Jeffersonian Revolution

In the United States, there are what are largely myths such as “anyone can sue,” or “anyone can run,” or “anyone can directly tell off the president or the mayor,” or “anyone can blow the whistle.” These combine with a few celebrated successes by rebels or an ordinary David taking on a Goliath for a win here and there, from a corporate-government ruling class that bends a little so that it doesn’t break.
Meanwhile, the inequality, gouging, political exclusions and overall gaps between the top 1 percent and the rest tighten the grip of the oligarchy and its draining, violent militarized empire.
Loss of control over almost everything that matters, including their children to daily direct corporate marketing of junk food and violent programming, is rampant. Over 70 percent of those polled told Business Week that they believed corporations had too much control over their lives — and that was in 2000 before the Wall Street collapse, severe recession and taxpayer bailouts.
The American people don’t see much they can do to counter the pressures of greed and power that track them daily from debt to debt, from lower standards of living to outright penury, from denial of critical health care to the iron collar of the poor credit score, from inscrutable, computerized bills to fine-print contracts trapping their sense of unfairness into waves of frustration, from being put on hold by companies until they’re told “no, no, no” or “penalty, penalty, penalty!”
How do we break the cycle of despair, exclusion, powerlessness and endless betrayal by those given the authority to bring the exploiters and oppressors to lawful accountability?
The empire rips up the Constitution and takes the reserve army of the young unemployed to kill and die in aggressive wars of the White House’s choice, with Congress watching from the sidelines – its only role to funnel trillions of tax dollars into the insatiable war machine’s unauditable budgets. President Eisenhower wanted us to control the “military-industrial complex.” Instead, it grew much more out of control. Eisenhower’s grave warning as expressed in his farewell address in 1961 was prescient.
The spark could come from a recurrent sequence of abuses that strikes a special chord of deeply felt injustice. Or it could be a unique episode of bullying that tolls the feeling “enough already” throughout the land. Such sparks cannot be manufactured; the power to arouse and break people’s routines is spontaneous.
When that moment comes, their self-respect and a keen sense of wrong will remind millions of Americans precisely why our Constitution begins with “We the People” and not “We the Corporations.” They will realize the necessity for a Jeffersonian revolution.