“We have a deeply divided body politic. Half the people believe the system is broken. The other half believes it is fixed.” — Swami Beyondananda
Back when Bruce Lipton and I were working on the “Healing the Body Politic” chapter in Spontaneous Evolution, I said, “We know our government is one sick puppy. But what’s the disease?”
I expected something related to heart disease, or cancer, or autoimmune dysfunction, but Bruce’s answer surprised me: “Paralysis.”
Besides being a cellular biologist, Bruce has been a keen student and admirer of the Declaration of Independence and America’s founding philosophy. So I asked him to explain.
From the biologist’s perspective, he told me, the government serves as a central nervous system for the body politic, coordinating and facilitating for the benefit of the entire “organism” and all of its “cellular” citizens. Unlike the propaganda we’ve been inundated with for decades, the government — when healthy — is a beneficial force.
Indeed, the Declaration of Independence established that the purpose of any government is to serve the people. And the Constitution literally sets out a mission statement in the Preamble — to “establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”
In other words, government of, by and for the people was created to protect us from external and internal threats, and actually help us cooperate for the benefit of each and all. But in the past half-century, those who would benefit themselves to the detriment of the commonwealth and the common good have waged an all-too-effective campaign to discredit government itself. From the Powell Memorandum to the Koch Brothers, these forces have sought to proliferate the meme, “business good, government bad.” This attitude was typified by the famous Ronald Reagan quote, “The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”
To his credit, Reagan did have an excellent sense of humor, so the quote stuck. And that brings us to Bruce’s diagnosis. Our government — that is, the apparatus designed to protect we the people and facilitate collaboration and cooperation — has been intentionally paralyzed so that nefarious forces can operate with impunity.
That’s why Donald Trump is more of a symptom than a cause. His election indicates the fed-upness of the American people, who chose to elect a known criminal rather than someone embedded in a chronically corrupt system.
The Democrats? Just like the Republicans, they are enmeshed in a “pay-to-play” system that requires a Senator to raise $45,000 A DAY for six years in order to win the next election!
While partisans are arguing whether to impeach Donald Trump, it’s the entire impeachable system that needs to be impeached.
Fortunately, a genuine breakthrough has been quietly brewing, largely unreported by the mainstream media who seem to have a vested interest in keeping the current “greedlock” in place. The organization is Represent.us, their campaign is called Unrig the System, and their slogan is: “The government is ours … it needs to work for us.”
Represent.us has as its key platform piece the American Anti-Corruption Act, whose intention it is to:
• Stop political bribery by making it illegal for lobbyists to lobby a politician and donate to their campaign. You can lobby, or you can donate, but you can’t do both.
• End secret money so Americans know who is buying political power.
• Fix our broken elections so the people, not the political establishment, are the ones in control.
I know, I know. They are proposing a sane world. They must be crazy.
Last year, along with my colleagues with the National Town Square project, Richard Lang and Rev. Lupton Abshire, I attended the “Unrig the System” event in New Orleans, and it gave us all genuine encouragement that there is indeed an “evolutionary upwising to overgrow the system.”
We were encouraged by the young people emerging from across the political spectrum to stand for the universal values that more than 90% of us share — just, transparent, honest governance that promotes the interests of “we the people” over what James Madison deridingly called “factions”.
Please watch Unrig’s short animated movie here featuring Jennifer Lawrence and share it with your friends, family and community — regardless of their party affiliation. Then, if you are so moved, join the upwising.
Each side, through fear, seeks to leverage us to vote for their “lesser evil” instead of the other side’s “lesser evil.” Here is a chance for you to evolve past the lesser evil meme and vote for THE GREATER GOOD!
Oh, and you can listen to our Wiki Politiki interview with Represent.us National Organizing Manager James Jamieson right here.
Thank you for being a Wiki listener and supporter, thank you for caring about our future, and thank you for being a co-heart on the journey!
Yours in Evolutionary Upwising,
Steve Bhaerman
Go ahead. Patronize me. Support Wiki Politiki monthly through Patreon.
