by Carol Warner Christen
(Swans - April 21, 2008) Off and on, my writings have described our Constitutional Republic and my urging that we reinstate what we had from the beginning. Alas, the actual republic (I have to concede to our esteemed editor) died with the rapacious rise of capitalism sometime during the Nixon presidency when he and Henry Kissinger, among others, went to Communist China and realized the huge market and industrial base to be had. The trade was the freedom of Taiwan. (1)
Since that time, American citizens have lost precious rights, such as habeas corpus, and myriad other rights that the Congress of the United States had no right to remove. Remove those rights, though, they did in the forty years since the corporate persons-in-law took over the lobbying of the 435 representatives with perks and money and trips.
We the People, I understand, were to be represented by one person for every 50,000 of us rather than the current one representative for every 700,000. Somehow, the Founders buried the original first amendment and assumed that representation would rise as the population rose. However, in 1929, Congress voted to fix the number of representatives at 435, the number we have had for seventy-nine years. That number ignores our right to full and proportionate representation. (2)
Because Congress represents so many and it is so far away in the District of Columbia, the corporate capitalists took advantage of the situation, moved into offices in Washington, DC, and provide millions of lobbying dollars per month to those 435 elected representatives in the name of business, not the People. "Like the effect of advertising upon the customer, the methods of political propaganda tend to increase the feeling of insignificance of the individual voter." (3)
William Clinton did away with the sane banking laws set up under Franklin Roosevelt. Those laws kept banks "honest." There were no fancy games played with money. The People could depend on mortgages, bank interest, loans, and so forth, being aboveboard.
The neoconservatives who had been gestated in the womb of the first Bush administration grew to childhood during Clinton's term, and became wanton during their teens when the second Bush administration was not elected properly but took office anyway. We are stuck with them in 2008: young, rapacious, "adults" of the worst types for governing; i.e., they have decided to run the world their way with their Project For The New American Century (PNAC) treatise. This concept did away with the Constitution in their eyes. These traitors act as if PNAC were the laws of this land.
The Constitution died in 2000 and has since had dirt shoveled over it for the past eight years with horrible, anti-freedom bills passed by the subservient Congress up to the current time. The "president" can put down any disturbance in any state or city by authorizing the National Guard of a different state to do just that on his say-so. The equipment many states bought for their Guardsmen is in Iraq and heavily irradiated. We cannot bring back our investment; so, we'll leave it for the children of those we attacked for oil to suffer and die from that contaminated equipment for millions of years.
My hope was that We, the People, would wake up from our electronic visions of consuming and games long enough to realize that our changes in our country, pollution, hunger, the cost of necessities, the loss of jobs, and so on, would cause a wake-up call to all sleep-walking citizens. The planet is dying. Who cares? If you've seen one planet, you've seen them all.
Ho hum, yawn, yawn, where's my electronic video violence toy? Girls are beating up girls on videos! Oh, look! See your very own children creating crime! At least they were arrested. This is what electronic light does to children. Lives there an American child who has no such toys and who still sees only natural light?
We, as a people, have yet to address our lack of true representation, the corporate "personhood" madness which overrides our human persons, hunger in our country, poisonous seeds and seedlings, pollution, chemicals, especially pills unused or in urine, dumped down toilets into the watersheds everywhere, the dying of the oceans along the coast in the western United States, and the polluted haze from China's industries sweeping across the Pacific to our air sheds. At least, we have cheap items to purchase. The cost of prescription drugs has suddenly risen: new rules, high co-pays. Some costs will be higher than the average $46,000 income per year. It's all in the Tiers.
The new unpublished Preamble to the Constitution reads:
We, the Executive Branch of the United States, in order to:
* form a more perfect power base,
* establish injustice amongst the people,
* insure domestic fear,
* provide for the National Security for our weapons manufacturers,
* promote corporate welfare in general, and
* secure the blessing of liberty only to Ourselves and
* only to our corporate or wealthy posterity, do ordain and establish this New and Conservative Constitution of the United States of America.
Article I. The Congress of the United States shall rubber-stamp the Executive Orders and Directives willfully into law. The Supreme Court of the United States shall uphold the right of the Executive to contrary and arbitrary decisions as The Law of the land.
Article II. The people shall have no rights; the Bill of Rights and habeas corpus are abolished. The Pentagon will enforce the will of the Executive to accomplish those ends. The police shall be under the jurisdiction of the Pentagon. Anyone protesting will be shot on the spot by the military, according to its duty. All taxes are the property of the Executive Branch.
Article III. In light of their condition, the poorest people will pay the highest taxes with a descending rate reaching zero for the wealthiest people, some of whom have rights to be determined by the Congress at a future date.
Article IV. Scientists shall serve the State or their degrees will be rescinded. The environment belongs to the Executive and may be exploited for profit in any manner it deems worthy.
Article V. As soon as the States are under our control, Our rule will be complete. The state laws conspire to thwart Our grand purposes as the People still believe what was and never will be again.
Power again divides the modern world, as in the ancient world, into a battlefield without boundaries. Into this mix -- lust, envy, avarice, covetousness, pride, anger, and sloth -- comes the corporate, global capitalist. Exhibiting all those sins, corporate pseudo-persons-in-law divide the only planet we overcrowded humans have. This is a war of them vs. us. The use of religion augments the small numbers of elitist oligarchs behind the scenes. Oligarchs always rule in secrecy and whisper, "Money talks."
A warrior's duty is to kill and to conquer, to create an institutional state in this, the third dimension of a ten or eleven-dimensional universe. The warriors give rulers the ultimate power to dominate and use other humans to their ends. This is not from God; it is the worst definition invented by men -- and the women who back them -- to hoard and hold limited resources others own.
A meta-system is a system above a system; for example, God is a meta-system to humanity. Humanity is only a system, for no human is above any other. Imagine a huge group of humans and notice that some of them are standing on the shoulders of the others, pretending to be meta-systems to the ones they look down upon. Up on other shoulders, they shout, "You will do this!" and "You will do that because I, or God, or the devil, or my mother, or the government says so!"
Ridiculous reasons are usually backed by some obscene force or other, for no one on earth has achieved such status and never will. We want to believe we are all powerful by ourselves; but, alas, we are not. This type of thinking and acting is pathetic and tragic for all of us. Love is a meta-word that encompasses both good and evil by rising above that two-faced coin.
This is why our Founders once declared "We, the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this CONSTITUTION for the United States of America." These are human goals to be met, not to be avoided politically.
No one in 1776 foresaw the information explosion. No one realized then, the canniness of certain people to confuse and to pass laws and regulations against the Preamble. If every law were measured first against its precepts and against the Bill of Rights, none of the bad laws and the political insiders debasing debate and dissent would be available to the clever amongst us. News would be news, not media with its paid commercialism overriding our need for real information.
To establish Justice, we have denied it to citizens and given the president power to deny proper trials, under the guise of secrecy, to "enemy combatants" who have not been tried except by torture as used in the Middle Ages by clerics. The Founders knew the depravity that occurs when men ignore justice in favor of themselves or their clients. One of our attorneys general past covered up Justice's statue for she was obscene in his eyes.
The executive branch operates spy organizations with "black" orders to kill the unpleasant without trial or any reason except their rigged powers to dictate without our knowledge and without the imprimatur of the Congress. Congress demurred to one branch of the government. Congress is useless to the People. It gave away its war powers to a cabal for expediency and profit. A great country does not operate on fear or unconstitutional methods. We have become pathetic; we watch television; we look adoringly upon the cabal. We get nothing for this; we have become what we hate; i.e., poorer, sicker, and powerless.
To insure domestic tranquility, those in power envision a repeal of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1835 preventing the Pentagon from operating on American soil. A breach was planned for the hurricane area in New Orleans to get around the Act by stealth. Guns pointed at citizens; the Second Amendment for some, but not others. The rest of the ugliness of the governmental responses to this disaster, but not to the president's brother's state -- which also had hurricanes -- is telling.
Recently, we signed a treaty with Canada to permit their troops to quell disorder in our country; we can put down rebellion in Canada. This is an outrage as is the idea that one out of 350 American citizens is treasonous. They jump to these conclusions to fill prisons for the corporate prison complex being built to conquer us by our overseers for "slave" labor.
To provide for the common defense, we went berserk with the National Security agendas. To think a soldier president warned us, too, about the military-industrial-complex whereby one out of five citizens earns a good living making weapons. Do you look forward to the microwave weapon in your neighborhood if you aren't good enough because you dissent, which was our birthright?
Why are the police so impolite and militaristic and over-armed in neighborhoods? Why do they shoot before they find out at trial if the person was guilty? Why do the police never go to trial? Are they gods or government servants paid by you and me? Why aren't they polite and trained by facilitators rather than just tough guys or, currently, the military whose duty is first to shoot and kill; a trial is beyond their duty?
As to the general Welfare in the Preamble, the compassionate conservatives and the libertarians amongst us, including the envious, deny that anyone is poor. If they are poor, then it is their fault. Somehow, decent wages or jobs gone offshore mean nothing to these independent complainers.
The median income has moved to $46,000 per year. The poor earning $5.15 in minimum wages for eight hours per day or 2008 hours per year would earn the sum of $10,341.20. The idealism involved in the minds of those who disparage the poor and downgrade their wages is the real problem and has been since 1980. Can you live on one-quarter of the average wage if you have a family?
Of course, the general welfare also means the public, the commons: that environment we all hold from the air we breathe, to the water we drink, to the utilities we create to help us endure, to the roads, and, above all, to the fairness we need from each other. Greed and envy have no place in the general welfare. We evolved as a species by cooperating, not by competition. Competition is purely for sporting events and interesting contests for prizes.
We even irradiate "evil" foreigners with neutron bombs to sterilize their environment forever. Check out the Pentagon's latest preemptive nuclear attack plans ("Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations," March 15, 2008), against populations we disagree with politically or otherwise. Note the telling word doctrine, a religious word for a belief that amounts to a war horror beyond biblical proportions.
Our egos are ten percent of our minds. The ego has no more than an hour's memory; it is refreshed by the subconscious. Its true purpose is to do the work we choose as beings in the here and now. In fact, the ego is our particalized persona here on earth. Unfortunately, our psyche is so vast and powerful that the poor ego becomes enchanted and believes that it is our soul, rather than our day-to-day servant. Hence, elitists and other egotists, who would own persons and resources, use force and try to use God as a servant to help them do it! That, in the old days, would be blasphemy; now, it's just good business.
The founders of this nation, the United States of America, gave us a Preamble spelling out the real purposes of government, a Constitution describing three independent branches of government, and a Bill of Rights to protect the People from unsavory politicians. They were very wary of the corporate. In 1896, a clerk, not the Court, wrote that corporations were persons. Somehow, that mistake has been assumed as law.
We are human persons; we now share the planet with corporate persons-in-law who have more clout than we mere humans have about our government. God did not create corporate persons; we did. To compound our error, we let these inhuman non-person persons gain obscene amounts of money with which to entice avaricious politicians into government to do their bidding while pretending to do ours.
Those who were to represent you and me -- flesh and blood and alive -- are paid by unknowns to write laws that harm the common good, the public good, the future of our children's children, our progeny. Corporate inhuman persons-in-law have slowly changed America to suit themselves. Finding that they could change our America, they gutted the place and moved onto the world by "globalizing" capitalism.
Corporations can now tell humans whom they may or may not associate with after work! They never go to jail and are never disbanded as criminals or locked up as happens to real humans. The entire world is now prey for corporations who foul our nest, refuse to clean their own, resent or rewrite laws to avoid taxation, downsize the work force, privatize our common energy needs and now our water for themselves: one percent of humanity at the top, hiding behind gated cities and armed guards or private planes.
Ponder New Orleans carefully. Toxicity there was covered over with 5 inches of soil and plastic; it's a Superfund Site and we all will pay to clean it for the corporations on the dole.
We, meanwhile, say nothing. We believe. Our journalists are not telling us the truth anymore. Some are, but the main news outlets will fire, not hire, them if they write the truth. Each of us believes we, too, shall soon be rich. Barring riches, we believe we are good enough for God to transport us whole in heaven while the rest of humanity suffers horribly in the world the "good" and the "rich" created. Before riches became obscene, the wealthy did their civic duty. Some still do; most don't.
Ah, well, blessed are the peacemakers for they shall see God. Where are the peacemakers in an empiric un-American country full of military ill will and nuclear might? An America that has forgotten the reasons for government is in serious trouble. Radiation inimical to life will last for 5 million years and destroy fragile and wonderful life forms on the only planet we know. We have plans to continue irradiating anyone we want to kill.
Some of the corporate politicians think they will catch a ride to the stars. Goodbye and good luck! Four light years is a long, long trip when it takes 6 months just to get to Mars. And, how many of the one percent will fit on a tiny ship? What technicians will repair it?
Meanwhile, back on this over-heated Earth with melting poles and dying species, war continues in Iraq indiscriminately and without mercy, creating a mess and rubble of ungodly proportions. That mess was recreated for us in New Orleans. For every action, there is an equal but opposite reaction. We cling to things and to beliefs. Our things were strewn in Louisiana with junk of immense proportions. We crave certainty; we crave absolutes.
In a quantum universe and on this one small planet, we only have uncertainty. Those who preach certainty have an agenda of their own. You and I are not in the equation; we are pawns in a game -- "The Great Game" -- we do not realize others are playing with our lives, our psyches, our existences.
Swans editor wrote recently: "Have you tried to contact your congressperson lately? Heard of constituents' services? Ever received a form letter in response to your inquiry or your grievance? Has any grievance of yours received attention?" (4)
For in a Republic, who is "the country"? Is it the Government which is for the moment in the saddle? Why, the Government is merely a servant -- merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn't. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them. (5)
Unless we prefer being the world's sole empire until defeat smacks us as it has every empire in the past, we need to rethink our roots and root causes, turn off the money printing presses, bring our soldiers back and heal each and every one of them, set aside monies to clean up the radioactive filth we have strewn in so many places; and, once again, become the people we were; i.e., decent American citizens whose only purpose is to make our country a better place to live on a planet that has been debased almost beyond belief.
Notes
1. "Look Who Capitulated to the Communists! Nixon and the Neocons of Bush and Cheney!" By Bill Hare, 04/08/2008.
http://www.politcalcortex.com/print/2008/4/8/162645/6200 (back)
2. thirty-thousand.org. (back)
3. Erich Fromm, psychoanalyst and social philosopher (1900-1980). (back)
4. Gilles d'Aymery, Blip#68, Swans, April 7, 2008. (back)
5. Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835-1910). (back)
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