What do Governments most fear? Their people. Why? Because a government's people are their graders. The trouble is that most governments think they are the teachers in the school of life, when really the people are. They try to force feed people to believe that and they succeed many times. It is when people discover they are the Teachers and the government are the servants, that those in charge fear for their jobs.
The dangerous part of governments is their entrenchment. Elected officials last too long in office. They pay either too much attention to their voters so they can keep their jobs, or the pay no attention; they pay too much attention to the majority or they pay too little attention to what they should do, rather than the popular and sometimes incorrect polling data.
We have to do what is right, sometimes we have to sacrifice for that, sometimes we have to upset people, sometimes we have to lose our job to do what is right. How many officials are willing to do what is right and lose their job? I've heard some say that is not true. But I know I don't want to lose my job, I have bills, until recently I had a family, kids to take care of and prepare for entering the world as adults.
I don't have an answer for this, but it has gotten really bad. We need officials to govern who will have decency in their powers, not just self serving orientation. Maybe we need to hire people, then pay for them the rest of their lives? If we voted in a president that had one, six year term, maybe he would do what is right. I get the feeling that too many presidents get into office for their first four year term and immediately begin running for their second term.
They don't want to do anything to screw up a chance at that second term, then in their second term they are worried about their legacy. I would much rather they only worry about their legacy, hopefully what we voted them in for, than that they don't want to do anything to lose their second term of office.
Having Congresspeople and Representatives able to return to office after their first term means we have veteran government officials that have relationships and know how things work. Having only Freshman officials who have to first learn everything, is a hindrance, but that brings a freshness (Freshmen and woman?) to things. When they repeatedly return to office, lobbyists have relationships with them that go on year after year. Lobbyists start out as supercitizens over that of normal average citizens like you and me, because they are backed by big money, and a relationship with that official who is on a serial office, many being voted in for decades.
That is good in a way, but it is bad in a way. Again, I don't have the answer, but we shouldn't ignore these things just because we don't know what to do about it now. We find out how to fix things by talking about it. Sometimes, simply by making changes and then working it out. But doing nothing, merely propagates the situation, exacerbates it.
We need right now to start with our kids. Educate them more about government so they grow up smarter about it. Teach them critical thinking, hone their skills. We educate kids to keep them quiet, to give them a basic education, not an education to excel. We don't educate them to have jobs, or we educate them to work in corporations. They need to think outside the box, to be irritating sometimes in their views, to spark thought, controversy (productively, not just annoyingly). We need to make debate a foreground thing, not miles behind things like playing football, or baseball or whatever.
Why are we in this situation? Because we have been lax for far too long. You don't achieve greatness by sitting on your ass, you push for change, for better situations. New, novel ones, unique abilities, situation, positions, products. We've done well on some of those things, but not the invisible ones, like education. We pay and treat our teachers like garbage when they are heroes, or should be.
Most of what is needed to be done to fix things, are invisible and seem to most people as counter-intuitive. And so we sit, whine, lose tempo in life and watch as things crumble around us.
But it doesn't have to be that way. Think about it. Talk about it. Go out into the streets like the people are now in New York, Seattle, Portland, Washington DC, and in other countries. There is a ground swelling of people pissed off and demanding change. But they are demanding it of those in charge and all they will want to do is maintain the status quo, keep their jobs, look good, and in the end, WILL anything get done?
Only if people continue to push and push, and make noise, and push more until something breaks, and change is inevitable. Because, something has to change. And change, is not status quo, but our change, when we push for it, always turns out to be the same old thing. We think change happens, but in hindsight we can look back and see, nothing really changes.
Unless we make it happen. I liked President Obama, we needed him when he rose to well, not power, but position. I'm not seeing him wield power, but he has invoked some new and good things. I'd just like to see him kick ass like Bush and Chaney did, who said, they didn't care what people thought, they were going to do what was right. And that is what Pres. Obama needs to do. Shove some reality done some throats in Congress, in the House, in the all powerful multi national corporations who, let's face it, are the root of so many of our problems.
It's easy to just say that, to lay blame at the door of one house (that of corporations) but truthfully, they and what they represent are greatly to blame. Once you move to a certain size in business, you lost sight of those that make up what your company is. We need to pull that back. Make sure that the people who make corporations what they are, are compensated, and not just those at the top and the share holders. We need to reorient how things are done, what is done, the orientation of those who run things and how they do business.
And this has to be world wide with the US leading the way. We don't just need innovation in product, we need more so, innovation in process.
There is hope. But only if we keep pressing the lazy bastards at the top and don't let them continuously trick and deceive us as they have ever always done in the past.
Change is a happening, don't let it stop.
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