Time to trade in the outdated solutions.

How are you holding up under the uncertainty? Would it be nicer and better if we lived in a world where politics and government were less relevant? That's not a rhetorical question but neither is it one to which we can pretend we have an answer. We've read enough fantasy and science fiction to be able to envision both a utopian and a dystopian option. For the past four years, and, actually, lots longer than that, we've seen a drift towards more dystopian society for US.

We remember the hope we felt when Jack Kennedy was elected, and the despair at his assassination. Lyndon Johnson's Great Society didn't work out as well as many of us hoped it would. "The main goal was the total elimination of poverty and racial injustice." Despite progress under Johnson, many of us felt doubly and triply robbed by the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968 and Robert F. Kennedy shortly thereafter in June. 

time to shore up our foundations

Photo by J. Harrington

Skipping ahead, President William Jefferson Clinton brought US the North American Free Trade Agreement. Its ratification was hindered because it omitted serious consideration of labor and environmental issues until they were addressed in side agreements. President Barack Obama tried to bring us the Trans-Pacific Partnership despite the criticism and opposition of many liberals and progressives.

time to mend our fences

Photo by J. Harrington

A cursory review of the past couple of decades indicates that the two major political parties representing US have become, for the most part, more considerate of their corporate sponsors than of the constituents who vote for them. How else to account for the missing "public sector" option in the passage of the Affordable Care Act. Does it now seem more understandable how many could vote for Trump, even after the past four years and why there has been a decided lack of enthusiasm for the candidacy of Joe Biden?

There is much needed and necessary work ahead for the rest of US to return what has become a corporatocracy into some semblance of a democracy. Some concepts and guidance can be found in these resources:

• On the Appropriateness of Local Scale & the Importance of Place
• Organizing Bioregionally
• How do we create communities to which all of us can belong?

These aren't all that's available, but they, and Elinor Ostrom, and Wendell Berry and the Schumacher Lectures and Doughnut Economics are places to start. Just remember, it's up to US to create the future we want and need and we can't do it alone, plus, the problems will change as we work on them.

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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