When your car, body or house is broken, you don’t ignore the problem, hoping it will resolve itself, you get busy fixing it.
So with our government.
That it’s broken, who can deny? Read the news. Gauge our respect among the nations. Track the satisfaction of our citizenry. That America has been great – and functioned effectively – goes without saying, but that was then. Governments, like cars, bodies, and houses, wear out. The ground rules of 250 years ago may not suit today.
Governments are harder to diagnose than bodies or cars. Few of us have thought much about it. Each brings their bias. Vast entities seek to influence our formation in their favor, often in secret. History, while helpful, is an equivocal guide.
All should be encouraged to weigh in on our Second Reconstruction. I expect to be playing this game for the rest of my life, for remaking America, if possible, will take more time than I’ve got left. The game itself lifts one’s spirits from our present misery. With luck we might rescue ourselves so let’s get cracking.
Items on my wish-list:
Diagnosis: We vote stupidly. By the time we eject him, all will agree that our present President was an almost inexplicable mistake.
Fix: Require minimum voter competence as we require driver’s licenses. “Low information voting,” as it’s politely called, kills people. I’m not talking Jim Crow laws or entrusting our future to college grads, I’m talking minimum awareness, like what we require of new citizens.
Diagnosis: Indifference to America – laziness – taking our nation for granted.
Fix: Universal national service – in the military, government, social services. Get to know some fellow citizens and experience our government at work. Those who’ve served the nation tend to feel more patriotic about it.
Diagnosis: Income inequality.
Fix: a fiercely enforced, inevitable graduated income tax
Diagnosis: Purchasing elections
Fix: Public financing of elections; no PACs, period
Diagnosis:… but the Supreme Court!
Fix: Add four seats to the Supremes.
Diagnosis: … but the Senate!
Fix: Welcome Puerto Rico and Washington DC to statehood
Diagnosis: Election rigging
Fix: Jail time for crooks, including those in office. Enough with the gerrymandering!
Diagnosis: Malevolent lying
Fix: Make TRUTH a public priority
Diagnosis: This gerontocracy!
Fix: Term limits and age limits. Octogenarians needn’t apply, sorry.
Diagnosis: Our climate calamity.
Fix: Science rules, not sheiks.
Diagnosis: Poisonous public health
Fix: Science rules, not quacks
Diagnosis: The disproportionate influence of small states
Fix: Hmmm. One man-one vote as a guiding principle – but what happens to the Senate? Over my pay scale.
Diagnosis: AI run amok.
Fix: WAY over my pay scale.
This list is nuts, sensible souls may object. Enacting any one of these is a heavy lift.
True. Unless! Unless Americans wake to our disrepair – and the danger to our kids and grandkids – and to our planet. And we might. The good news about the Nameless One and his goons is they’re so bad they may eject us from the Great American Daydream. The mess they make of the world just might jolt us to our jeopardy. “Depend upon it, Sir,” observed Dr. Johnson, “when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”
The Civil War ended slavery and commenced America’s Reconstruction. The Depression brought us the New Deal. World War II spawned the United Nations and decades of relative world peace. Let’s revive our vim by dreaming of a better tomorrow.
As that great American poet put it:
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedYou gotta have a dream,If you don’t have a dream,How you gonna have a dream come true?