The fabric of our democracy is being undermined by the very representatives we have elected to maintain its integrity. The government, an establishment intended to be of and by the people is now in opposition to its public. Humanitarian injustice takes place at home and abroad, surveillance systems that were set up to keep the populace in order are being used indiscriminately against the interest of their wellbeing, and mass corruption ravages the leaders of our country.
Is our democracy no longer legitimate? Does the system serve the public’s best interest or the interest of a few who hold the keys to power and decision-making? I think we know the answers.
Maybe it’s time… time to take action… time to bring about a day of reckoning… If not now, when? If not because of the wrongs committed against us, and in our names against others, then what will it take?
We should look to the ideal established by the students of 19th Century Russia — in the words of Dostoevesky, a “proletariat of undergraduates” — the minority of outspoken revolutionaries who were willing to speak their minds in the face of injustice at the hands of thew few who were in power and cry out into the abyss of a silent majority.
But where to start? It all seems hopeless in the great machinations of bureaucracy and due process. And those of us who have the most at stake often seem the most jaded by the media, the institutions, the press, the politicians, the pharmaceuticals and narcotics used to pacify us, the list goes on… But who are we to blame but ourselves for our inaction. The least we can do is refuse to settle for injustices committed in our names and speak up when others have fallen silent.
Hear! Hear! It is time for a revolution in our society. Our forefather’s must be turning over in their graves at what has happened with the freedom they gave us. I think we should throw out all the politicians and CEO’s and replace them with farmers, bankers, merchants, housewives, and other common sense people!!
If only we could expedite the process. In Camus’ “American Journals” there’s a resounding sentiment of distaste for what he’d seen and felt in his exploration of the Americas, specifically in New York City, Philly, D.C. This visit was during the WWII years regarding which points out: “One feels that it,(America), has been completely unaware of the war. In the course of a few years Europe, which was several centuries ahead in knowledge, moved several centuries ahead in moral consciousness.” One of those little truths American arrogance denies as significant and that somehow we’ve introduced a whole new way of life, a way of life for which all humans should naturally desire. Camus’ point is that despite all our ostentatious displays of superiority in the spirit of capitalism, he had no sense of love as in it didn’t exist for him by nature of American culture.
An American whose aquaintance was made in his travels named Tucci pointed out in a manner devoid of humor told him: “Human relationships are very easy here because there are no human relationships. Everything stays on the surface. Out of respect and from laziness.” Certainly how I might’ve put it but the observance rings both true and doleful. Validating my sense of disconnect and alienation from others people around me causing to expect something little from those around me and any hope for a sense of community. Enough said. J