On April 26, Jim Wallis, President and CEO of Sojourners Magazine and author of God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It, appeared at the City Club of Cleveland (can be heard at www.cityclub.org.) I felt very thankful to him for giving expression to some ideas in which I believe deeply and which are too rarely discussed.
1. "The common good has almost disappeared from political life on both sides." Lincoln's Gettysburg Address concludes with a reference to "government of the people, by the people, for the people." The word "republic" comes from the latin res publica, meaning "the public thing." The Greek word for politics: polis, refers to citizens to deciding together what to do. Our representatives are supposed to gather in Washington, as the founding fathers did in Philadelphia, to deal with the common concerns of the citizens. They are supposed to establish laws, and today we can all agree that they should repare flawed and inappropriate laws. Today, and at their best, representatives fight to enhance the power of their constituents and look upon those who disagree with them as opponents to be destroyed. Wallis tells how congressmen no longer even speak to members of the opposing party. At their worse, the sole purpose of our congressmen is simply to be re-elected.
2. The American citizen has been turned into a consumer. He does not participate in the development of public policy. He is a spectator who is expected to choose between various perspectives which have been prepared for his consumption by political and media operators. I have read that in the nineteenth century, the average American received between 5 and 10 newspapers. This was possible, because our country's founders, concerned with keeping the citizenry well-informed, set up the US Postal Service so that newspapers could be produced and delivered very inexpensively. Today, most voters get all their news from a very small number of immensely wealthy media conglomerates. Most of the news concerns the system: how the political parties are planning on winning power, where the money is being spent. For the next three months, there will be nearly daily articles on who Romney's running mate will be. In the mean time, Wallis tells us, one Afghanistan war vet commits suicide every 80 minutes. Nothing is being done about that, because those war vets have no money to make themselves be heard. On the other hand, to give my own example, one Keystone XL Pipe Line has become an issue of national concern for the the very simple reason that the Koch brothers, whose tar sands oil will flow through the pipeline, are among the very wealthiest people in the world.
3. "You can't put values back into politics until you take the money out of politics." Wallis tells of a conversation he had with an Australian friend and his wife who were thinking about running for the Australian parliament. They went through the pros and cons of such an undertaking; discussing the effect of such a decision on their family. When asked how much it would cost, they got really serious and said that that was the big problem. It could cost as much as $25,000. When Wallis told him that in the United States a Senator had to raise $20,000 a day if he hoped to be re-elected, they were stunned. Then they said the obvious: "That means you'd either have to be extremely wealthy or be dependant on people who are."
The means and end of American politics is power. Those without money to influence the political process: undocumented immigrants, the poor, are attacked and ridiculed by our politicians in order to support subsidies for those who fund the campaign show.
4. Fixing our political system will require a movement originating from outside the political parties. As an example of a movement, Wallis tells how Martin Luther King told Lyndon Johnson in 1965, right after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, that there would have to be a Voting Rights Act. Johnson, the great wizard of getting bills through congress, said there was absolutely no possibility of it. King pursued his appeal to the people through his civil protest movement and the United States Congress passed the Voting Rights act just five weeks later.
5. Our corrupt political process is "not likely to change in our lifetime." The Supreme Court has ruled it unconstitutional for congress to limit the flow of money. There have been two well-publicized recent attempts at creating a movement: Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party. I go beyond Wallis here in presenting my analysis. Occupy Wall Street remains independent, but does not have the wealth necessary to make itself heard. As for the Tea Party, it has been infiltrated by the extremely wealthy who have stepped in to help it choose its policies and elect its candidates.
My concluding thoughts: The American political system is far more broken than the average American realizes. The citizens are grotesquely misinformed. It appears that only repeated major catastrophes are likely to make him wake up to that fact.
