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Washington Is Not Dodge City
Early in his first term, George W. Bush said that "If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator." Nine months later, when the September 11 tragedy took place, many of his repressive policies, including the Patriot Act, were enacted. Since that time, he has led as if he were a dictator, trying to concentrate all the power in the executive office, and the American people have stood by passively to allow it.
Why are most Americans so passive? There are many reasons, starting with our system of public education. No Child Left Behind focuses on students passing standardized tests on basic skills. Left behind when teachers are forced to teach to the test especially when it infringes on the time spent teaching history and civics, is the independent thinking and individualism that Americans believe they practice.
Basic skills are essential but understanding the functions and importance of the three branches of government is critical for functioning in this society. I see the deficit in my students every day. Few know who their state or federal representatives are; few vote. They believe that electing one party or one individual can change the culture of Washington without having a clue to what that phrase may mean or how the rhetoric has been manipulated by both political parties and by advocacy groups pushing their own agendas.
As Saul Alinsky, an outstanding community organizer of the last century taught us, a broad coalition can only be brought together on a narrow platform of issues. A broad platform will only gain a narrow coalition. In other words, it is much easier to get a broad cross-section of people on board for a single or small number of issues. That is part of the problem in Washington
A Prussian politician, Otto Von Bismarck (1815-1898) famously said that "Politics is the art of the possible." Why "the possible"? Think what it takes for a decision on a narrow issue to be decided by a town meeting or a school board? Perhaps 100 citizens are in attendance when they have a full house. If you have ever been to a meeting say, on a zoning variance, you know how heated the discussion can be, how hard it is to reach a consensus and how divisive a narrow vote can be.
Visualize 100 senators or 435 representatives in the U.S Congress. They have their party principles; they have the interests of their constituents, all 300+ million of us. They have their own personal priorities. For instance, Rep. Tom Lantos who died earlier this week, was the only Holocaust survivor to serve in the U.S. Congress: everything he did was shaped by that experience, just as a Senator John McCain's work has been informed by the almost six years as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam war. Now get all those people to decide on what to put on a pizza!
Even if the House agrees to legislation, it must win the majority of the Senate to become law. If both houses agree, there is still no guarantee that the president will sign the bill or even allow it to pass into law without his signature. Absent a veto-proof or "supermajority," both houses of Congress may have Democratic majorities but the president can veto it ending months of negotiation.
Ordinary citizens hate the horse-trading that characterizes politics and they've demonstrated their displeasure by giving Congress a lower approval rating than the president As distasteful as it is to outsiders, compromise is the meat and potatoes of representative democracy; there is no way to avoid it. As John Kenneth Galbraith, an economist who served as one of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's advisers, said in response to Bismarck, "Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable." Most ordinary citizens have neither the stomach nor the patience to engage in it.
To be good citizens, people need a solid education in learning to think for themselves and exposure to history and to a broad range of opinions. Without the training to think clearly, question authority, and evaluate the rhetoric that governments, politicians, and the media, among others, aim at them, they will be unprepared to resist being hoodwinked by it. And we must be watchful; legislators literally make life and death decisions that affect all Americans every day.
Bismarck also said, "To retain respect for laws and sausages, one must not watch them in the making." Most people turn their faces away from their legislator's work and flock to candidates that claim that they can "clean up Washington." I hate to tell you but elected representatives are not sheriffs or dictators--and Washington is not Dodge City. Change is possible but it takes time, persuasion, and critical mass. If the bodies are not there, that is, if there are not enough members of one party to override a contrary or incompetent president's veto, then all the good intentions in the world will not clean up Washington. If the majority of the people recuse themselves from the process, then the few who are paying attention will rule the day. We can only have a strong society if the majority acts wisely.
Dra. Rosa Maria Pegueros is an associate professor of Latin American History and Women's Studies at the University of Rhode Island.
14 Comments so far
Show AllWhy are Americans so passive? 1.Many are completely brainwashed by the obfuscation of the whore media and like sheep, believe what they are told to believe and do not think critically. 2.Many are working hard and are in financial trouble and are not passive about their financial situation, but have little time for much else.3.Many have vested interests in the status quo.
"Change is possible but it takes time, persuasion, and critical mass. If the bodies are not there, that is, if there are not enough members of one party to override a contrary or incompetent president's veto, then all the good intentions in the world will not clean up Washington."
And this (for my ever-present naysayers) is the single reason you now need wall-to-wall Democrats in Washington. And, AMAZINGLY, you also have (as of now anyway) in 2008 a chance to actually get them.
"We can only have a strong society if the majority acts wisely."
No. I disagree. A healthy democratic society depends upon citizen participation. Whether citizens act wisely, or are motivated by mob passions, is another matter.
We have the leaders we deserve for our passivity.
The problem is that American children have been taught not to ask a very simple question whenever they are told something: "How the hell do you know?" A little proof goes a long way.
America depended on a fair press and trusted that it was a free press. No we didn't know shit ...it is the truth... but we didn't really need to, since our press was wise and it kept us informed. We could read about the issues we didn't understand and discuss them as if we did because we read about them as it happened in the papers.
No we didn't know where such and such a place was on the globe and yet when it was in the news our free press would explain it and give backround and try with journalistic honor to vie with their competitors to see which reporter said it best and most astutely. Yes two weeks later we forgot all about it and even where it was on the map till next time it was in the news. Then we would know once again.
In effect our press was our collective memory. Our vocal soul as a nation. We read about, who we were. Who they were around the world etc.. We didn't really have to know because the savvy reporters knew all that stuff ...that was their job. Maybe we didn't know so much about the issues but with our free press we didn't have to. They were like the memory bank in a computer for us. The facts were there to read, so we didn't need to remember because they would and we'd know all about what we needed to know by them telling us the facts. A free press telling it like it was. Well mostly anyway.
Now where is that standard of truth?
Do we know what we used to? We find that without that journalistic integrity to fill in the details, that we really never knew as much as we always thought we did. Once we could read and decide. Now we don't.
We don't know what is true anymore and the dependence on others better read and informed like reporters has shown our weakness without them. In realpolitik a rebel leadership is taken out and a movement crumbles. In effect a similar thing happened when our free press became an owned press. Our shared leadership as a free people in a democracy of the people was taken out and our 'wisdom' crumbled.
We never really knew but we never knew that we didn't. Now we do ... we know or sense that we no longer truly know much about anything. The media tells us we are uninformed and dumbed down, yet they are responsible for that dumbing down.
It is the way we were raised.
"No Child Left Behind focuses on students passing standardized tests on basic skills."
... sold to them by Neil Bush.
Not to obscure the author's main point, but I felt that sentence should be completed. No Child Left A Dime, after it was bled of any beneficial component in order to meet with the approval of w's pen, has proven a perfect trifecta for the Reich.
a) Hollow out the public school system and cripple the NEA while strengthening the 'case' for vouchers;
b) Relegate instruction in civics/history/government (not to mention science) to the margins to mold a citizenry which, after subsequent immersion in teleconsumerism, is rendered unaware of its rights and responsibilities under democracy; and
c) Create a nifty, mandated slush fund for li'l bro's exam-churning franchise. Poor guy must have already run through those funds he skimmed from the S&L con.
It's a good thing that pol's don't see themselves as Washington sewermasters or they wouldn't work there. We would have to hire the undocumented to do the work American pol's would not do. As it is they are convinced that sewermaster is the best job on the planet and will sell their souls to keep their jobs.
Does this qualify as positive thinking?
"Why are most Americans so passive? There are many reasons, starting with our system of public education. No Child Left Behind focuses on students passing standardized tests on basic skills."
What does this have to do with today's adults?
Daniel David February 13th, 2008 1:05 pm
""Change is possible but it takes time, persuasion, and critical mass. If the bodies are not there, that is, if there are not enough members of one party to override a contrary or incompetent president's veto, then all the good intentions in the world will not clean up Washington."
And this (for my ever-present naysayers) is the single reason you now need wall-to-wall Democrats in Washington. And, AMAZINGLY, you also have (as of now anyway) in 2008 a chance to actually get them."
You have naysayers because what you often say, as in this case, makes no sense and is not born out by the facts.
The fact is that the Democrats are just as guilty of getting us into the mess we are in as the Republicans are and changing one incompetent corrupted party for another will not solve any of the serious problems we face.
Lobo Gris
Now that we've beat ourselves to death for being passive, I would like to point out that not all of us are. Many of us -- many thousands are anything but passive and the statement that we as a people deserve what we get for our passivity is an insult to us all. The problem is not passivity. The problem is that our actions are ignored or mis-presented by a media filtered through national intelligence agencies and monopolized by the ruling class who have a vested interest in suppressing dissent. The larger problem is an unresponsive oligarchy wearing the very thin mask of representative democracy. This government is well aware that we are not "passive" or they wouldn't be solidifying a police state to suppress us.
Why vote? Life's short.
I have watched, at the top of my voice, as our congress betrayed the American public. We are no longer citizens but subjects of a Fascist Dictatorship. Why vote? We're no longer citizens...
What will we do with our 'stimulus' sop? It's borrowed money that we must repay with interest. What will we do besides send it back and do without for the interest? Can we vote to secede?
The neo-liberal believers and activists have attempted to cast us all into the sewer. By doing so they attempt to justify their own weakness and the nagging belief that they have souled-out. Those who maintain their dignity and walk a path of respectability is a constant reminder to them of their cowardice and moral weakness. Truth and courage is an everpresent and unwelcome thorn in their psyche.
So what next? Moral people will be demonized as malapropes, loosers, lazy, shyt disturbers, social geeks, peaceniks, and an unending list of inventive tags from the right. From this point the future looks fuzzy. We know that eight hundred prisons are being prepared across the U.S. capable of holding twenty thousand Americans each. We know that Bush and friends can now legally label you a terrorist at will with no questions asked and you can be held without recourse. We know that Rockefeller and Gates are participating in a seed bank and that a type of corn has been genetically engineered that when eaten will render a man sterile. We know that a vaccination has been developed and tested that prevents a woman from carrying a child to term. We know that eugenics has been renamed genetics and that the idea has never died but has continued behind the scenes. The belief in the Nordic ideal is still coveted as a goal by some elites is common knowledge. We also realize that this self consuming ideology may consume us before it consumes them. The table is set for a new American genocide. This new genocide may occur before the U.S. even admitted and apologized for the last one against Indigenous Americans. The total death toll there was over one hundred million.
The downside risks to America are very great today. Most Americans sense a problem but cannot identify or verbalize it. Will this be enough to emerge from the darkness? Compromise is certainly not the answer.
Until the reign of Bill Clinton, Democratic Presidents actually had to listen to the members of their New Deal coalition: unions, intellectuals, students, public servants, African-Americans, ethnic-Americans, etc.
Even LBJ had to step down because his constituency gave him a thumbs down. Of course, that was when the GOP finally took over by splitting a very large Democratic base from the DP: the anti-integrationist Dixiecrats.
The GOP, of course, played on the racist fears of this constituency. Many of whom were also evangelical White "Christians".
This contituency was (and is) from where the U.S. military recruits much of its officer corps and many non-coms. Of course, the South also contains the most military bases per capita.
As a result, the solid Southern branch of the DP also despised the large anti-war (Southeast Asia) presence revolving aroung the DP. Unlike the GOP, the DP had to be responsive to the Civil Rights and Anti-War Movements.
Again, the U.S. military is full of evangelical White "Christians."
This demographic political shift produced the two Democrats who won the Presidency after the Nixon fiasco: Carter and Clinton. Both Southerners.
Though Carter still supported some vestiges of the New Deal(CETA, VISTA, the White Collar criminal division of the IRS, Fairness Doctrine, the Cooperative Development Fund, etc.), these were destroyed by Reagan and never revived by Clinton -the "New" Democrat.
In fact, Clinton destroyed other New Deal programs by passing laws that the Republican Right has espoused for decades: Welfare Reform and NFTA (without enforced labor and environmental safeguards)
The New Democrat was not beholding to unions, popular community organizations, anti-war groups, etc.; his kind was only beholden to a sector of the corporate elite.
The collusive destruction of the New Deal's gains by the Republican Right and the New Democrats may be ending.
For example, Obama has promised to initiate large public works projects for the unemployed. As with earlier New Deal Democrats, most of these projects will deal with rebuilding and maintaining the US infrastructure.
Of course, Ms Clinton has yet to make such a proposal. In fact, Pelosi and Reid didn't even support (except in token form) the traditional bottom-up method of attacking recession: expanding welfare benefits and extending unemployment payments. Earlier, these stimulants were matter of course responses to recessions until the Reagan years.
However, at the present time, public works employment, re-regulation of finance and banking, the decommissioning of needless overseas and American military bases, the pull back of American troops from occupation duties in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Balkans and, of course, constructing a National Healthcare system while deconstructing the Homeland Security complex are still not on either political party's agenda.