Slowly Sinking Ship

One could readily make the assumption that a nation which has been organized for two centuries, is free of any occupying foreign force, enjoys a richness of natural resources, and has an educated populace, would be fiscally sound, generating an ever-healthier citizenry, producing progressively more intellectual and spiritual people and institutions, and earning the amity and respect of the world. In point of ugly factuality, if that country is America, the opposite is true in all cases.

One could add to that list the presumption that such a country would be in a condition of reducing the number of its residents in poverty, and would be improving its ecology. Wrong and wrong. So instead of an upward spiral, we of the vaunted U.S.A. find ourselves in the other kind.

We as a country are no longer just dangerously close to the infernal slippery slope; we are indeed over the edge of that precipice and in the process of slip-sliding down that slope. The smoke and mirrors machine of the mainstream media, working in concert with the Bush administration’s mega-hype machine, has lulled people into an eerie complacency about the state of affairs we are now faced with.



The White House recently described Karl Rove’s job to be "to make sure that we have an open and fair process ... and to make sure that policy is complementary and consistent." Nice try at gobbledy-speak but Karl Rove, the president’s top political advisor, who also sits in on all policy meetings across the governmental board, has as his job to make sure that the government does not do anything to alienate its political base (i.e., conservatives, evangelicals, and rich folks) and does in fact do things which make the base happy, regardless of whether it’s good or fair-handed public policy.



When you have a congressional situation -- which we do -- wherein the so-called representatives only vote along party lines, then you no longer have a representative democracy. It’s something else, and not a good something else — maybe call it partisanocracy. The Founding Fathers did not intend the House and Senate to be this way; their vision was to have the elected members vote according to an ethical blend of their conscience and the expressed will of their citizenry.