Jeff Barnes

Is our government really a democracy?  Is it even a republic?  What about a hybrid like it was meant to be? I don’t think so.  In fact, I think our government is moving in the exact opposite direction of what the founders intended.  Our own constitution states that “We the People of the United States…” which would imply that all persons in the United States would receive equal say in all matters of the governance of our nation.  The Declaration of Independence states that “…Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…”  This is why we became the country we are today.  However, I fear that over the past 60 or so years, our country has begun to deteriorate and as people we have begun to relinquish our control and say of how our country is governed to those with more wealth and power than the majority.  Our government pretends to be a government “by the people, for the people,” but I have my doubts.

If you think I am mistaken, please look around you and determine if what I say is a fallacy or perhaps hints at the truths we have failed to see.  Take for instance the school system. Established during the industrial revolution, the school system was started so that industry titans of the day would have a competent work force that could read directions, follow directions, and help to produce goods for the company.  Children were taught to obey, read, do simple math, and stay on task.  For those who have children, do they actually tend to obey and stay on task regularly?  Probably not, but we wanted to engineer a good work force, so we created a government-run institution to do this for us.  Schooling hasn’t changed much since the dawn of the system over 100 years ago, but I’ll be damned if the world around us hasn’t.

It should be noted that the purpose of government is to take care of the items that are of public interest (public goods) that the private sector would otherwise not be interested in handling.  Such is the case for our national highway system and defense.  I think we all agree that our defense system has played an integral part in who we are today.  Did you know, however, that the national highway system came to be under President Eisenhower who told us to create an infrastructure so that we could readily transport military weaponry and personnel across the country with ease?  That is the basis for our infrastructure today- the war department.  i have no problems or qualms with the reasons for our highway system, just the way we go about fixing it.  I’m sure most of you know that governing authorities who take on bids to fixing or improving roads and bridges generally take the lowest bid from a contractor.  Then, when the contractor gets the job, he somehow comes up with “unexpected and additional costs” that put the final bill way over the sums of even the highest bidders at the outset.  Guess what, these construction companies know what they’re doing, and they are generally in the pockets of our politicians long before the bidding process even starts.  It’s no wonder the government takes so damn long to fix anything- they pay by the hour and seem to have unlimited funds to do so.

Back on topic…My main point is that our government is no longer run “by the people or for the people.”  Would you actually sanction a system of education that teaches your child how to be average instead of excel in life?  Would you be willing to foot the bill for a road that wasn’t needed just because it “might help spur on the local economy”?  Would you want to help pay for a weapon whose basic function is to destroy all life within 50 miles just to “scare off” anyone who may or may not be interested in attacking us?  Would you send soldiers to die for a cause that you didn’t understand fully?  Would you vote for a politician to keep his/her salary for life even though yours is never guaranteed from one day to the next?  Would you be willing to allow a drug to be injected into your child without knowing what its purpose was or what ailment it is helping to prevent?

My guess is that you would say “NO” to most, if not all of those things.  However, we go along with these issues on a daily basis.  Children are immunized against STDs…at birth! Roads are built with money we don’t have because we want to “get the economy moving” again.  Doomsday weapons are built in an effort to scare off would be attackers to the tune of billions of taxpayer dollars every year.  We go along with this, not because of choice, but because of the lack of our own personal education, and the craftiness of those in charge.

In case you haven’t figured it out yet, I don’t think the politicians are actually in charge.  Most people know that politicians spend millions getting into office, only to be awarded substantial, shall we say, kickbacks when they work with their constituents.  Make no mistake though, folks, we are not really their constituents.  The real constituents are the major money players in the game.  The people who pay for those billion dollar campaigns and tell the politician which way they want the vote to go.  The media moguls who dictate what we will watch, hear, and then regurgitate as if they are our own words- those are the people who are in charge.  Don’t believe me?  Watch Fox News for a week and then tell me you don’t think every Democrat is a force for evil?  Listen to Rachel Maddow for a while and then tell me that you don’t think the Republicans are all blasphemous idiots!  You see, we, as a nation, are too damn dumb to understand what is going on, so we tune into our favorite news show and let them tell us what to think, instead of looking at the facts.

I started this piece talking about the governing documents for our country and the education system for a reason.  How many of you can actually tell me how the Bill of Rights and Articles of the Constitution differ? Not many I’d guess. I’m not trying to make you feel dumb, but rather pointing out that we aren’t actually informed or educated enough to understand how the system works, and how it should work.

I will leave you with one comment and a question that hopefully will give you pause and believe that I might be onto something here.  Were you aware that the top 5% of income earners (>$160k per year) pay nearly 60% of the federal income taxes for our country, and the bottom 50% pay none?  If I had two acquaintances who both wanted favors from me, and one had money and the other had none, whose favor do you think I would do first? This is how our government works, and this is why our special interest groups are so powerful.

Now ask yourself this: when was the last time you heard of a government program (school, workshop, etc.) that actually taught you how to become a top 5% earner so that you could help influence our government’s direction?

I have yet to see one.

It has already been ten years since the towers fell.  Since the Pentagon was attacked.  Ten years since a plane was hijacked by terrorists, only to have the passengers thwart their efforts and crash themselves into the ground in Pennsylvania.  Has it really been ten years already?  It baffles me how quickly time flies.

As you might have guessed by my previously cynical posts, this isn’t going to be a piece on how tragic that day was, nor how great our country was to come together thereafter.  Those are both truths that are being told time and again.  What I want to focus on is, what have we as Americans, as individuals, as a country, and as a global society, what have we accomplished in those ten years.

The first couple of years after the attacks, the world mourned for the United States and the victims of 9/11, as we all did.  We were labeled courageous, patriotic, heroic, driven, and unwavering.  These we all were as we searched out Al-Qaeda and Bin Laden in the first few years of the millennium.

But what then?  Then we used our “go get ‘em” attitude to seek out Iraqi insurgents and WMDs, most of which never existed or we never found.  The world started wondering if we had gone rogue, and as a US Navy sailor at that time, I wondered the same.  We were chasing phantom threats, and spending all of our taxpayers’ money (and borrowed money) doing it.  We blasted through all of our allies’ good will too, which wasn’t cheap either.

The other thing we did was inappropriately label Muslims as ‘extremists’ and ‘terrorists’.  Luckily, we didn’t go to the extremes of 1941-42 when all Japanese-Americans were thrown into internment camps, but we did unfairly demonize the Islamic religion.  Luckily for us, Muslim-Americans were not going to wage an all out war on the US and heed the call to arms that Bin Laden wanted.  Otherwise, we would be a markedly different country today.

Not only did we demonize Muslims, but we tore the veil of civil and human rights to shreds and stomped all over any freedoms that most Americans have.  That continues to this day, and all in the name of “safety and protection” of the American people.  I don’t think creating a new multi-billion dollar department of homeland security and transportation security administration has really made people feel much safer.  It’s all an illusion, and it’s time to stop letting our so-called fears of terrorism to overrule our freedoms as Americans.  You want security at an airport?  Give a Marine a fully automatic M16 and put one of them at every checkpoint.  That will be a much better deterrent than the fat-assed job security seeking morons that think that every bottle of baby formula is a damn bomb!

The other thing we did post-9/11 was destroy our entire economy.  We wanted people to keep spending money after the towers fell, so we dropped interest rates to the lowest they’ve ever been, just so people could get cheap money.  Well, we’re idiots with money, and look where that brought us!  We brought the entire civilized world to the brink of disaster, and it still could happen no doubt, all because we forgot what happened to Gordon Gecko after he stated “Greed is good!”

The other sad truth about post 9/11 America is that we have basically handed over the defense department to the likes of billion dollar companies that create war machines.  We’ve spent hundreds of billions of dollars over the decades on bombs, jets, guns, and the highest and most technologically advanced weapons ever seen just to send our troops into areas where road side bombs that are 30 years old are still killing our men and women daily.  If history has told us anything at all, we need to stop spending so much money on R&D for defense contracts, just so that those weapons can be sold to foreign countries, only to have those same countries turn around and fight the US years down the road (Iran, Iraq, Russia, etc.).

Now, I’m not entirely bitter about everything that our moronic government has done since 9/11. We did kill Osama Bin Laden (the way we should have done it initially by the way), we took down Saddam Hussein (so Baby Bush could get patted on the head by Daddy Bush), and we reminded the world not to fuck with us because we will cram an MK48 Missile up your ass if you do!

I am bitter, however, that we alienated our allies, refused the warnings of the UN, decided that spending money to spur growth was more important than fixing fundamental issues at home, made Americans feel uncomfortable in their own homes, and tripled our national debt in less than a decade! It’s time to pull in the reins, rethink our long term strategies, and stop acting like we’re doing all this in the name of freedom and the American People.  Stop lying to me and telling me that you’re staring at my junk in an x-ray machine for my safety! If anyone believes that load of crap, then the terrorist have won, our government is becoming as close to a fascist-dictatorship as it can without outright claiming so, and our populace is getting as dumb as it possibly could.

Don’t let the “Remember 9/11″ call turn into a “Let go of all you hold dear so that the government can ‘protect’ you” mantra!