SWIMMING WITH SHARKS

Imagine a vast cesspool teeming with hungry sharks and you have a pretty good idea of what it is like to be in Congress these days. The stench became too much for a principled senator like Byron Dorgan, who got out of the pool just in time before the Supreme Court dropped chum into the filthy water in the form of Citizens United. Now the sharks are in a feeding frenzy, fighting to get to the source of their sustenance: the corporate money that feeds them all and whose waste is the stuff that they swim in. Unlike predators who are careful not to excrete their wastes in their own habitat, these foolish and short-sighted men and women are quite content to live in the foul environment they have created.

How is an honest politician supposed to survive in this putrid environment? It is not true that there is no such animal. Bernie Sanders, Jeff Merkley Peter DeFazio and others are all in the fight, but not for themselves. They understand that they were elected to serve the People, not the voracious appetites for wealth and power that impels others to swim with the sharks.

Regardless of the risk of being soiled with the excrement of their colleagues they hold their noses and do what they can in the clear knowledge that if no one does the wealth of the nation is inevitably going to become food for the sharks and their handlers, the international corporate terrorists and war profiteers who feed them.

This is all to the good, of course. The thing about a feeding frenzy is that in the end, the sharks end up feeding on themselves when the chum is exhausted. The wounds can be fatal. Survivors can be injured to the point that they can no longer lead the attack on the common man on whom they depend to stay in the pool.

The only question is do we provoke the feeding frenzy that will eliminate the sharks and leave honest members of Congress the biggest fish in the pond so that they can clean it and take measures to assure that it will never be polluted with corporate cash again.

It turns out that the solution to this apparent dilemma depends on honest politicians being smarter than the carnivores whose only interest is to feed themselves for the benefit of the corporate Puppetmasters whose pets they have become.

Fortunately, sharks in a feeding frenzy are focused on only one thing. Normally that is the smell of warm blood but in this case it is the smell of cold, hard cash. That makes them easy prey for the smart fisher of men. The astute politician will protect him- or herself by supporting a constitutional amendment to abolish corporate personhood.

Not only will the voters finally have a simple issue by which to choose the politicians who will work for We the People and not to make us shark bait, but by creating the conditions necessary for honest politicians to live and work in a healthy environment, they will in the end be able to not only survive but to thrive in the newly created atmosphere of a democratic Republic.

We have to ask ourselves why it is so hard to convince our fellow Americans that this is the only way to restore democracy to the United States. There are many factors to consider in the ecology of American politics but in the end it boils down to a few variables that We the People can control if we can learn how to work together in the common interest of ensuring that our children grow up in a rational and sustainable world.  

First and foremost we have to redefine what it means to be American. The corporate media would have us believe that the singular American virtue is self reliance. Nothing could be further from the truth. The American Revolution would have turned out quite differently had the English colonists not recognized their common interest in shaking off the oppression of British Empire and working together to fight the corporate Puppetmaster behind the throne: The East India Company.

The equivalent enemy today is Goldman Sachs and its fellow criminal conspirators in the international banking and financial community. Britain ruled the waves with the backing of the corporate war profiteers of the day until they were challenged from within by a newly awakened People that was determined to shake off the chains of colonialism and determine their own future.

In putting aside for the moment the political and economic interests that divided them they came together to fight the mightiest power the world had ever known they secured for themselves and prosperity the opportunity to create a more perfect union where all men and women would eventually be treated as equals.

In the end the Revolutionaries  realized that they could not win this war alone and so reached out to other foreign powers who had waged a losing battle against the British corporate Empire. With financial help from the Dutch government and military and economic aid from the French, in the end the cause of freedom prevailed. 

America became a beacon of freedom and hope for the common man by demonstrating that a People united is more than a match for international corporate terrorism. The American Revolution inspired the people of France to rise up against the oppression of their government and to overthrow the royalty that had until then deluded the masses into believing that they had a God-given right to sovereignty over the People.

The revolutionary idea that a People could rule itself became the dream of all oppressed men and women everywhere. Unfortunately, the realization of that dream has been blocked by the rise of corporate Empire in the United States, now working in tandem with the economic royalty of the United Kingdom to enslave the Peoples of the world in a fascist New World Order.

The time then has come for the Peoples of Earth to form a united international front against fascism and war. When Americans once again taste the sweet flavor of freedom other Peoples will have the opportunity to do the same. In removing the threat of corporate control of the American government we will free ourselves from the rule of the self-appointed Masters of the Universe.

No democratic nation has ever fought a war against another nation. A free America will thus guarantee the realization of the dream expressed in the Declaration of Independence: All men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. Among these are the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. 

If we end America’s Civil War and fight together to finish the Revolution, soon the valleys and hills across the nation and throughout the world will ring with the cry “The King is dead! Long live We the People!”