Owing to a metaphor I utilized back on June 18, it seems to me the time has come for the American people to get out the pruning shears. The plant that we call the USA is struggling to survive and its three main branches -- the executive, legislative and judicial -- have been bought and sold by the corporate interests.
Not a day goes by anymore -- at least at the federal level -- in which we learn that the people have been sold down the river yet again. (It happens with increasing frequency on the state and local level too.) We read or hear that the president, Congress or the court system has dealt us another blow by raising up the corporate class to dizzying heights.
As any gardener knows, when a bush or tree is struggling to survive, sometimes the best medicine is to cut off the dead branches in the hopes that the plant can regenerate itself. In this same vein, the three branches of federal government are dead to us and so the time has come to quit relying on them to blossom.
It doesn't matter who we elect to serve and it doesn't matter who our elected representatives choose to serve on the judiciary. Over the past 25 years, we have sent countless numbers of Democrats and Republicans to our nation's capitol and, regardless of the configuration, the drumbeat toward corporate ascendancy pushes ever higher.
If we continue to utilize the same worn out methods as before -- voting, petitions, letters to the editor, op-eds and an occasional protest march -- the garden of the American Dream will be hopelessly overrun with the weeds of corporatism. These weeds will commandeer almost all of the rainwater that falls, the majority of the nutrients in the soil and the bulk of the rays of sunlight. The rest of us will slowly wither away to become nothing more than the dried out husks of our former selves.
Not a day goes by anymore -- at least at the federal level -- in which we learn that the people have been sold down the river yet again. (It happens with increasing frequency on the state and local level too.) We read or hear that the president, Congress or the court system has dealt us another blow by raising up the corporate class to dizzying heights.
As any gardener knows, when a bush or tree is struggling to survive, sometimes the best medicine is to cut off the dead branches in the hopes that the plant can regenerate itself. In this same vein, the three branches of federal government are dead to us and so the time has come to quit relying on them to blossom.
It doesn't matter who we elect to serve and it doesn't matter who our elected representatives choose to serve on the judiciary. Over the past 25 years, we have sent countless numbers of Democrats and Republicans to our nation's capitol and, regardless of the configuration, the drumbeat toward corporate ascendancy pushes ever higher.
If we continue to utilize the same worn out methods as before -- voting, petitions, letters to the editor, op-eds and an occasional protest march -- the garden of the American Dream will be hopelessly overrun with the weeds of corporatism. These weeds will commandeer almost all of the rainwater that falls, the majority of the nutrients in the soil and the bulk of the rays of sunlight. The rest of us will slowly wither away to become nothing more than the dried out husks of our former selves.
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