What is Democracy?

        We talk a lot this election season about democracy as if it is an absolute. I suspect it is because we have created a bipolar world where all the political commentators speak as if one side is “absolutely” wrong and the other “absolutely” right. We just need to find out which side we agree with and listen to only them. This seems to play well with television or media ratings, but it is wreaking havoc on the administration of justice, and society in general.

We seem to have lost sight of the wisdom from the age of enlightenment, when men argued over the rights of the many versus the rights of the few.

Democracy traces its foundation back to the golden age of Greek civilization when Athens gave its citizens the right to decide the big issues facing the city. We tend to gloss over the fact those guys told Socrates to bugger off and while he’s at it never bother them again. I’m not sure that approach was really the best course of action for someone we now hold as a great philosopher. Of course, they say hindsight is 20/20.

As I’ve aged, I’ve changed, just as the world has changed around me. The one thing I’ve come to accept is the supposed truths I held at thirty are not the same as I hold today. Of course, anytime we talk about truths we seem to come back to the opening of the Declaration of Independence, where our learned politicians seeking to rebel against the Crown declared “all men are created equal” as a counter to the standard of the day where the Pope had declared the divine rights of the kings, and the nobility were happy to keep that idea alive. Today we can question what they really meant but should keep in mind the progressives of the day didn’t see a real problem with slavery.

As I look back on life, I’m not sure I’ve seen a move toward that utopian world all the progressives and media promised us if we would just let the government guide our individual destinies toward that united ideal where all men and women (or other accepted genders) within the galaxy would serve a single purpose. Excepting, of course, those worlds who are the baddies. In fact, it appears San Francisco is doing its best not to be considered as a campus for Starfleet.

In the roughly 80 years since it was chartered has the United Nations ever actually lived up to its original purpose to allow conflict resolution without resorting to war. Why is that? We have great documents, but not much faith in its ability to protect human life, religious freedom, the rights of all men and women, and the environment. From my perspective it seems to be just a big clearing house for money transfer from the haves to the wants. Of course, progressives love it for its purpose and happily gloss over its failures.

So, we come to our quad annual election of a Chief Executive. One side promises democracy, while telling us the other side will return us to the life of 1930’s Germany under a new Hitler. We are presented a black and white choice that so many young have come to believe is the only option. Neither party and the power brokers within it are willing to cast aside their old ways and find a moderate approach that will serve to fix America and its problems. The best we can do is vilify the other side. Until recently the right was complaining about having a President with dementia running the country. Now it is the left who worries about having a President with dementia running the country.  As an interested individual all I can say is giving every kid a trophy apparently didn’t grow kids who could inspire anyone. Between piercings and tattoos, gender fluidity, and various shades of hair I don’t think the next generation is going to be much different than the radicals and hippies of my generation who are now the elder statemen of the two primary parties.

At the end of the day the question of what is democracy remains open for discussion since I’m no longer sure we have a republic that honors the individuals as it once did.

The Last Eight Years (Pt 2)

            What created President Trump? By all accounts, Donald J. Trump was happy being the center of attention in his empire, both in development and then on TV. He donated to his favorite politicians like most rich do, and he basked in the associations with people like the Clintons, but something changed during the Obama years that led DJT to run for office. What was it? The left will tell us he is a manifestation of our racist nature, but since they use that for most of their primary justifications it has grown thin and is not supported by Trump’s past. 

            For what it’s worth I think he saw the social decline in our nation and realized he had an opportunity that was not available to him before. He played on the divisions created by the social warriors of the left, fighting to take control of the DNC and like a bull in a China shop charged into the havoc of the 2016 primaries. He was smart enough to know the left would not accept his position of putting America ahead of a one-world government, not making the LGBT… crowd the center of attention, or begging for the support of white liberal women, so he ran as a Republican. It should be noted that Trump has changed party affiliation several times switching from Republican to Democrat to Independent and back, like changing a suit. What he brought to the campaign was self-confidence and arrogance most professional politicians have been taught to hide. This resonated with the party faithful who really wanted to change the status quo of being the “loyal opposition” to the Democratic domination.

            On the other side, the Democrats played the primary game, but it was clearly a rigged contest as the brokers in the party ordained Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton as their future Queen.  She had filled all the right squares as first lady, one term Senator, and Secretary of State under Obama. Besides, who didn’t want a woman President, no matter how flawed? The party knew full well all her baggage but rested on their laurels as those deplorable Republicans ran such an awful candidate who didn’t care about all the social justice demands of the Democratic National Committee. HRC campaigned in places where she could feel adored like NYC, California, and Chicago. She left what she, and her advisors, were told were safe union states to fend for themselves. It didn’t look like she understood the American psyche for change every eight years or so. If the DNC did understand this they’ve put on a tremendous show of surprise when on election night all of a sudden the winner was DJT. It was as if they were shocked the public would elect a Philander. This is funny on its face since Hillary’s husband was elected despite his philandering. 

            Once the Democrats recovered from their shock, they spent the next four years doing everything they could to vilify the President. The Steele Dossier was their first shot. They denied the legitimacy of the election, marched in the streets with funny hats, waved rainbow flags, and voiced as much outrage as possible. This was all dutifully reported by a loving media who were equally shocked by Trump's victory. The Democratic-controlled House set records for the number of political impeachments they were willing to levy, knowing full well they didn’t have a snowball's chance of winning in the Senate.

            Meanwhile, Donald Trump basked in the spotlight of their hate, while he changed federal spending priorities, and had his administration eliminate regulations by the truckload. Article after article came out shaming him and all the professional politicians couldn’t understand how he remained standing against their harsh words. Then COVID-19 came from China and the world changed.  Now the nation was locked down, and the powers in the states wrestled with how to let everyone vote without having to prove they were voting. At the same time, they questioned the legitimacy of every offhand remark the President made as if they had been carved into stone tablets. What we see now is how the upper-level bureaucrats worked to undermine his positions as they prostituted themselves for the DNC. The death toll of the initial surge of COVID-19 deaths was frightening and the mismanagement of how to protect the most at risk is now legend. The fear of the average person grew to remarkable degrees, and seemingly along political lines for some reason. Today you still see liberals and Democrats who appear to carry those fears forward with masks, sanitizers, and limited social activities. The whole vaccine fiasco stands as a testament to how trusted bureaucracies like the CDC and the FDA can destroy confidence in their expertise and political neutrality. As a result, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had only to campaign from some basement to win the election. An election where about 20,000 more votes were cast than had ever been cast before. How is that explained?  For Democrats, it's simple – “Despite their best efforts the GOP was unable to curtail the poor black people’s ability to vote.”  For Republicans, the answers are a little more complex and perhaps suspicious. But at the end, the votes were counted and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris swept into office with the promise of unifying the nation.

The Last Eight Years? (Pt 1)

This next election is really about the last eight years, or is it? Perhaps we need to go further back to understand the choices we’ve made and the choices before us? I doubt this opinion will matter much to anyone but me, but if you choose to read it consider if I am accurate or just full of excrement. Those who know me know my political positions but let me give anyone else a synopsis. First and foremost, I am a FISCAL conservative. By that, I mean spending within our means is what matters most to me, as I see unrestrained growth of debt as a nation-killer. There is a lot of history in this position as we look at the ancient world up through WW II. Socially, I’ve moved from a liberal indifference to a moderate, as the two extremes drag the respective political parties to the extremes. What I see today are two primary parties led by people who no longer understand how to govern, they simply fight for media supremacy. I see an electorate who can’t be bothered holding their politicians to moderate positions as they all clamor for the federal dollars everyone wants. I’m not sure reason and accountability have ever been a key component for a politician, but by all measures, it does not exist today.

            In 2008 this nation faced a real fiscal crisis which many viewed as equivalent to the stock market crash of 1929. The federal government under Bush and a Congress led by John Boehner (R-OH) in the House and Harry Reid (D-NV) in the Senate. The crash came because of lending practices for home mortgages by the Federal Government when home sales stopped and people and bankers speculating with short-term “balloon payment” mortgages could not make their payments and had to declare bankruptcy. There was a decent movie made in 2011 called “Margin Call” that shows the type of crash that happened. As a result of this disaster the American people who had unified in 2001 to fight a terrorist enemy, again united to remove the GOP from power and instill a Democratic Congress and our first Black President.

            That President had almost total control over running the government and chose a path to redefine the role of the government as a social institution. His party passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act. But in their arrogance, the Democratic liberals knew they had to lie to the American people about what this new “socialized medical scheme” would do. The GOP railed against the act and the costs, but with a coopted media they were simply painted as “evil men protecting the big businesses.” At the same time we were pushing into this world the government was attempting to save businesses “too big to fail.” Chrysler, GM, and others. As far as I know, Ford was alone in its choice not to take the federal dollars.  How much of GM, and how many jobs were saved by these efforts?  I know all the executive positions are still there, but how many plants employing thousands of UAW workers are left?

            In his eight years of leadership, did his choices on how to lead the nation make us a stronger and more unified people? He routinely argued against guns, and Americans went out and bought guns in record numbers. He recognized when an African American was killed by violence at the hands of a white man, but seldom when it was at the hands of another African American, or when a white was killed by a black.  Did his efforts reduce violence in the urban areas, or lessen the probability of school violence? In short, did he move us to that dream of Martin Luther King, Jr. where his children will “… one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character?” Looking around I don’t see his leadership in achieving Dr. King’s ambition.

            We can speculate as to why that was, the left would say our racism came out, but is that really the result of our institutions, or the agenda of those who would rebuild our nation to spend its time repaying others for the sins of the past? The one truth that seems obvious to me is as long as we make race the central component of every story we will never move beyond racism. It really doesn’t matter if we are speaking about white, Asian, or Brown. If we implement a race-based program of any nature we further the issue of race as a central dividing point amongst the people of our nation.