Come Home America
The challenge is not keeping America great but rather returning America to America.
The country that I treasured as a child growing up in the ’50s and ’60s is hardly recognizable today. Its indescribable natural beauty remains, but we, the American people, have drifted far from our better nature.
When I travel the country, I re-unite with America. Whether in New York, Huntsville, Montgomery, New Orleans, or Boston, kind and thoughtful people are everywhere. This is the America I love. Open and without prejudice. Diverse. Ready to help. Anxious to be a friend. Industrious. Filled with energy and potential.
One-on-one people are great, but in the unfortunate event the conversation turns to politics, things turn binary. Whatever goodwill existed up to that point is at risk of being forfeited if one expresses the wrong view. There’s no middle ground; it’s either right-on or moron.
Isaiah 1:18 “Now come, let us reason together, saith the Lord,” doesn’t apply here. Why should we bother to apply reason to facts when that might expose those facts as half-truths? It’s not about what’s good for America; it’s about winning the argument!
Whether conservative or liberal, this collective half-mindedness follows us into the voting booth.
Our decision on a candidate is not guided by the prospect of gain as much as the fear of loss. Support is based more on our dislike of the opposing candidate than our like of the candidate for whom we’re voting. People who vote for Trump do so because they hate the democratic party and the liberals in it. And people who vote for Biden do so because they puke at the sight of Trump. Sleepy or not, they want Joe principally because they hate or strongly dislike Trump.
When it comes to winning over hearts and minds, politicians need to pollute them first.
In his book Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman writes: “negativity and escape dominate positivity and approach.” This tendency, known as “loss aversion,” is a driving force in our lives and what politicians tap into to hype the emotions that drive irrational decision-making.
If our elections are beginning to feel like a conspiracy, you’re not alone. “Negativity” is not just the domain of those seeking office, it’s also the domain of media that bankrolls vast profits from it. Negativity sells better than news unless it’s bad news.
This conspiracy doesn’t have any masterminds behind it; instead, it’s the signal of a dying political system that has turned up the noise to drown out its failings. There is no Civil War or Vietnam, and yet we’re as divided today as we were then. That’s the conspiracy! Not operating in the shadows but in full view for all to see and participate in. More like a churning pit of quicksand than a swamp.
Washington is capitalism at its worst. Money buys influence and influence is power. Outcomes are of little importance. Aside from a minority of dedicated civil servants who do the country’s heavy lifting, our nation’s Capital is running on borrowed time with borrowed money. Congress seems comfortable with our growing 20+ trillion-dollar debt; it keeps the Party alive and helps us to forget that this debt, ultimately, rests with every American to pay.
Our current political system, now approaching 233 years, had served us well but is old, redundant, and undermining the core principals upon which America was founded. It requires an overhaul; our political system needs to be Americanized. We need a system that is in line with the modern challenges we face, many of which didn’t exist in the days of our Founding Fathers. In the process of doing this, our Federal Government should be restored to its appropriate place. Not at the head of the country but in service to it.
Broken Congress — In his 2013 Ted Talk, American attorney, and professor of law, Lawrence Lessig, states that members of Congress spend “30 to 70 percent of their time raising money.” Not solving problems but looking for problems that address the wants of fundraisers and, occasionally, those of the general public.
Legislation is often written by lobbyists, many of whom served in Congress. And, as our elected officials are too busy with fundraising, they seldom read the legislation upon which they’re voting. You would think this is central to what we’re paying them to do, but it’s forgotten in the whiplash of finger-pointing and dick-swinging that takes priority in our Capital.
Washington is not just a failing democracy but non-stop theater that has the effect of distracting and further dividing America. We are emotionally connected to all the political buzz and cheerleading, but invariably we go nowhere. As Benjamin Franklin might have cautioned, “motion” is confused with “action.”
Like an engine about to cease, Congress is rattling out of control. Broken beyond repair.
Broken Bureaucracy — Nothing operates with a higher degree of waste and inefficiency than the US Federal Government, but that is intended.
When attending graduate school at American University in 1975, my teacher, a professor of Government and Public Administration, explained how things work in Washington. He said: “If you have a budget of $1 million to solve a problem, start by making that problem bigger and then ask for $10 million. That’s how you grow your agency and your role in it. ”
Today, our Federal Government employs a workforce estimated at 7 to 9 million and manages mountainous budgets that represent twenty-one percent ($4.4 trillion) of the US gross domestic product (GDP).
The simple fact that employee count is an estimate is evidence of the mess that is Washington’s bureaucracy. According to New York University Professor of Public Service, Paul C. Light, the problem stems from the Federal Government’s “blended workforce.” As of 2015 it comprised an estimated 3.7 million contract employees, 1.5 million grant employees, and 2.0 million Federal employees. Add in active-military (1.3 million) and the postal service (.5 million), and the total is an estimated 9 million.
In his report The True Size of Government. Light states: “Although Washington’s blended workforce has an imperative role in the nation’s success, it may have grown so large and poorly sorted that it has become a threat to the very liberty it protects.”
In fairness to civil servants, a lot of our bureaucracy’s inefficiency is the fault of Congressional mandate. For example, CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid) is prohibited from negotiating drug prices. The biggest buyer of drugs in the world is not allowed to apply their buying power, as would Walmart or Amazon, to lowering drug prices for Americans. Members of Congress are in debt to pharma donors and rewarding them at the expense of ordinary Americans.
The large number of contractors and grant employees (5.2 million) shows that the majority of our Federal Government is run by industry. Many may think it’s better to fund contractors, presumed to be more efficient, to do the government’s work. But what this actually reveals is the extent to which industry is fleecing government, and the extent to which our government is looking the other way.
One Hundred Twenty-Five Billion Dollars is a lot of money.
A 2015 report conducted by the Defense Business Board, a federal advisory panel of corporate executives, with help from McKinsey and Company shows the extend of government waste and neglect of the public trust.
According to a December 5, 2016 report in The Washington Post, by Whitlock and Woodward, the Defense Business Board report, “identified ‘a clear path’ for the Defense Department to save $125 billion over five years. The plan would not have required layoffs of civil servants or reductions in military personnel. Instead, it would have streamlined the bureaucracy through attrition and early retirements, curtailed high-priced contractors and made better use of information technology.”
But, as is Washington protocol, the facts were buried. “After the project documented far more wasteful spending than expected, senior defense officials moved swiftly to kill it by discrediting and suppressing the results.”
Imagine how many problems could be solved and new opportunities found with $125,000,000,000! But, no, that’s not how Washington works. It’s simply a spending machine with no regard for the consequences of its actions.
How American is that?
The Supreme Court — created by the Judiciary Act of 1789, two years after the Constitution was signed, the highest court in the land is still wrestling with fundamental aspects of the very document that’s supposed to define and protect us. An example of this is originalism vs. non-originalism.
The concept of “originalism” didn’t exist at the time the Constitution was written, but it does today. Originalism asserts that the Constitution be interpreted based on the “original understanding of the authors or the people at the time it was ratified.” Non-originalism views the Constitution as “evolving with changes in society and culture.”
We see in the Supreme Court today the same political divide we see in the rest of the country. Conservative justices tend to be originalists, and liberal justices tend to be non-originalists.
Maybe it’s time for a second Constitutional Convention to create a Constitution 2.0. We undermine the character of the Founding Fathers by wallowing in the excrement of failed government. We need to do as they would have done. Fix it!
Come Home America
Never in American history has power been more concentrated around politics, and Washington, than it is today. Winning is everything; honesty and integrity are for losers.
The American dream has come undone. The system intended to replace aristocracy with democracy is now moving in reverse. Our political leaders speak of unifying the country, but, oddly, we’re engaged in a domestic war where there shouldn’t be one.
Slavery is behind us as is Vietnam, but you’d think we live with both today, given the level of division in America.
Call it a conspiracy, but I see a parallel between the British imperialist tactic of creating tension between peoples in order to control them, and what’s happening in America today.
It’s political madness by design.
The country’s Founding Fathers were bright, ambitious, determined, and brave, but they were also imperfect. The Preamble to the Constitution makes this clear in stating that its purpose is to “form a more perfect Union…” Their work remains undone. It’s up to us to carry the American idea forward.
The fundamental principles of our country, as stated in the Declaration of Independence — Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness — should never change, but the political mechanism that ensures these principles needs to evolve to keep the dream of America alive.
Since the invention of the microchip in 1958, our world has become increasingly decentralized. This was not apparent at first, but the introduction of personal computers in the 1980s and the Internet, a decade later, changed the dynamics of work and the country. Today, entrepreneurs are by the millions, and opportunities are virtually everywhere.
Our Federal Government, by contrast, remains tethered to the past. Growing bigger, more inefficient, and dangerously irresponsible by the day. The Trump presidency only makes these limitations more obvious, but the trend to this point has long been in the making.
The end is approaching. We can either crash or set America on a new course. Assuming the latter, radical change will be required to address the many failings of our Federal Government. Fundamentally, its power needs to be trimmed along with its massively wasteful spending habits. Decentralized, States and regions around the country can take up the slack. In the process, power and money will shift from where it’s being abused to where it can provide value.
In conclusion…..
Washington has proven itself unworthy of America. Where America started is where America should return. Doing this will force Washington to a better place, put it in balance with the rest of the country, and make it a viable part of America once again.
