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Tuesday, 02 January 2007 13:48 |
| | Bill Walz |
By far, the best event of 2006 was the electorate voting out Republican control of Congress.
America woke up and acknowledged that we have been presided over by what historians are speculating may be the worst president and the worst Congress in American history. Government "of, by and for the people" had become the Corporate/Evangelical States of America. The anti-government people had manipulated and bullied their way into controlling the government. As Iëve said in this column before, could there possibly be a worse idea?
The
wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and with terrorism are being lost because all
the blather about democracy in the Middle East was only cover for their
real purpose: political leverage, access to oil, war contracts and
subverting the Constitution. The true complexity of what Bush was
marching us into was never seriously considered. The Republican agenda
has been to put narrow-minded religiosity into government and to
contract out and privatize governmental responsibility everywhere it
possibly could.
Banking, medical, environmental and energy policy were
written by industry. Itës been a disaster. We began to see in 2006 just
how corrupt and inept the business sector is when not balanced by
activist government oversight and tempered by bedrock American
commitments to egalitarianism and civil liberties. Pundits say the
election was about Iraq and Katrina. They have yet to link those
disasters to a more pervasive rot in the American soul, turning the
society over to the profit motive and business methods.
Here we are. The
environment is slipping toward catastrophe. The arts, heritage,
tradition and culture have been marginalized as important only if
profitable. The health care system/industry is in violation of its
Hippocratic Oath. We have become a nation of slaves to soul-numbing
jobs that are being shipped overseas anyway. Our pensions are
disappearing. Banks are manipulating us into crushing personal debt
levels. Corporations change the rules of the game whenever their
scramble for profits calls for it, never caring about the needs of
workers, citizens or the country. Media has become lurid mind-rot and
vapid journalism, functioning not for the benefit of the people, but as
instruments of promoting consumerism and consolidating
corporate/government power. We are increasingly becoming a three-tiered
society with an elite of wealthy money and power manipulators, a
general population of manipulated workers/consumers and a growing
number falling into poverty.
Commercialism
and corporatism is on the brink of destroying this country. Maybe, just
maybe, 2007 is the year that Americans discover that greed is not good
and finally start yelling Howard Beale-like from the movie "Network,"
"Iëm mad as hell and Iëm not going to take it anymore!" Maybe, just
maybe, with the election of November 2006, Americans showed signs of
waking up. Maybe 2007 will be the year that Americans start taking back
their country. Republicans, many Democrats and the whole dehumanizing
corporate world, take warning.
America is a
beautiful country on the verge of losing it all. Maybe in 2007 an
irrepressible movement fighting for wisdom, conservation, transnational
cooperation, simplicity, generosity and compassion will spring forth.
Maybe in 2007, weëll decide that we surely canët be the bullying,
crass, selfish creatures that we somehow have become. Not this golden
land of promise.
"Throw open your
windows and shout, ǃÚIëm mad as hell, and Iëm not going to take it
anymore!" Write to your congressman and your newspapers. March in the
streets. Most of all, change your values and your life. Simplify.
Beautify. Conserve and protect what is beautiful and precious, knowing
that it surely isnët symbolized by big-box stores, overdrawn credit
cards, SUVs or giant flat-screen TVs. And surely it isnët young
Americans trapped in a disintegrating Middle Eastern country, killing
and dying over oil while CEOës-turned-politician continue to lie to us.
Let 2007 begin
to change all that. Letës make sure the Democratic Congress really
takes us in a new direction. And hereës hoping for a presidential
campaign that really gives us something, someone, to believe in. Hereës
hoping for hope, for America regaining her soul.
ï
Bill Walz is a
UNC Asheville adjunct faculty member and a private practice teacher of
mindfulness, personal growth and consciousness. Contact him at
bill.walz-at-worldnet.att.net or 258-3241.
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