What is a country, after all, when it stops caring for its citizens?
Things are not going well. This is my takeaway from the constant pummeling of the news I can’t seem to escape. Rogue AI. Environmental catastrophe. Mass Murder. Unaffordable healthcare and housing. A growing mistrust of institutions and a return to medieval superstitions. The rise of authoritarianism and the dismantling of democracy. An unhinged world leader who operates openly from a position of grievance and retribution — a Divider in Chief. Rampant antisemitism and xenophobia. It’s become open season on the most vulnerable in order to appease the endless thirst of the richest of the rich.
It brings to mind another time in American history, when we reached a point that seemed untenable:
When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
This, of course, is the beginning of the Declaration of Independence, that holiest of American documents. It continues thus, and I urge you to read it carefully and thoughtfully, as if it had been written yesterday:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
Despite the fact that the founders were not thinking about anyone but themselves — land-owning white men — the rest of the people in the colonies heard those words spoken, and were awakened to the possibility that they, too, might be included in this declaration. Not just rights, mind you, but God-given, inalienable rights. These were not granted to us by a noble, out of gratitude or generosity, but ours to begin with, divinely handed down from on high. This was a radical idea that consumed a people, that became a nation.
It might consume us once more, as those in power seek to denigrate and demonize those who are deemed impure and of the wrong sort. All citizens must be endowed with these rights, and not just the ones favored by those in power, or no one is. A people must consent to be governed; otherwise, they are merely subjects of a man who would be king.
That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
I’m no longer sure what you call our system of government, but it isn’t working for anyone but the billionaires, the monarchy of our time, and it’s time to make a change. Like most Americans, I still believe in a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
The old devil-you-know argument is alive and well in modern America. Man is more disposed to suffer evils to which they are accustomed than to right themselves. Never has this been more true than it is right now.
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.
We are quickly moving towards absolute despotism, and it is, indeed, our right and duty to throw off such a government and to provide new safeguards for our future security. A single political movement is attempting to take unilateral control of the country, but even their own supporters will not be the recipients of their largesse. The fact is, our government is no longer caring for us, or even considering us, when it comes to creating policy, and they have ceased to govern at all. They are lining their pockets and rewarding their friends, all at our expense, and it is time we said, No more.
I am not so naive as to believe that we can topple the current structure and reinvent the government out of whole cloth. This is not a realistic expectation, despite the rants you read online. We are much more likely to break up and return to thirteen sovereign states, much like the breakup of the Soviet Union in the previous century. None of this would be without great bloodshed and economic strife.
Among the many offenses that our current government has inflicted upon us, many of them would be all too familiar to the founding fathers in their day, as they were detailed in the very same declaration. They include, but are not limited to:
- He has refused to assent to the rule of law
- He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
- He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
- He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
- He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for the Naturalization of Foreigners.
- He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
- He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
- He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
- He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
- He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
- He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation.
- For protecting [officers]…from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States.
- For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world.
- For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent.
- For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury.
- For transporting persons beyond the Seas to be tried for pretended offenses.
These are just the most obvious ones, as the list goes on, but they sound eerily familiar and quantifiably disturbing. Donald J Trump is a tyrant who aspires to be a despot, and he must be removed by cutting the power out from under him. A new order must be established that prevents such flagrant offenses in the future.
I don’t know what the answer is, but as it stands, this government is of no use to me and does not exist to provide security or comfort for its citizens, so it does me no good. If we are to have a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, then the people must be the primary recipients of its service. The government is meant to serve us, not the other way around.
The situation has become untenable.
