Democracy: at risk of failure?

Please first follow the links and read:

• David Schultz' Was Trump right: Could Minnesota flip in 2020?

• Then this series on Twitter: Blue Wave Democrats better have a coping strategy for November. ["Voting is necessary, but not sufficient."]

• Followed by this series on Twitter from David Roberts. ["The Very Serious People who serve as tone police in DC need to decide what they value more: democracy or civility."]

We don't have a clear exit from the swamp our country is drowning in, we're only learning to read a compass. We do know that we're seeing frightening levels of inconsistencies in the world, country, society we inhabit. The "shining city on the hill" is lost in an unbelievably thick fog. We have truly lost our way as a country, unless we are willing to live in the "United Corporations of America."

endangered: both the symbol and the reality of America

Photo by J. Harrington

Here are some key points of what we believe we do know:

• The conversation has become too shrill.


• We lack the necessary skills to effectively communicate with and compromise with each other.


• We lack leaders who will put the common good above personal and party advantage.


• A constitutional convention is very unlikely to turn out any better for democracy than Citizens' United did.

There are these reasons for hope that we've come across in the past few years:

• Miriam Horn's Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman.


• See how hunters, anglers and outdoor recreationists are trying to come together with energy developers to create responsible energy development.


• Explore The Next System Project.

Neither our economy nor our culture can function, let alone thrive, based on deviousness and untruths. We need to learn that we all have a stake in the outcomes of our political battles. Politics needs to return to some version of the  Marquis of Queensbury rules for politics. The alternatives, as we see them, are living in a totalitarian state or a state of anarchy.

The issues aren't limited to the US. Britain is floundering, from what we've read, with managing Brexit. We've read that foreign interference has exacerbated problems at home and abroad. What Americans, with few exceptions, are willing to live under a puppet government? Let us not make the perfect for some the enemy of the good for all.

For You O Democracy

By Walt Whitman

Come, I will make the continent indissoluble,

I will make the most splendid race the sun ever shone upon, 

I will make divine magnetic lands, 

                   With the love of comrades, 

                      With the life-long love of comrades. 

I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers of America, and along the shores of the great lakes, and all over the prairies, 

I will make inseparable cities with their arms about each other’s necks, 

                   By the love of comrades, 

                      By the manly love of comrades. 

For you these from me, O Democracy, to serve you ma femme! 

For you, for you I am trilling these songs.

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