You can feel the pendulum swing to the left. As with any society, the morals, values and political thought go from right to left with stunning regularity. The keywords that people like to use, “blow-back”, “backlash” and the like, all cover this phenomenon. The world has gone through this periodically in its history. Governments that swing too far to the left or right, invariably move back to the center. Sometimes, as in the case of Germany, the wild excesses of the 1920”s and early thirty’s left people longing for “traditional” values, but the blow-back of the move to the left, brought in a tyrannical right wing dictatorship that had to be removed by war.
What I see in this country is the same in reverse. Our experiment with right-wing leadership has caused many Americans to reconsider their values and their political stance. While many Americans wanted a strong, moral national government, they were not prepared for what was to come as Bush and Cheney delivered to the American people an almost fascist type of government that took the nation to wars of conquest and abrogated the populations civil rights and their protections under the United States Constitution. We now are faced with a government that the people no longer want, and no longer trust, with powers that have not been seen since our own Civil War.
Now, the pendulum is swinging left. Most Americans are disenchanted and more than that, they are fearful of what this government will do next. We are effectively shielded from information that historically came from the press, as it has also caved-in to the far right in its reporting. The Internet is the only viable way to get uncensored information about what is really taking place. Americans are now getting their news and information over the web.
Insofar as information is still coming to Americans, we are still privy to what our government is doing in our name. Most Americans abhor this war in Iraq and don’t want a replay in Iran. Most Americans want us to leave the area, and the protests are growing larger with the passing of time.
The problem we face in bringing the pendulum back to the left is that the two political parties in power are run by corporate entities that abhor the left and feel that these ongoing wars that we are engaged in feeds their “bottom line”. As long as these entities sponsor and finance these politicians, we will never get a government that respects individual liberty or respects the wishes of the people.
So therefore, what are Americans to do? We could start a citizen’s lobby that identifies those corporations that support the right and funds their political coffers. Their hold on the media outlets is so complete that we receive not news, but government “spin”. Case in point the Iranians supplying the Sunni’s with “Explosive Formed Penetrators” (EFP’s) that are supposedly coming from Iraq, when in fact, according to many in Iraq are coming from our supposed “allies” Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan. Until we have an honest free-flow of information, the population will trust our government less, each time we find that we have been lied to.
The pendulum will continue to swing to the left. The government, in an attempt to quell dissent will get more and more radical with each passing day. We are caught between a government that is intent on spinning a web of deceit, and a population that has grown weary of the lies and distortions. We are headed towards a confrontation that we haven’t seen since the Vietnam debacle. This administration is worse than the Nixon Administration and has far more power to abrogate the Constitution. We live in perilous times, not just because of the wars, but primarily because the American People have given up so many rights since the attacks of 9/11. It will take a knowledgeable, well informed public to reign in a government that is responsible not to the American people, but to itself and its corporate backers.
Voting has become a kind of coronation of those picked by corporations. We have very few examples of politicians that revile the status quo. Those that do are maligned by the press as “Fringe Left” candidates. This is anathema to our supposedly “representative republic”. It will take a courageous people to throw off the yokes of influential corporatist’s and a government that ignores the will of the people. The solution is ours to pursue. It will not be easy, but saving a representative form of government never is, after it has been hijacked by unprincipled people.
This is the way I see it.
Labels: Bush, Constitution, War