New York City v. San Francisco

Which city affords its denizens a better quality of “street life”—New York or San Francisco?  A San Franciscan, the question came to mind recently as my bride and I walked along garbage-strewn sidewalks and past graffiti-laden buildings in The Big Apple.

As a City and County of San Francisco employee, I routinely take calls from citizens who complain of dumped garbage, graffiti and worse.  San Franciscans may also seek enforcement action from their government to remove garbage containers from sidewalks, and even from private property, if such containers are viewable from the public right of way:  The City and County has ordinances on the books that require property owners to keep their garbage cans not just off of the street but hidden from view altogether.  This ordinance may even force a property owner to build a lean-to on their land with slats close enough to conceal such offending garbage company-provided “Toters.” 

No graffiti tag, no matter how artful or even exquisite, is allowed to see the light of another day without abatement action being initiated once it has been reported to the civil servants of “The City.”  Woe to the city official who takes a call from a San Francisco citizen who must express their outrage about a government that “allows” graffiti vandals to run rampant.

If New York City has similar “quality of life” laws, its City Hall seems woefully incapable of enforcing said regulations.  On our first night there, the sidewalk curbs were lined with not just garbage containers but plastic bag-wrapped trash as well.  All of the garbage had disappeared by the morning of our second day, but the bulky items and trash bags began to collect anew by that evening.

New York City seems to have no such timetable for the removal of graffiti.  Although former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani first committed his city’s public works resources to combat the specter of “copy cat blight”--one broken window spawns other broken windows—if New York city has a “graffiti detail” similar to San Francisco’s, it is woefully short of adequate resources.

Seeing such urban “decay” throughout the East Village, SoHo and elsewhere in the lower half of Manhattan could well have led me to the conclusion that San Francisco’s quality of street life is better than New York’s.  But San Francisco is not picture perfect—surely there will always be trash dumped on its sidewalks, too, and graffiti will forever both grace and mar its structures.  I love living in San Francisco, regardless, even if all of the negatives that disgust so many of my fellow residents result in their endless irritation.

And as for New York?   The city’s sheer size and seemingly endless number of people on its sidewalks make it a place in which I would never want to live.  But the city is awe-inspiring in what it has to offer culturally.  I am too interested in looking at its endless array of interesting architecture and people, and to view the countless treasures contained within the interior of its buildings, to feel bothered by its trash.  I will keep coming back to enjoy the quality of life to be found in The Big Apple for as long as there is space enough on its sidewalks to allow me to pass.

Imagine Life In A Healthy American Democracy

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA      ) Criminal No.

v.                                                              ) Count 1:  Denial of the Right to Vote

                                                                                                  (United States Constitution,  

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY; THE             )                Amendments XIV and XV;

REPUBLICAN NATIONAL                        )                Civil Rights Act of

COMMITTEE; BUSH CHENEY                  )               1965, as amended;

2000, INC; GEORGE WALKER                  )               Voter Accessibility

BUSH; RICHARD BRUCE CHENEY;       )                for the Elderly and

KARL CHRISTIAN ROVE; BUSH/            )                Disabled Act;

CHENEY 200 FLORIDA, INC.; JOHN       )                National Voter

ELLIS BUSH, also known as “JEB               )                Registration Act;

BUSH”; KATHERINE HARRIS;                 )                Help America Vote

CLAYTON ROBERTS; EMMETT              )                Act; 18 U.S.C.

MITCHELL; 2000 STATE OF FLORIDA   )                section 245; 42 U.S.C.

DEPARTMENT OF ELECTIONS               )                section 1973)

OFFICIALS 1-99; 2000 FLORIDA               )

COUNTY SUPERVISORS OF                     ) Count 2:  Infringement Upon

ELECTIONS, BOARDS OF                         )                 the Right to Vote

ELECTION and OTHER                               )                 (United States Consti-

OFFICIALS in BROWARD, COLLIER,      )                 tution, Amendments

HARDEE, HENDRY, HILLSBOROUGH,  )                 XIV and XV; Civil

MONROE, PALM BEACH and OTHER      )                Rights Act of 1965;

 COUNTIES 1-999; 2000 FLORIDA             )                Act of 1965, as amend-

HIGHWAY PATROL OFFICERS 1-99;       )                ed; 18 U.S.C. section

THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA       )                245)

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE;                      )                 

BUSH CHENEY 2004 OHIO, INC.;              ) Count 3:  Altering, Mutilating,

JOHN KENNETH BLACKWELL;                )                and Destroying Voter

KEITH CUNNINGHAM; CAROLE              )                Registration Forms

GARMAN; PAULA HICKS-HUDSON;       )                 (42 U.S.C. section

2004 STATE OF OHIO DEPARTMENT      )                  1974a)

OF ELECTIONS and OTHER STATE          )

OFFICIALS 1-999; 2004 OHIO                      ) Count 4:  Manipulation of

COUNTY BOARDS OF ELECTION            )                 Voting Machine

and OTHER OFFICIALS IN ALLEN,           )                  Vote Counts

ASHLAND, CLERMONT, CUYAHOGA,   )                  (42 U.S.C.

FAIRFIELD, FRANKLIN, HOCKING,        )                   section 1974a)

HOLMES, HURON, LICKING, LUCAS,     )

MAHONING, MEDINA, MONROE,            )

MONTGOMERY, MORGAN,                       )                  

MORROW, PORTAGE, PUTNAM,              )                  

SUMMIT, VINTON, WARREN, and             )                  

WASHINGTON COUNTIES 1-999;              )

2004 OHIO REPUBLICAN PARTY;             )

WARREN O’DELL; BRETT RAPP;             )

DWAYNE RAPP; MICHAEL BARBIAN,    )

JR.; SPROUL AND ASSOCIATES, and        )

NATHAN SPROUL                                        )

INDICTMENT

COUNT ONE

(Denial of the Right to Vote)

THE PLAINTIFF CHARGES:

1.              At times material to this indictment:

Defendants’ Positions and Responsibilities

                  a (1).                     Beginning on or about January 1, 2000, defendant THE REPUBLICAN PARTY was a national organization of citizens and public government officeholders.  REPUBLICAN PARTY MEMBERS included any citizen who declared their party affiliation as REPUBLICAN PARTY on a voter registration form and officeholders in the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives; governors, state legislators and other state officials of the states of the United States of America; county, city, township and other public governments; on the REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE a. (2), a national decision-making board for THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, and state, county and other municipally-sized REPUBLICAN PARTIES, including REPUBLICAN PARTY COMMITTEES at the state and local level.

                 a (3).          BUSH/CHENEY 2000, a national organization comprised entirely or almost entirely of REPUBLICAN PARTY MEMBERS and created to advance and support the REPUBLICAN PARTY presidential and vice presidential candidacies of GEORGE WALKER BUSH a. (4) and RICHARD BRUCE CHENEY a. (5).

                a (4).          GEORGE WALKER BUSH, REPUBLICAN PARTY governor of Texas and 2000 REPUBLICAN PARTY candidate for President of the United States of America.

                 a. (5)          RICHARD BRUCE CHENEY, REPUBLICAN PARTY member and  2000 REPUBLICAN PARTY 2000 candidate for vice president of the United States of America.

                 a (7).          KARL CHRISTIAN ROVE, BUSH/CHENEY 2000 director of polling and media planning; director of strategic planning and policy affairs and deputy chief of staff for President GEORGE WALKER BUSH.

                 a (8).          BUSH CHENEY 2000 FLORIDA, INC., a statewide organization created by REPUBLICAN PARTY MEMBERS to actively support the presidential and vice presidential candidates of GEORGE WALKER BUSH and RICHARD BRUCE CHENEY, respectively.

                 a (8).          JOHN ELLIS BUSH, also known as “JEB BUSH,” REPUBLICAN PARTY Governor of Florida.  As chief executive of the state of Florida, JEB BUSH was the top state official responsible for the faithful execution of voting laws in the state of Florida in the 2000 national election.

                  a (9).          KATHERINE HARRIS (REPUBLICAN PARTY) Secretary of State of State of Florida in 2000 and a Florida State co-chairperson for BUSH/CHENEY 2000.  As Secretary of State for the State of Florida HARRIS was responsible for the faithful execution of election laws in the State of Florida in the 2000 national election.

a (10).          CLAYTON ROBERTS, 2000 State of Florida Division of Elections Director.  Responsible for the faithful execution of election laws in the State of Florida in the 2000 national election.

                 a (11).          EMMETT MITCHELL, 2000 State of Florida Division of Elections Assistant General Counsel.  Responsible for legal counsel to the Division of Elections in the state of Florida during the 2000 national election year.

                 a (12).          2000 STATE OF FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF ELECTIONS AND OTHER STATE OFFICIALS 1-999.  Responsible for the faithful execution of election laws in the State of Florida in 2000.

                 a (13).          2000 FLORIDA COUNTY SUPERVISORS OF ELECTIONS, BOARDS OF ELECTIONS AND OTHER STATE OFFICIALS IN BROWARD, COLLIER, HARDEE, HENDRY, HILLSBOROUGH, MONROE AND PALM BEACH COUNTIES 1-999.  Responsible for the faithful execution of election laws in the State of Florida in 2000.

                 a (14).          2000 FLORIDA HIGHWAY PATROL OFFICERS 1-99, responsible for the faithful enforcement of the rule of law in the State of Florida in 2000.

                a. (15).          THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, the presidential cabinet-level department of the federal government of The United States of America created to fulfill The Constitution’s preamble mandate to “establish justice.”

        

                 a (16).          BUSH/CHENEY 2004, a national organization comprised almost entirely of REPUBLICAN PARTY MEMBERS created to advance and support the

REPUBLICAN PARTY presidential and vice presidential candidacies of President GEORGE WALKER BUSH and Vice President RICHARD BRUCE CHENEY.

                 a. (17)          BUSH CHENEY 2004 OHIO, INC., a statewide organization comprised entirely or almost entirely of REPUBLICAN PARTY MEMBERS created to actively support the presidential and vice presidential candidacies of GEORGE WALKER BUSH and RICHARD BRUCE CHENEY, respectively.

                 

                 a (18).          JOHN KENNETH BLACKWELL (REPUBLICAN PARTY), 2004 State of Ohio Secretary of State and a 2004 State of Ohio co-chairperson for BUSH/CHENEY 2004.  Responsible for the faithful execution of election laws in the State of Ohio in 2004 and for the conduct of the OHIO BUSH/CHENEY 2004, INC., campaign.

                  a (19).          KEITH CUNNINGHAM, 2004 Allen County (OH) Board of Elections Director.  Responsible for the faithful execution of election laws in Allen County in 2004.

                  a (20).           CAROLE GARMAN, 2004 Greene County (OH) Board of Elections Director.  Responsible for the faithful execution of election laws in Greene County in 2004.

                  a (21).          PAULA HICKS-HUDSON, 2004 Lucas County (OH) Board of Elections Director.  Responsible for the faithful execution of election laws in Lucas County in 2004.

                  a (22).          2004 STATE OF OHIO DEPARTMENT OF ELECTIONS OFFICIALS and OTHER STATE OFFICIALS 1-999.  Responsible for the faithful execution of election law in the State of Ohio in 2004.

                  a (23).          2004 OHIO COUNTY BOARDS OF ELECTION OFFICIALS AND OTHER COUNTY AND LOCAL OFFICIALS IN ALLEN, ASHLAND, CLERMONT, CUYAHOGA, FAIRFIELD, FRANKLIN, HOCKING, HOLMES, HURON, LICKING, LUCAS, MAHONING, MEDINA, MONROE, MONTGOMERY, MORGAN, MORROW, PORTAGE, PUTNAM, SUMMIT, VINTON, WARREN AND WASHINGTON COUNTIES.  Responsible for the faithful execution of elections laws in their respective counties in 2004.

                  a (24).          2004 OHIO REPUBLICAN PARTY.  A statewide organization of citizens and public government officeholders consisting of REPUBLICAN PARTY MEMBERS.

                  a (25).          WARREN O’DELL.  Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Diebold, an electronic voting machine company, and a member of the OHIO REPUBLICAN PARTY state committee.

                  a (26).          BRETT RAPP.  President of Triad Corporation, an electronic voting machine company responsible for voting machines used in 41 counties in Ohio in the 2004 national election.

                  a (27).          DWAYNE RAPP.              Vice President of Triad Corporation.

                  a (28).          MICHAEL BARBIAN, JR.   Triad GSI Corporation field representative.  On-site technician for Triad GSI Corporation in Ohio during the 2004 national election and state recount.

                  a (29).          SPROUL AND ASSOCIATES, a private business created by NATHAN SPROUL a (30)., a REPUBLICAN PARTY MEMBER.

Events Leading up to Election Day 2000

(The evidence supporting the four counts is taken almost entirely from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 2001 report “Voting Irregularities in Florida During the 2000 Presidential Election” and the 2005 House Democratic Judiciary Committee Status Report of the Democratic Staff “Preserving Democracy:  What Went Wrong In Ohio.”)

Devil Dog: The Amazing True Story of The Man Who Saved America

Devil Dog:  The Amazing True Story of The Man Who Saved America is a biography of Smedley Darlington Butler, one of just nineteen American military men to be awarded the Medal of Honor twice for "conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his or her life above and beyond the call of duty while engaged in an action against an enemy of the United States."

Born into a family of Philadelphia “bluebloods”—both grandfathers were prominent bankers, his father was a powerful United State congressman—Smedley Butler served 34 years in the United States Marine Corps.  His personal story mirrors his country’s transition from a republic to an imperial power.  Devil Dog should be required reading for every American citizen.  This “Amazing True Story of The Man who Saved America” is as pertinent to the American scene today as it was one hundred years ago.  A major difference between now and then is that American society does not at this time have such a savior.

All Americans should know the story of Smedley Butler and the rise of the American empire at the dawn of the Twentieth Century, but most, of course, do not.  Published in 2010 by Simon and Schuster, Devil Dog should have enjoyed many weeks of topping nonfiction bestseller lists.  Instead, 2010’s top selling books included political tomes by the likes of Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, Laura Ingraham, David Limbaugh and George W. Bush—all of whom would have been dubbed as “conservative hatchet men and women” by the straight-talking Major General Butler.

There are myriad ways to measure the difference between a healthy democracy and a democracy, such as ours, where the word democrat is spoken with a sneer.  The sales figures of Devil Dog and of the above hucksters in 2010 is but one of too many.  For no American—not Palin, Romney, Ingraham, Limbaugh and Bush—could claim to be more patriotic than Butler.  Consider:

--In 1900, at 18 years of age, U. S. Marine Corps Lieutenant Smedley Butler commanded a company of 45 enlisted men who fought in China during the infamous Boxer Rebellion.  Spurred on by imperial-minded politicians and a hysterical mass media, Austria, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Russia and the United States all sent military troops into China in order to capture Chinese treasure.  Butler and his American troops were the first to fight their way to the very walls of the “Forbidden City”—the center of Chinese political power in Peking.  Ready to enter, the Americans were told to “stand down” from their final assault because their allies wanted to make sure that they would share in the plunder.

--Twelve years later, Major Smedley Butler found himself at the forefront of a U.S. effort to squash a burgeoning democracy in Nicaragua.  Major Butler secured the success of the American campaign by singlehandedly convincing the leader of the Nicaraguan resistance movement to surrender.  In a portent of the future, Butler experienced mixed feelings about his own “heroism”:  Nicaraguan General Luis Mena had been a major shareholder of La Luz, the country’s most prominent mining company that was controlled by United States business interests.  Mena’s love for his country came to override the personal pleasure he had gained from being in the American pocket.  Butler respected Mena, but now he had to help destroy him and the Nicaraguan resistance under the guise of "American democracy.”

--In 1917, following the U.S. military takeover of Haiti, Major Butler was the military overlord of an American puppet Haiti government.  Initially dismissive of the Haitian people’s ability to govern themselves, in time Butler ultimately decided that he wanted “to make Haiti a first-class black man’s country.”  But his military superiors would rotate Butler out of the country in 1918.  He never rose above the symbol of America’s occupation force that would rule Haiti for nearly twenty years—and doom the country to a century and more of political and spiritual impoverishment.

--In World War I, Butler commanded the U.S. Marines’ 13th Regiment.  After a nightmarish trip across the Atlantic Ocean, the “Hoodoo Regiment” arrived at Camp Pontanezen, where 65,000 soldiers were crammed into a camp built for 1,500.   12,000 soldiers were sick with flu.  Hundreds more were dying each day.

After being appointed commander of the camp at a time when it was about to be recognized in the States as an international scandal, Commander Butler—though sick himself—blew past protocol and quickly transformed Camp Pontanezen into a model military facility.  As a result of his Herculean lifesaving effort, Butler was awarded both the U.S. Army’s and Navy’s Distinguished Service Medals and was promoted to the position of brigadier general.  He was 37 years old, the youngest brigadier general in marine history.

Brigadier General Butler went on to become a crusading crime fighter in Philadelphia during Prohibition, a leading spokesman for American World War I veterans who were betrayed by their country in the darkest hours of the Depression, and a coveted front man for a joint Wall Street-military coup intent on overthrowing first-term President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  Smedley Butler’s life story reads like the most outlandish of Hollywood’s mythmaking scripts.


In the end, what did this most celebrated military man of his age learn from his life’s experiences?  Butler gave many speeches and wrote his own book, War Is a Racket. Much of what he had to say has been preserved for posterity.  Perhaps the best summary of his life as a military man is this—

I spent 33 years and four months in active military
service and during that period I spent most of my
time as a high class muscle man for big business,
for Wall Street and the bankers.  In short I was a
racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

  I helped make Mexico . . . safe for American oil
  interests.  I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent
  place for the National City Bank boys to collect
  revenues in.  I helped in the raping of a dozen Central
  American republics for the benefit of Wall Street.  I
  helped pacify Nicaragua for the International Banking
  House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912.  I brought
  light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar
  interests in 1916.  I helped make Honduras right for the
  American fruit companies in 1903.  In China in 1927,
  I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went on its way
  unmolested.
 
  . . .  Looking back on it, I feel I might have given Al
  Capone a few hints.  The best he could do was to
  operate in three city districts.  We Marines operated
  on three continents.

We, the people of The United States of America, continue to operate in much the same way in every populated continent on this Earth.  We need another Smedley Butler to make us understand the error of our ways.  We live instead in a land of inhumane babble.

In memory of Martin Luther King, Junior and Patrice Lumumba

It seemed more than fitting to learn on this twenty-fifth Martin Luther King, Jr. Day weekend that Sunday, January 16, 2011, was the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, Congo’s first democratically-elected Prime Minister.  

Reverend King and President Lumumba represented the hopes and dreams of their people.  Both men were dynamic speakers who excelled at “speaking truth to power.” And despite the unexpected election of Barack Obama to the American presidency in 2008, the social aspirations of far too many African Americans and the Congolese people as a whole have been retarded as a result of their untimely deaths.  Patrice Lumumba was thirty-five when his life was cut short, King thirty-nine.

Patrice Lumumba and Martin Luther King, Jr. share one other historical tie: Both King and Lumumba were targeted for assassination by the federal government of The United States of America.

The spoils of victory

Drifting in and out of codeine dreams he sees George H. W. Bush going mad.

The President stands at a podium on a stage in front of thousands.  The shouts of hecklers rise from the crowd, their words waver in a fierce wind.  “Iran-Contra haunts you!  Iran-Contra haunts you!” the noisy protesters chant.

Iran, Iran-Contra, The Iran-Contra Affair:  one thread of a democracy unraveling.

Bush’s grin widens maniacally, his arms flail wildly, he shoots out his left hand in defiance.  “You know, I wish, I wish those draft dodgers out there would go back to, to CANADA where they came from," The Commander in Chief stutters in that Yankee Texan twang of his.

The faithful roar in Pavlovian response. 

What is this, he thinks haltingly, Campaign ’68 or just another grotesguery of the mind?

In the middle of the night he senses what must surely be:  In his desperation to retain the Presidency, Bush has fallen into frenzy, and he’s taking the country down with him.  He lies awake and wonders if others sense this to be true.  Although it is a cool night, his bed sheets are damp with sweat.

He turns on the television, to CNN.  Lost in a drugged fog, he sees blurred talking heads mouthing disjointed, Felliniesque sound bites:  Watch out for that ozone man . . . My dog Millie knows more than those bozos . . .  Pundits opine the President has found his stride as he heads into the homestretch.   


A plane flies through gray skies trailing a tattered white banner reading GEORGE BUSH, IRAN-CONTRA HAUNTS YOU.

Iran-Contra haunts you once again.

He is awakened by the sound of the early morning newspaper bouncing off of the hollow front door.  Unable to escape back into sleep, he eases carefully out of bed. 

He hobbles to the hall and looks down the darkened stairway, uncertain whether to descend.  Deciding to do so, he stops after each step, trying to control his response to the pain.

He twists open the two deadbolts and the front door’s brass knob.  The courtyard is brightly lit.  An emergency vehicle’s siren pulses somewhere in the distance.  A spent moon shines through an oak.

He folds down onto his hands and knees to pick up the banded paper and crawls halfway outside.  He sniffs the barely cool air.  He feels a kinship with the animals that prowl through the night when he’s forced to assume their position.  He reaches for the paper and withdraws back into his own human shell.

Seeing the date on the masthead of the paper, he realizes he’s lost many days.  He looks at the lead headline—BUSH, CLINTON IN VIRTUAL TIE—and shudders involuntarily in response.

It’s not that he’s a fan of the Arkansas Governor’s:  Bill Clinton seems too much a part of the Corrupted Wing of the Democratic Party, Federal Government Division.  But, unlike the sitting President, Clinton hasn’t had a chance yet to wreak havoc at home and abroad.  Cream rises to the top only in dairy products, he thinks.  What rises to the top in American politics is something else altogether.

“But who cares what you think?” he asks himself savagely.  He feels the words reverberate in the room.  He crawls to the couch as another damning consideration dies into a mutter.  He climbs onto the couch.  


He looks at the plaster swirl marks on the ceiling, searches for patterns, feels the weight of the newspaper on his chest.  Must you immerse yourself again in the sordid details of this all-too-animal human planet in the midst of your own going under?

He hears no response.  He closes his eyes and sighs—what he wants to do most is stop thinking.  He dams welling tears with his knuckles and whispers, “Be still, be still, be still.”

In that moment before sleep, when the body often jolts, a final question shakes him:  what has happened to my country, and to me, as a result of “winning” the Cold War?

Democracy and democracy II

We, the people of the United States of America, have created a nation whose society has been both the envy and great evil for many throughout the world.  The amount of human progress due to American creativity and technological advancement is almost beyond measure.  The goodwill that the United States accumulated with the rest of the world in joining the Allied cause during World War II, and in helping to rebuild Europe with The Marshall Plan in the aftermath of the war, appeared to validate America as the legitimate “Leader of the Free World.”  But the antidemocratic contradictions which existed from the outset of our republic—slavery, allowing propertied males only to vote in political elections—have evolved in ways which have continued to cripple the American people’s understanding of the liberating promise of democratic philosophy. 

Although a civil rights movement toppled legalized segregation a century after The Civil War ended human slavery in The United States, many of the movement’s beneficiaries remained mired in poverty--and targets of Americans who resented the change.  


The tragic imperial mindset that begat the American colonization of the Philippine Islands at the end of the Nineteenth Century led to a Pandora’s Box of Twentieth Century American nightmares:  the overthrow of democratically elected governments in Iran, Guatemala and Chile; the destabilization of other democratic movements worldwide; our Southeast Asia war; Ronald Reagan’s Central America Wars and “The Iran Contra Affair.”  The spirit of “Iran Contra” begat the lies of the George W. Bush administration that led us in 2003 into war in Iraq.  


Imperial America’s rejection of the liberating promise of democracy that its Founding Fathers made to the world over two centuries ago has resulted in many throughout the world who are fearful or resentful of democracy, American style.  The American news media sugarcoats the bitter fruit of our betrayal of democratic social philosophy with “fair and balanced” reporting that rarely makes mention of inconvenient historical context or foreign opinion. 

Instead of educating themselves as to why their country has lost its position of moral authority in the world, Americans spend as much of their free time as possible in catastrophic mass consumption, immersing themselves in a shallow celebrity culture and watching any number of popular “reality shows” intent on bringing out the worst in people.  Not surprisingly, violent video games have been a booming American market for generations.

All of the generalizations and justifications that we practice in defending “The American Way” of excessive earthly consumption and human exploitation is the best measure of the distance we remain from being a people devoted to the common human good.  Rather than release humanity from our species-long battle between our animal instincts and the enlightened soul within, “we, the people” have instead become the biggest and baddest of all of the animals to be found within the human jungle for as long as we have been able.  So long as we continue to embrace our social status quo, the American people, will have no real appreciation for the promise of democratically elevated human conduct. 

We, the people, must accept responsibility for our country’s tragic and violent rejection of the democratic spirit at home and abroad in order to end our inhumane social behavior. 

Democracy and democracy

Most Americans know that a democratic form of government is one based on individual and national self-rule.  But democracy as a code of human conduct?  Most Americans know as much about democracy the philosophical ideal as they know about speaking ancient Greek.

Go ahead:  Ask any American.  Ask yourself:  What defines democratic philosophy?

There will be many guesses and half-guesses, of course, but it is safe to predict that most will be incorrect.  It is also safe to predict that, once the democratic philosophy is defined, most Americans will not believe that their society’s conduct can be based on such a belief.  Indeed, democracy will sound to most Americans like communism, socialism or that other, still lingering, likeminded “evil”--liberalism.

The American Heritage College Dictionary defines philosophical democracy as principles of social equality and individual rights.  My Illustrated Oxford Dictionary (Revised First Edition, 2003) defines a democratic society as being classless and tolerant.

Well, now:  Just how democratic is the “average” American?

Too many Americans’ knowledge of laudable individual and social conduct becomes stunted at a championing of individual rights only.  Because of such an arrested development, those who most vociferously advocate individual rights as what it means “to be an American” are also those within society most likely to advocate an “America—Love It or Leave It” brand of patriotism.  The democratic principle of social equality becomes code for Marxist Leninism, classlessness is defined as “class warfare” and a notion that Americans aren’t tolerant can be countered with the popular intolerant charge that such a commentator “Hates America.”  Tolerance for anything other than defending a pre-Civil Rights Era, early 1950s version of the American status quo—when most Americans knew their place--is condemned. 

It’s amazing, really, how little most American people know about democracy, and how even less regard most Americans have for democratic philosophy.  “Are you crazy?  What are you--nuts?” is not an uncommon comeback to hear when Americans are told that there’s more to democracy than just a nationalistic “right” to do whatever we damned well please.

So now that you know you’re not a democrat, what are you?  And how is that better than the social philosophy our country’s Founding Fathers held up to the rest of the world in the 1770s as the best hope for Humanity?