THE BRANCH UPON WHICH WE SIT
By Ken Larson
Technology
has permitted marvelous advances and opportunities in communication and
convenience.
It
has also impacted independent thought and created concerns with respect to
privacy and transparency in government. Our focus has shifted recently to sophisticated
forms of government technological control that may be both legal and illegal, and are being challenged in our
court systems.
Mass
marketing and communications have created expectations beyond reality in venues
from romance web sites to building wealth. They have also confused us about our government functions, our elected representatives and where they are taking us.
We
have grown used to the convenience of viewing the world through media sound
bites, opinionated, biased, news and insincere, short sighted, money driven
politicians, who are financed by loosely controlled contributors and influenced
by lobbying firms that spend enormous amounts of money made available by the
wealthy to impact our opinions.
We
have become less competitive in the global economy, as a concentration of
wealth has shifted to a very few and our corporations evolve operations outside
the country, taking the resulting tax relief, profits, investments and
resources with them.
THE CONUNDRUM
Consider simpler times a few years past. Trust was
necessary in many venues as a means of survival on a day-to-day basis. We
relied on others extensively for our well-being from our local store to our
banker, from the policeman to the politician. And we knew them all better, we
could reach out and touch them and we were not viewing them in sound bites and
web sites, nor were we being bombarded with multiple forms of input to digest
about them.
Americans have very little trust in the current era. We see a negative, idealistically bound, bloated government, growing like a money- eating beast and putting generations in hock with unwarranted incursions into foreign countries and a focus on big corporations and big business.
THE CHALLENGE
The
key to our true independence is in becoming involved as individuals, taking flight on wings that grow
strong by exercising our intellect, our shared opinions and our participation
in government. We must research a
personal perspective based on our personal values and take time in the fast
pace our culture demands to communicate with those we elect to government –
before and after the election.
Trust is hard to establish in the modern era. We see very little true statesmanship in the good people we send to Washington, who promptly become ground up in the huge machine there in order to survive. That machine must change and the people we send to change it must share that objective with us.
Trust is hard to establish in the modern era. We see very little true statesmanship in the good people we send to Washington, who promptly become ground up in the huge machine there in order to survive. That machine must change and the people we send to change it must share that objective with us.
HOW STRONG ARE OUR WINGS?
Communications
and expectations are two vital elements in measuring trust.
To an extraordinary extent, the age in which we live is requiring us to redefine trust and the degree to which communication and expectations contribute to it. To become truly independent, we must become much more sophisticated ourselves in the manner with which we view all this input and sift it in a meaningful way to have true trust.
To an extraordinary extent, the age in which we live is requiring us to redefine trust and the degree to which communication and expectations contribute to it. To become truly independent, we must become much more sophisticated ourselves in the manner with which we view all this input and sift it in a meaningful way to have true trust.
To
a very large degree this is a personal responsibility. We must become involved,
make prudent judgments and think for ourselves, then communicate our
expectations to those who represent us.
If
we do not, we run a high risk of tyranny and that fact is inescapable.
Our constitutional republic is at war with our unbalanced capitalistic economic system.
Written over 200 years ago , the constitution is now being shred by opportunistic forces using technology and communication to pierce freedom weakness seams in the document that the founders did not anticipate or imagine.
Through the struggles of our times the bedrock democratic ideal behind that document can only be saved by the people of this country themselves.
Ken Larson
