. They kick their feet and scream as government tries to relieve them of the burden of unaffordable health care. They throw their support behind scheming opportunists, who represent the same creeps who stole their money in the first place. They look for new scapegoats and the same old ones, like gay people, African-Americans, immigrants and others.

So, politics begin to resemble high school prom-queen and prom-king competitions. Sarah Palin, a woman who has glaringly obvious deficits as an intelligent leader, gets into the political sphere because she looks pretty and has done all the conventional 'right' things as a wife and mom. Scott Brown, the U.S. Senate candidate in Massachusetts, gets into the political sphere because he was a jock, a nude poster-boy and drives a pick-up truck. Those whose lives peaked and plateaued in high school rally to the flags of these pubescent icons.

Meanwhile, democracy and the people's real needs are discarded. They are successfully sabotaged once again by the evil forces behind the doctrine of personal greed and materialism, who gladly fund and promote this process of regression. The bankers slink away to their gated mansions with a cynical laugh at their willing dupes, the Tea-Party-style fanatics.

Today is Martin Luther King Day. Martin Luther King, who was the most inspiring man in my adolescent life, was not a pretty man. He was no prom-king candidate. He did not advocate rage or tantrums. He did not advocate selfishness or materialism. He did not support free-market capitalism. He did not whine and rant about what he wasn't getting. Martin Luther King spoke to the hearts of those who yearned for progress, social equality and economic justice for all through civil, progressive government. And, he was killed for it by the same characters who are currently funding efforts to subvert peace, the Obama administration, human rights for all and universal health care.

Make your choice. Will you indulge your own negativity? Will you go on justifying your own materialistic selfishness? Will you continue to begrudge paying taxes for social welfare programs in America while not even blinking when your taxes needlessly kill civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq? Who will you support in the voting booth?

Education

There is a current debate about the costs of college education in the US. The education industry (yes, it is an industry in the full corporate sense) has worked with government and professional interest groups to degrade public education in favor of private education, which costs a lot of money and makes a lot of money for a lot of people.

The focus of the current debate is the college loan scam, which has become a lucrative business for banks. High interest rates, bankruptcy-free guarantees of full repayment, thanks to bought-off legislators who have supported the gutting of public-financed educational loans over two decades. Another ruinous part of the Reagan legacy.

Education, I believe, ultimately has little to do with a degree from a college. Degrees are tickets to job interviews. Education is something else altogether and usually ensues with effect long after a student gains a degree.

However, shouldn't an intelligent government, self-proclaimed as a democracy, wish to be representative of an intelligent constituency? The quality and quantity of free public schooling in the US are inferior to the quantity and quality of free public schooling in most of the other wealthy world democracies. It is shameful. It is contributing to the corrosion of the quality of American life, and life around the planet.

Meanwhile, those who make over $250,000 per year in the US are wailing at the prospect of paying increased taxes. This group is 1.5% of the US population. And, for the last 8 years they have been calling the fiscal shots for the government of the US. Do you call that democracy? Are you happy with the results?

Part of practice is understanding the world around us. This is called 'study' in Buddhism. Traditionally, when there were very few literate people in society, Buddhist monks carried the burden of literacy and the arts in many cultures, as did Christian monks, imams and rabbis in the West. Today, dedication to a Middle Path entails study of all of society and understanding one's place in it. It entails placing one's steps along the correct path to further personal and human evolution.

Those who begrudge free education of all human beings by refusing to contribute to that cause do not practice. They are consumed with greed and blinded by nearsightedness which comes with addiction to personal pleasure at the expense of the greater society. It is the responsibility of those who do practice to try to show those who are so obsessed with greed the way to a life which can bring greater happiness to all.

We

We the people have allowed our planet to become our sewer. We the people have allowed corporations and corrupt politicians to tell us that evil is good. We the people have killed and plundered in the Middle East, in Viet Nam, in Cambodia, in El Salvador. We the people foster the misconception that killing under the pretext of war is honorable, when we bow our heads to the military. We the people allow gang violence to exist in impoverished slums by allowing the politicians whom we pay to not do their jobs. We the people allow vandals to deface and destroy public accommodations and private property by not holding the parents of these vandals and negligent police responsible. We the people encourage overpopulation, poverty and stupidity by supporting the folly of reproductive rights without reproductive responsibility. We the people are the cause. We the people are the only solution through practice and right action.

Elections

Yes, it's payback time here in America. The cycle of human folly. They have destroyed a country, thrown it into civil war, to satisfy our rage over 9-11. Now the masses are bored with Iraq. The media too, it seems. Perhaps the two are the same. So, with the mentality of 'Monday-Night Football', the Middle Americans may actually vote to the left. They weren't motivated by the potential gutting of Social Security. They weren't motivated by the Medicare drug plan to help the upper middle class (Republican base). They weren't even motivated by illegal immigration. IF America were truly a democracy, we would all have a big, red VOTE button on our computer keyboards and on our digital-TV remote controls. Could Middle Americans handle that responsibility? Perhaps not. Politics are a true test of my resolve to maintain my practice.

Projection

Projection is a term referring to a human tendency, as a defense, to project personal fears, faults, failings, emotions upon another who is perceived as safe, neutral or hostile. Example: An insecure person who is performing well at work might still accuse a taciturn boss of thinking he is inadequate if he is stressed. He projects his own feelings of inadequacy onto the blank screen of the inscrutable authority figure. I feel that projection has become an American habit, especially on the geopolitical level. We point fingers at repressive and racist regimes, while the current government in America is sexist, racist, repressive, secretive. We point at 'terrorists' as beastly, irrational and violent, while we senselessly bomb and shoot innocents in the name of democracy, a political system which we do not even have in America. America is a federal republic, not a democracy. If America were a democracy, it would not be run by 10% (the corporate wealthy) of the population. I have an idea. I think, if people began to stop projecting and start communicating about what is really happening around them, things might begin to get better. Try it.