Just as surely as the Magi knew instinctively to follow the Star of Bethlehem, Americans as they prepare to vote in this week's elections know that something is wrong--perhaps lost--in our country. It is a momentous time as people await the outcome. Only out of the plethora of politicians where is a leader in sight? Plus what happens if nothing really changes?
At the time of President Reagan's election I commented that Ronald Reagan is the last freely elected U. S. President. Both Bush presidencies were water-downed extensions of the Reagan era while the two Democratic Presidents were elected in reaction to the public's disfavor with the Bushes. Both Democrats made sure with their overarching campaign promises that a new America was within grasp of every citizen.
All it took was 20 short years to run this nation into the ground so much so that the model of ancient Egypt looms over our collective futures. This sinister pyramidal organization of society wherein 1% or less comprise the privileged at the apex while the vast balance of society exists lumped together as the broad base obliterates what made the United States great--the huge, thriving middle class, a teeming brotherhood of the common man. Moreover, this diabolical pyramid stands diametrically opposed to the American system of government and our organization of society up to and including capitalism and our highly individualistic modes of being.
The United States is unique in the history of world civilization. It is a government of the common man as celebrated in the Declaration of Independence and as organized around the rule of law. Nothing else matters. Laws made and observed by free men and women, people made free by the inviolable Bill of Rights. It is a country where people are free to determine their lives as long as they do not infringe upon the rights of others and make no harm to others. When it comes to religion its people have been free to worship as they so chose. It doesn't matter how many and varied are the ways that Americans have chosen to pray because Americans praying has made the U. S. a prayerful country and as such a blessed and protected nation among all others.
No better place can we see this celebration of the common man than in the works of America's "poet laureate of the radio era" Norman Corwin. During World War II he set Americans' imaginations on fire so much so that our soldiers on the war fronts famously quoted his line: "There will be a full morning soonest." Those words led them onwards.
Take the opening lines of his World War II masterwork "On a Note of Triumph" first broadcast on V-E Day on May 8, 1945, and applicable to V-J Day on August 14, 1945:
Take a bow GI, take a bow little guy.
The Superman of Tomorrow lies at the feet of you, common man.
You had what it takes.
Seems like free men have done it again.
Truthful, stirring words that applied to all theaters of World War II--European, African, Middle Eastern, and Pacific. Average Americans from all walks of life beat down two of the most horrific war machines of all time. It was a victory from a people with an ethos that no one is above you, and no one is below you. They are the ones underscoring who is an American in "The Ballad for Americans (1939).
My question is: How many of those running for office in the current elections have the common man to the forefront of their campaigns and their political agendas? They do not necessarily have to know Corwin's "On a Note of Triumph" but they must remember that it is the American GI who won World War II for the entire world; and it is American soldiers who since that war have preserved no only our own liberty and interests but also that of other peoples throughout the world.
Do they make the connection between the Doughboys and the GI dogfaces in the past world wars and our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan today? Do they ever think about our hundreds of thousands of soldiers who are buried in vast American cemeteries in foreign lands and who never got the chance to make it back to home soil because there were just too many of them? Before any U. S. President sends someone's child to a faraway war they should walk a number of those foreign soil cemeteries in order to meditate and pray there in the vastness of these places reserved for our fallen.
The answer may be that sadly many do not. Intuitively Americans right at this moment know that something in America has been lost. We all feel it. Not only are we concerned but also we are fearful. No one wants to lose the U. S. and the unprecedented freedoms that we have enjoyed for so long. During the last part of the 20th century there has been a steady erosion of our freedom of speech. Since 9/11 many other liberties are in peril, perhaps unavoidably. To this, add the current financial imbroglio that threatens worldwide economic collapse, and you see the dangerous precipice upon which we all stand.
Back in November 2006, I remarked to the L. A. PBS chief Al Jerome that the religious right will seize control of the nation albeit at the ballot box. He thought I was crazy. He did not even want to know my reasoning. This reason is that the pendulum has swung so far to the extreme that the very foundations of our system of government are no longer recognizable. "Anything goes" has worn out its welcome.
I cannot elaborate. I just know that it is going to happen. Something dreadful may occur and may occur on U. S. soil to act as a catalyst--total worldwide economic collapse, World War III, terrorism, civil wars, or another Holocaust as the late Oscar-winning producer Charles H. Joffe predicted. When things get so far out of hand and it becomes apparent that these events are the machinations of those entities that stand to profit from the turmoil then this fierce swing to the right and to a strict interpretation of the U. S. Constitution will occur.
In a U. S. fraught with the ambivalence of politicians who kowtow to the 1% at the apex of our society be they banks, corporations, government bureaucracies, or individuals; and in a U. S. anesthetized by the thought that we are in the midst of losing a once great nation we desperately need all and any sources of inspiration, both great like Norman Corwin and small, wherever we can find them.
One example occurred last Thursday night, October 28, 2010, during game 2 of the World Series in San Francisco: Steve Perry, front man for the rock band Journey, stood singing one of his songs along with tens of thousands of other attendees--the common man. This event shows more about what the U. S. is about in terms of its spirit, its courage, and its integrity than anything we have experienced on the political front in a very long time. It was simple and spontaneous.
America is not to be defined by Halliburton and its defective concrete; not-so-circumspect, power-mad politicians wheeling and dealing behind the scenes to tamper with elections that should be a matter of only free men and women at the ballot box; a national media with the exception of one lone reporter that "whitewatered" the last election lining up so lopsidedly for one candidate and only one candidate; and people who forget that this is the land where the rule of law prevails--laws made or repealed as the times warrant. Laws that apply fairly to all.
To conclude from Corwin's "On a Note of Triumph":
They spilled their blood for the rights of man.
For people the likes of me, and you.
And they ask that we do not fail them again.
In the days we are coming to.
All I am trying to say is that this is a nation of the common man where each and every individual counts and in the days to come we are going to need each and every one of our American citizens and our citizens-in-the-making because we are approaching those days "we are coming to" as Mr. Corwin predicted.
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