I find it incredulous how some Americans can’t see what is happening to our country, and how it is being accomplished.
A healthcare bill just passed in the House of Representatives that has the support of 17% of Americans, and it was celebrated in the White House Rose Garden. Let’s say the polls regarding the bill have an error factor. But, even if the vote was close, it still passed and got publicly celebrated. Even a very high polling error factor of 10% still says the bill is opposed by 73% of Americans.
Where is our democracy, and where did it go wrong? How is this possible in the United States? I can understand the uninformed supporting this, they don’t know any better. And some racists will support anything they perceive will hurt people of color, even if it denies their own good. But, where is the outrage of the majority, and why isn’t the mainstream media aggressively covering the erosion of American democracy?
Russia may very well have decided our presidential election, but the more insidious enemy of the people is within: legislators that are bought and paid for doing that what harms democracy and the people. Why do we hear from the media that Trump’s finest 100-day accomplishment was his appointment of a qualified Supreme Court justice, when in fact, that justice is a reliable vote against the will and needs of the people? He is a reliable vote in favor of extreme gerrymandering and the purchase of our representatives by corporate and wealthy interests. Where is the justice and democracy in that appointment?
The U.S. Senate (bought and paid for by the wealthy few) will likely produce a health care bill that looks nothing like the abomination produced by the House and Trump. But what does that say about the House and Trump? Doesn’t that just highlight how out of touch they are with the needs of the majority of Americans?
Doesn’t it say they are confident that they can get re-elected after publicly celebrating a bill that is opposed by the vast majority of Americans? And what does it say about the electoral college when the know-nothing in the White House lost the popular vote by three million?
What does it say about the state of our democracy, and our education system, when a president can go in the exact opposite direction on health care than he promised when campaigning for office, and what he continued to promise after he got elected?
This is the democracy we try to sell other people on around the world? Will it be any surprise when they tell us to fix our own glass house before we throw any stones at them? And, when do we plan to fix it?
Ann Brickner is a fired-up grandma, Chicago native and Cub-Sox fan now living in Shady Side, Maryland.
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