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Tuesday, September 26, 2017

Our Leader

What are a people to do? How are they to protect themselves from themselves in a nation governed by a representative democracy? We live in a wonderful nation, a nation governed by the majority, yet ever protective of the rights and privileges of the minority. One of those protections is our Electoral College, an institution comprised of a set of electors who are, under the law, selected by the voters to choose who should lead the country. I submit to you that this time it failed us, an observation with which, if you are really watching with an open and informed mind, you must surely agree. We have elected the wrong person to office, political parties notwithstanding. Our nation is in serious trouble.

Leon Friedman, professor of Constitutional Law at the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University, wrote on November 10, 2016 in the Huffington Post, that the reason we have the Electoral College “goes back to our founders’ distrust of democracy. Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 68 explained that the ‘immediate election [of the President] should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station.’ Rather, a ‘small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations.’” This having been said, I can’t help but wonder who is going to protect the majority from the minority, the 0.1% who have “all the money”. This is just to provide for you a brief summation as to why we have the Electoral College, but another thought relative to this election enters my mind. Was Donald Trump really elected legally? Wasn’t it just reported that twenty-one states were hacked in this election? How did that affect the vote of the Electoral College?

Now let’s talk briefly about the Presidency of the United States of America. Wikipedia tells us that “the President of the United States is the head of state and head of government…. The president directs the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces. The president is considered to be the world’s most powerful political figure, as the leader of the only contemporary global superpower. The role includes being the commander-in-chief of the world’s most expensive military with the second largest nuclear arsenal and leading the nation with the largest economy by nominal GDP. The office of President holds significant hard and soft power both domestically and abroad”. This goes on, but you can check it out in Wikipedia and, also, Article II of the Constitution.

It has been said that the government of the United States is the “largest enterprise in the world”. If you will, imagine for just a moment being the CEO of an organization that huge and the immensity of the challenge such a job, arguably the biggest job in the world, entails. Think about it a long time because that is the problem before us. We have hired the wrong job applicant. We have hired the wrong man regardless of politics. He just ain’t qualified to fill the job for which he was hired.

Whether you love him or not, let’s look briefly at the problems currently facing our nation, problems which we must solve if we are to survive. Let there be no doubt about it, this is serious. These problems must be solved. The games have to stop.

 First, and above all, this nation is the most divided since our Civil War in which, according to historian J David Hacker, an estimated 750,000 soldiers died (it is said that is proportionally equivalent to 7.5 million US dead in 2012 [Ref: BBC News 4 April 2012]). We must come together and we need a leader who will do that. In almost every instance, rather than unite us, our president is serving to separate us—just listen to the news.

Second, we are on the verge of a nuclear war with North Korea. Our leader has done almost everything possible to exacerbate this threat, the nation of Iran notwithstanding. Do you think?

Third, our whole healthcare system is threatening to explode. Our people, most of them—I believe—simply can’t pay these massive increases in costs when, really, a solution is relatively simple if not for the petty very expensive political bickering of our elected representatives.

Fourth, as I have repeatedly written in the past, we are losing our democracy. The rights of our people notwithstanding, our nation is being governed by a shadow government of the Corporatocracy and Power Elite, controlling every move of our elected representatives through lobbying, campaign financing, and who knows what else. We must get money out of government. We must overturn the Supreme Court ruling to the effect that Corporations are people with equal rights. We must take back our country.

President Trump is not a leader either within our country or without. His position in the Trump Empire notwithstanding, he is not a manager; and, to say the least, he is intellectually incompetent. In his current position, he is a dangerous man—dangerous to our country and dangerous to you and to me. He should do the right thing and resign.

I have just now exercised my freedom of speech. Now you exercise yours. If you agree with me, please share this in the public venue, Facebook and otherwise. In the meantime, this is Ronald Miller.


   

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