My biggest concern is that the citizens of this country are losing vigilance and intelligence. I'm assuming they had it in the first place. I am seeing scenes from Idiocracy in my head when I think of how a George Bush versus Al Gore election could have ever been even close. Maybe that is how this specie is- a nearly 50/50 ration of intelligent versus stupid. I guess survival really depends upon how fast one can run, and not how well one can think. But then that gets into a complex area. After all, we have survived all of these millions of years. Are we any stupider now than we were?
What I was thinking while reading your post is that we always hear there are three branches of government. Well, four if one counts the press. So we look outside of ourselves AT government. Yet there is another branch- The People. We make up another branch. And yet I've never heard anyone say it. As if we're detached. It's them versus us. I don't have a cellphone. I was in San Francisco recently, with my 90 year old father. We had separate things to do. When we drove home that night I remarked about how people seemed so detached from one another. He was surprised to hear me say it, because he had been walking around, and he noticed that people were all glued to their "devices". They were walking like zombies. It was so different than the SF that we knew in the 60' or even 90's. Whether or not this has anything to do with anything, it is dramatic. And I often wonder what kind of an effect modern, easy, living has had on our ability to be engaged and consciously part of something. I fear we've become so impatient that whether or not we're less intelligent now, we just don't have the connectivity to enact a better world for ourselves. For example, if we know that burning fossil fuel is going to kill us, and yet people seemingly blindly race around in cars, and jets, frivolously burning massive amounts of petroleum, as if it were benign, does that not indicate an unconsciousness towards self preservation? Is it no different than preservation of a genius work of civil construction? We built this house called America, and yet some seem to think they can live in it without any maintenance.
I have always thought that the majority of people were caring, vigilant, intelligent. I never imagined it was half and half. If that is the case, I don't see how this will ever be anything but a tug of war.
There are voices like Norman Soloman, who speak for me. But they seem to be unheard but for the noise made by the bigger voices. The corporate voices.
When Obama asked us to hold his feet to the fire, I thought of two things. That he knew he was one man up against the momentum of Pentagons, and lobbyists. And that he was telling us that we're another branch of this monumental orchestra.
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