Al's Opinions

In a previous post I advised my liberal-progressive-Democratic friends to let Obama go about the constitutional job of being President and not depend on him to start or promote new initiatives toward reforming our undemocratic, corporate-ridden political and economic system.  Starting something new is something we have to do ourselves.  Our opponents on the Right have been working for years to develop a coherent movement that, even though it is a minority, is so disciplined and organized that it has become more influential than the majority of our citizens.  As Democrats, we have a tradition of obstinate independence that precludes the discipline shown by the Tea Party movement.  We need to have at least agreed goals that conform with our views about what's wrong.

Unlike the Tea Party Movement, we can't vent our frustration with the system and at the same time advocate fundamental changes that will, if enacted, simply reinforce the things about the system that we hate.  Fortunately, we are not that disciplined and not that inclined to listen to demagogues who use our frustration and energy to promote their own selfish interests.

Let's start with agreeing on what needs to be changed.

• A great deal of wealth has been created in the past thirty or more years.  Most of it has gone to a tiny segment of society.  Most of us have not participated in becoming more wealthy.  CEO's of large companies typically receive salaries and other forms of remuneration 400 times that of the average worker.  In the rest of the industrialized world, excepting perhaps China, the ratio is only about 20.  Some of this wealth needs to be redistributed, starting with the tax code.
• We no longer have a system of representative government.  Our elected Representatives and Senators do not accurately represent us.  They represent the interests of those individuals and organizations who have money to spend on election campaigns.  This situation needs to be changed.  The supreme court decision a year ago simply verified what was already in effect; namely, that organizations with money have political influence.
• Our country has blundered into several needless wars: Viet Nam, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.  None of these wars was started in the constitutional way by a simple declaration of war by Congress.  None of them would have been started if the American Public had been consulted.  We can debate the question of whether we obtained any of our objectives in these wars, but in general the situation in each case has settled our of probably will settle out to be just what it would have been if there had been no war.
• We need to do a great deal more than we are doing about global warming.  It is too late to discuss the question of whether human activity is a cause.  We have to plan for a warmer environment, a rising sea level, more frequent and stronger hurricanes, and other undesirable changes in the weather.  Our government is doing practically nothing.  No reputable institution is advising us on how we must change our ways of living to cope with the coming climate changes.
• We put too many people in prison.  We require long prison terms for minor offenses.  Prosecutors use the threat of long prison terms to try to induce drug retailers to rat out their suppliers.  The retailers don't talk - they don't dare - and accept the long terms to protect their lives and their families' lives.  We should rely much more on a system of probation for minor offenders.  Probation is cheaper than prison.

Feel free to add to the list above.

We can not depend on favorite candidates for office to make these changes.  We need to use techniques recognized in the constitution itself: public protest and petition.  History teaches us that peaceful protest is more effective than violent protest.  Look at Russia!  The people rose up and violently ended the rule of the tsar.  What replaced it?  The rule of Stalin.  In these days, the rule of Putin.  It is not sufficient to overthrow a government that is oppressive.  There must be a profound change, not only in the government, but in the people.  Peaceful, if rowdy, demonstrations eventually wear down the prejudices of the people and bring about changes in the government.  I am talking here about an effort that will take two or three generations.  It isn't going to happen in the election of 2012.

Labels: reform achieved by patient activisim, Saul Alinsky, Stalin, tsardom