Mr. President, What Big Ears You Have

I'm afraid that our nation's only hope no longer rests at all in its elections, but rests in an unprecedented event that would occur between election day in 2016 and Inauguration Day of 2017. Sometime between those two days we need a big bad wolf to commandeer the White House and to lay waiting in the Lincoln Bedroom, disguised as President Obama of course, for the next President elect to arrive. And when that person arrives and gets around to asking the wolf what big ears he has. The wolf can answer: 'The better to hear everyone with.' And with that, the big bad wolf can lock the President elect up with Obama and take over the President's elect 4 year term. And after those 4 years, we can decide on whether we should either keep the big bad wolf as President or let Obama and the President elect come out of the closet.

The moral of this story is that the qualities we most need in our next President and all other elected officials is that of wanting and being able to listen. But here, I am not just referring to having a President putting up with listening to us people moan and groan. Included with that is for the next President to listen to us as we provide at least half of the solutions to our nation's problems.

See, every election we say we want change. We say that we want our nation back. But it beats the heck out of us to figure out who has our nation in the first place and we are too ignorant of history to really know who had it in the first place. And while saying we want change, we still vote in the 2 major parties despite their track record and their dependence on others who are monetarily well-endowed. 

We also say that we want America to be great again. But at what point in our history has America been great without relying significantly on exploiting others? Do we really want to exploit more people to be great when we are in denial of those whom we have already abused and taken advantage of? So how can anyone take us seriously when we say the things we do? 

If our nation was really honest with itself, we would admit the following about what we want with every election. We want to elect officials whom we can ignore until the next election.  For some of us that means that we want our elected officials do not get in the way of our own pursuits in life, many of which are trivial. For others of us it means that we want our elected officials to make it look like they are helping those whom we don't want to touch. 

Of course there are those who want to get as much out of the government as they can. The worst offenders here are the financial elites. They don't fit the voters described above because they don't ignore those whose elections they've paid for. And so we vote for authoritarians to get our wish. Why authoritarians? Because it takes authoritarians to run government without our input and guidance. And if you look at the current field, it is, without exception, filled with authoritarians.

The idea of greater citizen participation was one of the two main messages of Occupy Wall Street (OWS). Certainly OWS wanted to draw attention to the misdeeds of the 1%. But just as much if not more than that was the idea that we wanted more citizens to take an active role in our democracy noting here that democracy is more than just voting every x number of years. The reduction of democracy to just voting is probably one of the biggest reasons why we have the kind of government we have now and that is regardless of the political party in power.

So what we really need from any future President is that he/she would demand that we, the citizens, persistently participate in government in ways in addition to voting. Those candidates who do not call on us to do so are mere authoritarians who are, because of the complexity of the job, ill-equiped to approach the job that way. 

And if we want government to change, we have to change ourselves first. We can no longer vote for the candidates whom we think we can ignore until the next election. We must demand that our next President, as well as all of our other elected officials, include us not just in the identification of problems, but in the finding of solutions. To not change to that means that we could confine ourselves to our own individual pursuits, but it also includes living in a nation on the decline led by a government that exists to serve itself. And that means that eventually, we will not the choices we have today.

The Kind Of Revolution We Need For Ferguson et al

There is something that has gone wrong in the exchanges between the police and the protesters who are reacting to the grand jury decisions in Ferguson and New York. While one side chants 'shut it down,' the other takes offense at any sympathy shown to the protesters and their cause. And as for my fellow Leftists, as long as we are content with the current divisions, we are missing an opportunity to further democracy.

Some of the protesters want to exert their power by stopping events or processes by their mere presence. At this point, such is actually a call to maintain the current power game only to change the identity of those who are in charge. It's not that I couldn't protest with them, it is that we are focussing more on who is in control rather than how to change the control game. So though I could join them because of the rampant racism and abuse of power that exist in law enforcement, a Leftist perspective to solving the problem is missing here.

And when we combine that with the negative police response to sympathetic expressions made to the protesters shown by NFL players, the end result is that we see ourselves in a tribal war between those who favor team Black versus those who favor team Blue. And what confirms that this war is tribal, that is what is right and wrong in this war is mostly determined by who does what to whom, is that we are being forced to pick sides. It seems that we are not allowed to show understanding to both the police, whose jobs can be excruciatingly difficult and even life risking, and people who belong to minorities who have continued to suffer from a harsh racism exercised by those in power.

There is a Leftist solution to our current tribal struggle that has been perhaps deliberately overlooked by many on the Left. That solution would not replace the protests, such would be wrong. Rather, that solution would be added to the protests. That solution would consist of creating groups of representatives from both law enforcement and minority communities who would both listen to each other and share their concerns so that they could perhaps come up with a list of joint suggestions and even demands on which our elected officials would act on. And here, we should be clear that there should be multiple such groups of representatives from  both groups across the whole country who would be participating in such a venture.

Such a getting together is more of an exercise in democracy because we would be involving more of the stakeholders in our  society in making decisions. The more stakeholders involved here, the more self-rule we are exercising. And the more self-rule we are exercising, the stronger is our democracy. 

And for these meetings of the minds between those in law enforcement and those from minority communities to contribute to democracy, they must be put together voluntarily and in great enough numbers. If we wait for the government elites to put together these meetings or to speak for all of us, we would be showing our passivity. Here, we should note that citizen passivity and enjoying a strong democracy is a contradiction in terms. We can't have both. We should also note that democracy is not just exercising the right to speak one's mind, it is working to both create the opportunities for others to speak their minds and to listen to what they have to say despite any possible disagreements one might have with them. To work to have one's own group seize control so that they tell others what to do is undemocratic. 

This blog stated in a previous post that democracy is a state of being for a society. That the more democratic a society is, the more all of its citizens are involved in self-rule. Thus, how democratic a society is, is at least partially determined by the number of democratic processes we practice and employ. Our problem is that we are so easily divided by ideologies and other differences and our personal identities have become so tribally determined that we easily sacrifice the practice of democracy in order to preserve our own group loyalty and advance the causes of our ideological and other tribes or gangs. And proof of how we have sacrificed our democratic processes and state of being can be seen in how unwilling we are to listen to our "opponents" speak. Proof of how we have forsaken democracy can be seen in how willing we are to live in our ideological and other ghettos. 

So thus far, those who have been orchestrating the protests to the Ferguson and New York City grand jury decisions have repeated the mistake that we in the Occupy Movement committed. That mistake was not the mere conducting of protests and establishing encampments. Rather, that mistake was not including with our protests and encampments the inviting of our opponents, the 1%, to come to the table to break bread and talk. This invitation to come together to both listen and make demands should be extended by those from both the minority communities and law enforcement in multiple instances across the whole nation. And the refusal to accept such invitations or to manipulate the proceedings will tell all of us who is for or against the rest of us.