Aroused citizens are often distracted before the chickens come home to roost. The anti-bullying campaign provides a useful illustration. The campaign mobilized public indignation, focused that indignation on schools and demanded improvement. Public indignation was quieted. The power people are undisturbed. What is wrong with this picture?

Our sports celebrate bullying. We want our military to be able to kick butt. The 2016 election will feature the Republican hawks versus the appeasers. No-competitors are dismissed as “wimps” or “losers.” Our society breeds bullies. Sending schools on another mission guaranteed to fail strengthens the argument for privatization of education thus turning the reform energy against public interests by attacking the symptoms instead of the cause. Our difficulties are attributed to some agency outside of the power structure. Misrepresenting the cause results in an inappropriate response which will not interfere with, may even enhance the prerogatives of the powerful. The resulting frustration with misgovernment can be redirected against government in general with a T-party. Entrusting government to people who believe that government should be drowned in a bathtub eliminates one possible counterbalance for an amoral economic system that unleashes new products, services and/or technologies on the public with no liability for damages to the social fabric or the planet.

The major political parties have a gentleman’s agreement to refrain from attacking the power structure. This agreement explains why conservatives often fund both the Republican and Democratic parties. For Independents there is no room at the center of American politics! The reason Obamacare is unsatisfactory is that the power structure of the health care industry remains. The single payer health care system by changing the power structure makes real reform possible.

Our propensity to be distracted by window dressings in lieu of real reform is seen by the powerful as justifying their contempt of us and, by contrast, their exalted opinion of their superiority thus accelerating the demise of democracy.

 

John Gibson

Owatonna