Reply #26: Bush is transitory [View All]

Blaming bush for all the ills of our country is a mistake made over and over and over and over on DU. bush is hideous. He is extremely dangerous. And when he's gone, and it can't happen soon enough, we still will have badly lost sight of the vision of the country's founders.

I will not address the focus of the OP which quite correctly cited the intellect of George Washington and the total lack of curiosity of bush. I agree with it but my reaction to the OP goes beyond that.

When the country was born, there was an incredible energy and vision to build a nation that served all the people. in a symbolic way, not just one King George was stripped of power but all the King George's. America was to be a nation of the common man. Was it perfect? Not by a long shot. But the vision they had to give each and every citizen (although they didn't do it - e.g. blacks, women) an equal say and the institutions they constructed to support that vision made a sustainable democracy a real possibility.

But the King Georges didn't just disappear. they organized. They sought more power. They sought more power than the common man had. as the hot core of visionaries died off, rather than pick up where the Founders left off, we allowed that vision to become vaguer and vaguer. With each passing year, especially after corporations were enabled and were given equal power under the law, the King Georges increasingly returned to controlling We the People. The situation was not all black and white. Laws were passed to temper some of the corporate excesses. but overall, bit by bit, big money, big organized money tightening its grip and we came a government of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations. And King George, whose evil was once understood and vigilantly guarded against, had returned.

The problem we have in this country is NOT just bush. Our citizens do not say the most important issue facing our country is the vigilant guarding of our democracy. They do not say that we are at risk of losing our liberty. They do not vote out political parties that wallow in corporate money and corporate control. They do not arise and call for a second American revolution to restore the Founder's vision for a land of the free. And they do NOT value and empower the few real leaders who do call for the tearing down on the new institutions, like corporate personhood, that have perverted the original vision of the Founders.

And that, my friend, is how we have turned this country away from the vision of George Washington and into the land of the privileged few.