The Battles of Lexington and Concord: How They Translate Into Our World Today
As we note today’s anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord in the early part of the American Revolution, it’s hard not to think of the parallels to the current scene here in the modern-day U.S. In particular, 241 years later, an enormous swath of our citizenry is infuriated at the way it’s being governed, and will not tolerate any more of this.
On the left, we have the amazing Democracy Spring / Democracy Awakening movement, predictably all but totally ignored in the mainstream media. These folks are focused on removing Big Money from our government, and are not afraid to use civil disobedience in a huge way to communicate the urgency of the situation as they perceive it.
But these groups and the revolutionary animus behind them are actually fairly small in comparison to the horde of “Angry Americans” whose only affiliation with a movement is their support of a nut-job presidential candidate. This sector, numbering many tens of millions, is also quite vocal about our institutionalized corruption and the devastating effects it’s having on our society (and, of course, their checking accounts).
In a way, one could say that Americans were born to be revolutionaries, something in which we should all take great pride.
Craig,
You wrote:
“On the left, we have the amazing Democracy Spring / Democracy Awakening movement, predictably all but totally ignored in the mainstream media.”
Unfortunately, the mainstream media are often not a good source of information. They have an agendum which is to maximize profits by maximizing the viewing, listening, or reading audience size because that maximizes advertising revenue. They maximize audience size by making the news as exciting, lurid, and gripping as possible. That often results in leaving out important news because it is insufficiently exciting. News of lesser importance but which is exciting to much of the audience is repeated over and over ad nauseam thereby crowding out more important news.
PBS and NPR do a better job than the mainstream media because they are less dependent on advertising revenue. However, they have multiple agenda and thus are not totally reliable either.
Getting adequate and reliable information is not easy.
You’re right. And I love the use of “agendum” as the singular of “agenda.” I’m not sure I’ve ever seen that before.
Craig,
To a certain extent the history of every nation is shrouded in myth and delusion. None more so than the USA.
Not all the issues motivating the original American revolutionary movement were noble. Nor were all the citizens consulted. The “revolutionaries” often practiced what today we would call terrorism, and violent oppression against their neighbors.
Nor was the “revolution” as altruistic as Hollywood would lead us to believe. It was mostly about money.
The Age of Enlightenment philosophers may have influenced those individuals who framed the US Constitution, but most revolutionaries were more concerned with material issues.
The main causes for discontent were British government taxation, trade restrictions against France, the expansion of slavery, and a very significant issue was removing the restrictions placed by the British government on uncontrolled expansion into Indian lands resulting in the dispossession and extermination of of native Americans.
In contrast, Canadian democracy doesn’t seem to have suffered too badly from remaining with the Westminster system and not joining the American revolution.
Organizations such as Democracy Spring / Democracy Awakening which advocate civil disobedience and the avowed intention of violently preventing free assembly of their opponents ( including denying the right of opponents to speak in public) can hardly be said to be friends of democratic principles.
In fact like petulant spoiled children, their battle cry seems to be “if we can’t make the rules and win the game, we’ll stop anyone else playing” !
Certainly a case for US electoral reform exists, but it shouldn’t be based on simplistic partisan slogans or narrow sectarian interests.
In no nation do corporations play such a significant role in society as the US. No democratic representative government is perfect, but the most successful are those most inclusive of all participants in the political dynamic.
The more open the electoral process, the more healthy and stable the government. It’s better to have all campaign contributions unrestricted but announced and available for public scrutiny, than covert and secretive.
Electoral systems which encourage open contributions from all organizations, have shown corporate donations more evenly divided among all mainstream parties. (with most corporation donating to both sides).
In my opinion a more constructive and long overdue reform needed for US national politics would be extending the term of the House of Representatives to four years. This would immediately reduce the amount spent on campaigns funding, and relieve the candidates of the pressure of being in perpetual campaign mode.
It’s very true that the Democracy movement wants to “stop the game” from being played. The game is the fossil fuel industry’s corrupting our government so that it can continue to ravage our planet. We demand that it cease.
Craig,
Just an afterthought. Maybe issues like Citizens United aren’t of such importance to the average American as you imagine, nor is your faith in the infallibility of opinion polls justified.
All the main polls showed only a narrow gap between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders among Latino voters. Yet in New York 59 percent voted for Clinton and only to 41 percent for Sanders.
Likewise, despite Bernie Sanders mercilessly pushing the issue of income equality and corporate greed throughout the campaign, including the role of corporate political funding, he lost convincingly among the poorest New Yorker’s. ( especially voters earning less than $30K per year).
The issue of campaign funding also shows a level of hypocrisy with Saunders outspending Clinton 2-1 in New York advertising, (yet that level of spending on advertising proved ineffective).
The Saunders’ campaign’s claim that big monies ability to outspend on advertising can “buy” an election, doesn’t seem to be working for him !
Opinion polls often fail because they ask the wrong questions.
Young Americans may relate Bernie Sanders as your angry grandfather who “gets it”, but they also don’t trust him to have the answers to complex social policies. In other words, they see Bernie Saunders as more of a protest vote, than actually supporting any of his policies.
More perceptive polling among young voters (those that actually vote) reveals them to be aware of Clinton’s image as a media-crafted moderate-leaning, calculating pragmatist, and ambitious politician hungry for Presidential office, but they also believe she is more able to govern and achieve her policy initiatives than Bernie Saunders.
Saunder’s hints that he may be prepared to act as a wreaking ball should he fail to gain the nomination, has cost him support, even among younger voters. Democrat voters may not tell pollsters, but the do not favour candidates who don’t want to play by the rules.