The Sage Observer

Where Do We Go From Here?–Part 1

When we look to our future, deciding the direction of our nation, we really don’t have to go back to school. We shouldn’t even have to talk about it. Over the many years of our history, we have been there, done that. We have empirical and historical evidence to support our options as into which direction our nation should go (or not go), economically and politically, whichever way we may decide. We have talked and studied these issues to death. If we don’t know the answers, we damn well ought to know them.

So, why don’t we "gitter done"? There is a problem. We are engaged in a civil war–a real war. It’s just that there have been no shots fired–at least not yet (and hopefully not ever). On the one hand, we have those concerned almost wholly with the civil and political rights of the people, corporatocracy, and the power elite (generally, these are those on the right); and, on the other those who are concerned with all three rights, civil, political, and social (generally these are those on the left), a problem exacerbated by the former’s preoccupation with the belief that one’s social status is wholly the result (or fault–depending upon the observers own status) of his own efforts, his economic and social environment, race, educational opportunities, and class status notwithstanding. This is further exacerbated, in my view, by the rapid widening of the disparity in income and wealth, as well as massive unemployment, due in part to globalization. This is explained very thoroughly in William Wilson’s book, When Work Disappears, published in 1996.

On November 19, 1863, at the dedication of the Soldier’s National Cemetery, in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, four and a half months after the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln delivered his world-famous address, part of which follows:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come….

Has anything changed? Here again, we are at a point of crisis; and are we not at the same point again, revisiting an old but obviously unresolved issue–equal rights for all, civil, political, and social? We have a crisis as to who is going to run this country, we the people or the Shadow Government of the Corporatocracy and Power Elite who have literally taken us over during the years since the advent of Ronald Reagan; and, as evidenced by our current status, growing disparity in income and wealth, and diminution in voting power (thanks to the 2006 amendment to the voting rights act of 1965 and decision of our U. S. Supreme Court in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission). 

We were conceived in liberty and created equal under the law. The question now is will we endure?

Ronald Miller

mtss86@comcast.net