3 posts tagged “politics”
John issued a challenge several days ago to write an article on what I thought political leadership was. Here's his excellent essay. And here's my paltry offering on the topic:
"A sense of humor is part of the art of leadership, of getting along with
people, of getting things done."
Dwight D. Eisenhower
"Getting things done." That sounds so simple, doesn't it? But as we poke and
prod at these three words, a much more complex picture emerges. We expect our
politicians to get things done, because we elect them to do just that. However,
we have to tell our elected employees what it is we expect them to do so they
can set about getting it all done.
I very deliberately use the term "elected employees"[1] because that best
illustrates their place in our society. It's a reminder, to me, and hopefully
to those elected to assorted political and government offices, that they are not
independent contractors but rather a conduit of our will and needs. They are
not leaders, but servants, chosen to do our bidding to advance our needs to the
entire nation and to weight those needs against the needs of other areas and the
nation as a whole. They were elected to see to it that we, the people who
elected them, are not overlooked in the vastness of the United States. A part
of that job is to inform us of the needs of other groups and allow us to help
decide if other needs outweigh ours - for the greater good of our country as
whole.
This isn't happening as it should. There's been a break-down in communication,
and the average American feels disenfranchised from the very government that is
supposed to be our tool. Apathy has become the order of the day because so few
people understand exactly how our government should work. We are driven by our
country, not the driving force of our country.
In America, our government is a republic [2]. Most people think we live in a
democracy, an assumption by the average American that is played upon and
exploited by the very people who should know better - the people we elect to
represent us in that republic. They, and we, have forgotten that "the only
title in our democracy superior to that of President [is] the title of
citizen"[3]
There are so very many causes contributing to this that it is less effective to
look at what caused it and far more productive to look instead at ways to change
this.
We need leaders in our community - people who are clear-sighted and tough enough
to face reality. They are more likely to be organizers, advisers, and
delegators of work. They are deeply connected to the local community and they
know what's needed where and why. More importantly, they know how to fulfill
those needs. People know them, recognize them, and trust them to get things
done. Unfortunately, these are not the people we are electing to our public
offices.
"A state is not a mere society, having a common place, established for the
prevention of mutual crime and for the sake of exchange...Political society
exists for the sake of noble actions, and not of mere companionship."
Aristotle, Politics
It would be refreshing to be able to honestly state that our politicians, the
people we elect to public offices to represent us, were engaged in noble
actions, deeds that would strengthen our nation and make it stronger and better
than its individual parts. I believe this was the ideal, the spirit in which
our Constitution was written by our Founders.
These people offered up their livelihoods and their freedom to birth this
country. They spent many hours agonizing over how this country should be run,
seeking ways that would keep it running for centuries without reverting back to
the systems of government they were escaping. Have you read those founding
documents, the letters our Founders wrote one another as they struggled to
create a nation that would be the freest and greatest country the world would
ever see? Do you know how they struggled to create a government that would
protect us and allow us constant input in its operation? Do you know the
difference between a democracy and a republic[4]? Did you think it was easy for
our leadership back then to write this?
Those were leaders - people who offered up their lives and their wealth to
invest in a cause and a country that would be free. They worked hard to ensure that
their new country would have the tools it needed to survive and thrive. Their thoughts
weren't for their personal comfort and profit, but for the welfare of the country they
were forming.
And what have we done with it? We - we, the people - abdicated our
responsibilities. We don't look among us for the people who are genuine leaders
and put them up for the position of our elected employees, we have what amounts
to a popularity contest. We vote for people based on their political platforms
- or maybe on their looks or their "sincerity". Let the least hint of scandal
attach to them and we're appalled at their humanity. We expect our elected
employees to be demi-gods, pure of soul and free of stain. Or at least appear
to be so.
"If liberty and equality, as is thought by some are chiefly to be found in
democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the
government to the utmost."
Aristotle, Politics
Aristotle's ideas work well in small communities, nations the size of our
counties or perhaps the smaller states. Democracy is for small countries. The
United States of America is too big to work as a democracy and our founders
understood this. They created our country to be a republic - a country where
the smaller segments may operate as democracies, but then they'd choose a person
to speak for them; representatives who would deal with the representatives of
other small segments of America to keep us all functioning smoothly together in
united cause.
With strong leadership and good choices in our elected employees, this would
work to our benefit. How many of us even know the names of our city mayor, our
state governor, our state representatives and senator, let alone the names of
our federal representatives and senators? Even if we voted for them, do we ever
communicate with them, tell them our concerns, our needs, our wants?
It's no wonder these elected employees are going off on their own. What other
job has so little supervision, so little oversight, that the employees can
dictate the terms of their employment and give themselves pay raises at the
expense of their employers? They call themselves "leaders" because they are
making decisions, but those decisions benefit themselves, their friends, their
businesses, and the people who give them money - not the people who voted for
them. Their employers - the people who voted for them - are virtually ignored
by most elected employees because we - the voters - don't exercise our
supervisory duties over them.
At some point in our history, our elected employees seem to have convinced us
that they are the ones utterly in charge and once elected to office, we have no
further say in their activities. They can act unilaterally and without
accountability in any matter they choose.
That's not true. A real leader serves as a channel for those they lead. They
aggregate the needs of their constituents, sort through them to find the
commonalities, and devise a plan to provide the greatest benefit to those same
constituents. They present the plans to their constituents, and on approval,
direct the implementation of them. Leaders have a number of responsibilities -
to see the greater picture, to find the course that will provide not the
quickest relief, but the most effective, to satisfy every element in their
constituency either through implementation of approved plans or by finding ways
to provide some relief for those whose needs can't be met, to keep the lines of
communication open, and to safeguard their constituents from excessive
restrictions imposed by outside forces
"The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and
to protect its free expression should be our first object."
Thomas Jefferson
In the US, our elected employees need to start listening to their constituency
once more, to open the lines of communication with them, to get to know the
people they are representing. Since it isn't likely the politicians will
change, it must perforce be us who change. We need to communicate with our
elected employees, resume our supervisory position. We can do that through
handwritten letters (still the most effective method because many of our elected
employees are apparently living in pre-internet and possibly even pre-telephonic
times when it comes to communication) , through face-to-face meetings (possible
in smaller electorates like city mayor, and even with one's state
representatives), and then through phone calls and emails.
Our government is "our" government. We are ultimately the ones in control of
it, no matter how bleak things look right now. It is our will that forms it.
We've kind of slacked off on that by focusing our will on trivial things like
American Idol, but it wouldn't be difficult to infuse politics with interest.
Our media, if they were willing to do it, could make politics a focal point of
our lives very easily. At the moment, when political events appear on TV or the
radio, it's always presented in dull and boring formats. People tune out after
a while because the current formats of speech, debate, or interview are - less
than riveting among all the other choices offered for viewing, like American
Idol, or Hell's Kitchen, or You're Fired. Personally, I don't find these shows
appealing so much as humiliating, but the format would be much more informative
and interesting than our common political presentations.
Consider: Potential elected employees would compete in various areas with
critiquing by a panel of ordinary Americans. They'd have to - in word and deed
- convince this panel that they are the best candidate for the position. They'd
be able to offer videos of their past performances if they have been an elected
employee in the past. They'd have tasks to perform - with goals and set
resources, and be judged on their accomplishment of those tasks. The candidates
could be in communication with their potential constituency via websites, email,
chatrooms, and more. The panel would pull random questions from these venues to
ask during the "judging" process. And then the audience could vote candidates
off or keep them on. The winner on the show would be the one who accomplishes
all the tasks and survives to the end.
Then, there'd be the actual vote for the office following the show. A person
who did well, but was voted off or eliminated in the show might still win the
election, in the same way that some of the participants in those reality shows
who were eliminated went on to do far better than the winners of the shows.
Our current political party system would change - and I find this a good thing -
because the smaller parties would be an on equal footing with the dominant
parties. It would make politics interesting and dynamic once more. It's
stagnated for far too long.
Yes, it would be a spectacle, but is it really any worse than our current method
of voting for people because they are the lesser of two evils, or abstaining
from voting altogether because we have no candidates we can trust, no one who
exhibits true leadership potential?
We don't have the ability any longer for old political methods to work - the
meet-and-greets are restricted any more, many voters can't gain access to them.
The fundraisers are prohibitively expensive for the average voter. The
televised debates are often boring and rarely provide any real information. The
ads are misleading and full of mudslinging.
Americans feel disenfranchised from politics. I hear and read a lot of people
saying they don't vote anymore because it doesn't matter. Their vote doesn't
count. And even if it did count, the politician would just do whatever he
wanted to do anyway. Our current president is such a shining example of that -
in spite of the fact that most Americans want stem cell research, he
vetoed the bill again. In spite of the fact that most Americans want us to
withdraw from the war our President started, he's going to "stay
the course" [5] no matter what the cost in lives, families, ideals,
reputation, or money.
A leader listens to the people they are leading. When leaders stop listening to
their constituents, it causes all sorts of problems. The leader becomes a
dictator, demanding attention and forcing through their personal agendas at the
expense of everyone else. The constituency becomes disgruntled and apathetic.
Before long, we aren't governed by the majority any more, we're governed by the
majority of those who participate in our government - and those aren't always
the people who have the best interests of our nation at heart.
There are so many potential leaders in America who are excluded by our current
methods of politicking. Maybe a reality competition elimination type show would
allow us to find these people and vote for them. It would certainly restore
interest and humor into our politics, and it would allow us to feel as if we
have power over our government and lives once more.
[1] I didn't coin the term, it is used among unions and Australia; I just
applied it to politicians.
[2] Immigration Flashcards - scroll down to the
flash card to Question 89, that asks "What kind of government do we have?" - the
answer is "A republic". Also Benjamin Franklin, when asked what kind of
government we'd created just after the signing of the Constitution, replied "A
republic, if we can keep it." And Article IV, Section 4 of our very own
Constitution states, ""guarantees to every state in this union a republican form
of government"
[3] said by former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis - and even he didn't
understand the difference between a democracy and a republic.
[4] a democracy is determined entirely by a majority vote, a republic has a
charter to protect the basic rights that can't be altered by a simple majority
vote. - WiseGeeks
[5] He may have dropped the phrase, but not the intent.
It's been a year since I wrote this, and very little has changed for the better in that year. We’ve had states try to pass draconian anti-abortion laws, we’ve had one champion for women’s rights railroaded out of her authoritative position because she decided her people could offer women what they need. In the news, we read stories of women “being raped”, not of “men raping women”, and watched court cases of rape victims being further victimized. We’ve seen more women and children becoming homeless because they weren’t allowed a choice that could have prevented the whole problem. We have people actively and vociferously advocating having babies - in spite of the fact that we are breeding ourselves out of resources.
More and more, we need to take control of our reproduction, to stem the constant increase in our population. We need to consider the welfare of those who are already born and living in this world. We need to care for those who are alive now, and in need now.
I believe life, and the life of the soul, begins at conception. I do not believe sentience begins at conception. That is something that develops when the vessel it is meant to inhabit matures enough to nourish the seed of sentience and nurture it to fruition. Life is sacred. All life is sacred. I am morally opposed to the malicious taking of any life, but I believe life that already exists independently takes precedence over a potential life. Choice must be moral, ethical, and legal. Let me explain.
I choose life for myself and the children I bore, because I am inherently selfish and fluffy. I choose for no other woman because I am an American. It is the precise separation of religion and law that allows disparate faiths to thrive alongside one another, including disparities within religions, such as Catholics and Methodists. The American attitude of freedom of religion and the separation of church and state has ensured our safety in the practice of our beliefs, and our rights are not dependent upon the morality of the privileged few, but rather on higher ideals of justice, equality, and freedom.
I am pro-choice because it is the only moral choice to make when it involves other people.
Without choice, there can be no morality at all. There can only be slavery.
Consider. A woman who becomes pregnant has not just her unborn child to consider, but also any other children she may currently have, her own body, and other people dependent upon her. She is the custodian for all of them. She must be allowed the freedom to choose to add this unborn child to the family or to abort it for the greater good of those already born. If we take away that choice, then the unborn baby may be saved but at the cost of a far greater evil to the woman and to those already born.
Is it better to allow a woman her choice, knowing she may choose to abort in some cases, or do we remove that choice and most assuredly commit evil in every single case?
Life must be protected. There is no doubt about that. As a woman, it is my duty to protect the life of my unborn child, not the government's, not some preacher's, certainly not yours. It is also my duty to protect the lives of other children I may already have, and those living children take precedence over an unformed and unborn potentiality. It is my duty as a woman to protect the people already living in my care, and I must consider so very many things.
The welfare of the developing embryo is, like the embryo's own tissues, too caught up in the mother's own existence to be considered separately. The distinction between mother and child occurs gradually. In the beginning, when there is no distinction, when the embryo is incapable of independent viability, it is and must be entirely and completely the mother's decision on how to safeguard all the lives within her care, from her own and the already-born to the unborn within her. The mother can, should, indeed, must, protect herself first, because she must be healthy and able to care for those dependent upon her. Then she must protect the already born who are in her care – whether those are older children of hers, her elderly parents or grandparents, cousins, kin, mates, mates' kin, co-workers, neighbors. She has a large group of people to consider, not just the one unborn child.
Life must be protected, and the question becomes, whose life?
The pro-life argument is not one of law or physical technicalities, but of the spirit. It is not life with which they are concerned, but the soul. Let me address this from my own Numenist perspective.
To have any integrity of the human soul at all, we must be allowed to know, and knowing, to choose our path. To remove a person's right to choose is tantamount to gainsaying the spiritual concept of free will. Free will is an important part of Numenism. Those who would prevent a woman from making a choice to bear or abort the unborn embryo may think they are stopping a terrible crime, but what they are actually doing is harming everyone - everyone connected with the woman, everyone in that woman's neighborhood, society, culture, and religion. They are stifling spiritual growth, playing god in an unhealthy way, and abusing the intelligence granted us.
It is fine to be pro-life. If you can change someone's mind with love, compassionate words, and physical support, so much the better. It is not acceptable on a spiritual level to force someone to make choices they would not make because you feel it is the right thing for them to do. Removing choice from someone removes their humanity, their adulthood, their hard-won maturity. It makes of them slaves. Slaves have no choice in what they do - it is all controlled by someone else. Spiritual slavery is as terrible as physical slavery. I, personally, think spiritual slavery is more terrible than physical slavery, for physical slavery has avenues of escape, even if that escape is death. Spiritual slavery offers no escape, for even death doesn’t guarantee freedom.
This isn't about "killing babies", it is about the freedom of the human soul. It is about being allowed to choose our destinies. It is about being allowed to have respect for our own reproductive lives, and it is about having no shame when we protect ourselves by doing what we must.
I could never ask a woman to risk her life for a pregnancy she did not want. I could never ask a woman to shoulder a lifetime responsibility she does not feel she can bear with grace. I could never presume to make a life-altering decision for anyone not myself. I didn't even have my son circumcised so he could make that decision for himself when he was old enough. How could I have the utter arrogance to decide if a woman would bear child or not?
I believe that abortion is the taking of a life, but it is not murder. There is no negative stigma of a woman choosing to preserve the emotional, physical, and mental well being of her life and the lives of those already dependent upon her. Abortion is a method of self-defense and protection for her and her world. To label a woman who has had to choose an abortion with the same name as the people who deliberately drown their children or shoot them or starve them is a disservice to the soul of society. And when we burden society's soul with too many negatives, it responds in harmful ways. Those already born become less valuable, more disposable. People who know their lives are not valued in turn place little value on other people, and violence, greed, and callousness become common.
The reality of abortion is not black or white. It is not good or evil. It is human struggle, filled with blood and grief and fear and pain and humiliation. Nobody plans to get pregnant just so they can have an abortion. Abortion is not used as a primary method of birth control, not by any sane, valued being. Birth control methods fail, and abortion is a back-up for that. Men take advantage of women via rape, and abortion is there to help protect the woman from one major consequence of the man's violent act. Only the woman can determine if she is capable of caring for a pregnancy forced on her through violence, or through failed birth control.
And that brings us to what our society would consider the dark side of abortion and what I consider the bright side of it. Relief. Abortion is a safety valve for families. The choice to abort or not allows the woman and her family freedom and safety. It is a considered action that dignifies the value of human life and the human soul by considering all parts of the equation and not just the one unknown cipher. Like any act of great human consequence, there are times when abortion is the right and only thing to do, and times when it is a terrible mistake. The pregnant woman is the only one who can make that decision, and once made, we, as a society, cannot ethically and morally judge her choice, not and remain a moral and ethical society.
Who are we to second-guess her choice, a choice that is never as simple or easy as it sounds?
We have the wealth, the technology, and the ability to make every child born a wanted child, to prevent unwanted pregnancies, to safely abort dangerous or unwanted pregnancies, to provide support while any children are entirely dependent upon the mother, to make families stronger and safer.
But we don't.
As a society, we Americans devalue the mother, we force women into untenable positions to assuage the vocal demands of a small group of control freaks, we force children into untenable lives of poverty and violence, we make all of society colder, meaner, and more selfish, and we do this by preventing women from being honored, from making the hard choices they must make. Abortion is not easy. It is as life-altering a decision as giving birth, and there's not a woman who has had an abortion who doesn't regret the need for that decision. They may not regret the decision itself, they may rejoice that they could have that choice, but they will always regret the need that forced the decision upon them.
This isn't even addressing the primary reason for allowing women to make the choice to carry or abort the pregnancy – the spiritual growth that such decisions will bring. By abrogating the woman's right to choose, we stunt her spiritual growth. We enslave her soul and the souls of all her children and dependents.
Perhaps there are those who want women to remain spiritually small and weak; they are themselves small-spirited.
There are those who will cry out, "But what about the father's right to choose?"
And to them I answer: The father's right to choose takes place before the act of coition and orgasm. Once he decides to squirt his sperm and conception occurs, he hands over the decision for what happens next to the woman. It is her body, her life, her family, her community, her spiritual well-being that informs her decision. She may choose to allow him a part in her decision, but it is ultimately and completely her decision, and it will remain hers until we develop something along the lines of the Bujoldian uterine replicators. When we have artificial wombs that put no woman's life at risk to carry a baby to term, that involve no woman's emotions, bodies, or families; then men can decide to take custody of the embryo, grow it in the artificial womb, and raise it.
When women can walk away from the pregnancy as easily as men can, then men can decide.
So, if men want to make that decision, to take the lifetime responsibility of growing and rearing a child, they should hustle and develop working artificial wombs as soon as they can. Until then, they need to take responsibility for their fertility, either through using condoms and a spermicide, through abstinence, through vasectomy, through the male birth control pill, through self-control. And they must always, always be aware that birth control does indeed fail, that surgical sterilization isn’t always 100%, and that, like most humans, women make mistakes, are forgetful, may have an idiosyncratic reaction to birth control, and sometimes, sometimes, in spite of all the effort to the contrary, pregnancy occurs.
Abortion is a safety valve for those instances. For men as well as women.
Abortion is never an easy choice. No matter what the media tries to make us believe, abortion is a dreadful burden, a life-altering choice that haunts the women who must choose it for the rest of their lives. If a woman is impregnated by a man - through failed birth control, through lies, through rape, through changed circumstances - she has very few options. Every one of those options has a strong potential to be detrimental to her health, her spirit, her mental well-being, her finances - and the health, well-being, and care of those already alive and in her care.
If a woman lives where she can still choose
abortion, she has to undergo a risky surgical procedure to free herself
of the unwanted pregnancy - a man walks away without having to undergo
any kind of surgical procedure or alteration to his body.
If, for religious or ethical reasons or, increasingly often, for lack of adequate medical care in her community, she has to carry the unwanted pregnancy to term, she risks a host of ailments, up to and including death. A man gets to walk away without any kind of damage to his body and certainly without any fear of dying for it.
If a woman chooses to place the child for adoption, she can't do so without the father's permission - permission he can deny just to punish her - and it is a punishment to both the mother and the poor unwanted child, to have to work and spend money to feed, house, clothe, and educate that unwanted child, frequently without any support whatsoever from the father - who gets to walk away without losing a penny or a moment's sleep over the lives he's just destroyed. Even if a court of law determines he should pay child support, all he has to do is walk away. A woman who walks away from her baby is prosecuted for child abandonment at best, and child abuse at worst.
If the couple are married when the child is conceived and born, if the man decides he no longer wants to be responsible for the child he helped bring into the world, all he has to do is walk away. No one condemns him for it. No one demands he pay for the life he helped create. No one blames him if he denies the child is his. After all, short of DNA testing, there’s no proof, not like there is when a woman gives birth. Maternity is rarely in doubt.
So many men have taken the option to just walk away, it's a wonder women haven't risen up and reacted with far greater anger and made far stronger demands. It’s a wonder women even consider giving men any choice at all.
Men make their decision to impregnate women the moment they allow their sperm to come into contact with a fertile egg. If men failed to use birth control themselves, (via abstinence, condoms, male birth control, self control, or vasectomy), then they are as liable for the unwanted child as the women they impregnate - more so, perhaps, because they could always choose to walk away and (radical idea) not leak sperm in inappropriate places.
The burden of birth control is not and should not be entirely upon the woman.
Me, I'd like to see every child born be a wanted child - planned and anticipated and hoped for. That means everyone has to own up to their part in the procreation process - from erection to childbirth, and take responsibility for the results of their choices.
That means we need a wide variety of choices, from better birth control for both genders to better behavior from men and women to better health care. We need artificial wombs so women can walk away from a pregnancy as easily as men do. We need better methods of adoption and fosterage. We need more humane peer pressure.
And we need to allow women the freedom to choose and the access to knowledgeable and skilled physicians to help them in their choice.
And men? If you want to have a choice in the continuance of a pregnancy - get busy developing artificial wombs. When you build those wombs, then you can choose.
I'm not usually willing to commit to predictions, but this pattern is so large and so unavoidable it begs to have someone notice it enough to at least say something.
Not six years ago, a police shooting was major news all across the US. Now, police shootings are so commonplace the news about them rarely makes front page anywhere but the local paper and is lucky to make it into any news forum beyond the local ones.
http://www.examiner.com/a-438888~Colorado_Springs_police_officer_shot_and_killed.html
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/crime/bal-md.shooting06dec06,0,3220725.story?coll=bal-local-headlines
http://cbs2chicago.com/topstories/local_story_297060859.html
http://forums.officer.com/forums/showthread.php?t=55068
http://www.qctimes.com/articles/2006/10/08/news/local/doc4527e07c28259726665574.txt
Violence against "authority" is increasing so fast there's no longer an easy way to trace it back to the originating vector. It's a viral meme that is deadly.
And it won't get better any time soon. Right now, the police are already engaged in limited forms of urban warfare. Too many people have lost their respect for the police and no longer hesitate to use extreme violence against them, even people who have committed no other crimes and are not wanted by the police or are not even being questioned by the police. The five articles above are representative of this attitude.
When our soldiers return from Iraq, what are they returning to?
Minority military personnel won't receive the same treatment from civilians they came to expect from fellow soldiers. All the soldiers of any race will feel stressed, coming home wounded, or with friends or family members wounded, maimed, even dead, in a war that has never had a clear point or purpose. Like good citizens, and good soldiers, they did the job they were sent to do to the best of their ability, and no blame accrues to them. Still, they will be the ones who suffer even after they return to the US.
They will return to the US with skills and experience in conducting urban warfare. They will return to inner cities torn apart by poverty, strive, and the sure knowledge that while US companies continue to show large profits, the average workforce is being "trimmed down" to make for "leaner" companies, and those who remain employed will see smaller pay raises, assuming they see any at all. A lot of soldiers will get jobs in service industries, notorious for low pay and fewer benefits.
They'll feel the pinch of discrimination, racism, underemployment. They'll be frustrated and angry. And they'll have knowledge of how to hurt "the man". "The man" is anyone in any position of authority. Anyone with a better paying job. Anyone who gets in their way. They won't be fighting for anything, they'll be lashing out, fighting against things. They won't be looking to replace or fix what's broken. They'll want to smash it to smithereens. So long as they get the satisfaction of hurting "the man", they won't think about what comes next. They won't consider how to fix the problems they will face - that we're all facing, really. It's just they'll feel it more personally.
And they'll be experienced in urban warfare from their time spent in Iraq. They'll share what they know with their friends, their family, and if they join them, their gangs. IEDs will be the least of the problems police and other citizens will face in the coming years.
There are ways to ease this, maybe even avert the worst of it. It would take a lot of effort and possibly even some sacrifices on the part of businesses, particularly corporations, and on the part of politicians. They'll be unpopular for a while, but in the long run - and we're all in it for the long run, I should hope - it will bring us back stronger than before.
First, businesses have to invest in their workers. They have to rebuild employee loyalty by being loyal to their employees. Bring back a few of the perks we've lost over the years - some of these perks don't cost the company a penny, so whining that it will be expensive is just that - whining. Consider allowing employees to decorate their office/cubicle as they wish. Either allow all religions equal opportunity to decorate their cubicles or to meet or whatever, or forbid all such expressions on company time. Consider a change in dress policies, one more in line with what the employee can realistically afford. Increase pay. Give employees a real voice in the operation of the company. Promote from within.
Politicians need to listen to their actual constituents, and not the lobbyists and special interest groups. They need to return back to being what they actually are - employees of the voting public. They need to consider what their areas genuinely need, and to protect their constituents, making sure tax dollars are spent on actual public works, and not to line hte pockets of private enterprises. Addressing the needs of their constituents to have homes is crucial. Citizens have a right to have a place to live. The fact that homelessness is increasing dramatically is a sure sign that there's something seriously wrong - and it's employed people who are losing their homes, losing affordable places to live.
The statistics for unemployment are seriously skewed as well. It registers only the people who are collecting unemployment or are otherwise current in the welfare system. There are a lot of people who are drastically under-employed or completely unemployed who aren't in the system, and so aren't counted. Laws and regulations need to make it possible for people to find and engage in ways to make a living - to earn money and pay taxes. A good government will make sure their people can afford to live comfortably enough that they are happy to pay their taxes. People who are worried about affording the rent or having food for their next meal are pissed about having to pay taxes, and I don't blame them. They've been betrayed by their government.
We need to think about what we're doing, where our country is heading, and we need to do it with clear sight and a willingness to face unpleasant truths so we can change it. We have to do this in a way that allows people to retain their humanity and dignity. Our laws have to recognize that most people are law-abiding and not punish them for the acts of the few lawbreakers.
At the core of it all, we need to act as if people are decent human beings. All of us - politicians, the rich, the poor, the employed, the unemployed, the homed and the homeless. We all have to treat one another with the knowledge that we are all decent people. It doesn't matter what size, or shape, or color we are, what religion inspires us, what jobs we hold, where we live, with whom we associate, who we love, who loves us, or what hobbies we have.
Begin there. Begin by acting as if everyone you meet is decent.
