I want to pose seven questions as we consider the state of American Democracy in moving toward the November 2012 elections.
Question #1. If “literacy” tests are now required for African Americans, seniors and others in order to cast their votes, will lunacy tests now be demanded of the people who came up with this bright idea? (Can the new voter i.d. laws that prevent Americans from casting a legitimate vote now be viewed as another form of “testing” whose ultimate purpose is to prevent them from voting because they cannot obtain proper identification?)
Question #2. Why in our discussions about the perils of individual welfare don’t we ever discuss the burdens of corporate welfare?
Question #3. Why do politicians create political crises and then react to them either by denying their existence or completely avoiding them? Why can’t they develop an approach that will solve America’s problems rather than use the political system to create more problems while pretending that they are making earnest efforts in solving them?
Question #4. Why in a so-called post racial America has racism and racial code words infected politics in Washington and escalated to new heights in our public discourse?
Question #5. Why can’t some of the mega-rich and Pluto-oligarchs in this country use their money to devise more creative solutions to helping America as a whole rather than using their money to gumb America up, dumb America down, and steal America away just to have more and more of what they already have more than enough of? With all the fiscal power that they have at their command why can’t they develop intelligent, creative, progressive solutions than will move the nation forward? “Money can buy an education but it can’t prevent ignorance.”
Question #6. Why is religion used as such a violent tool and weapon to divide, denigrate, demean and destroy people of different religious faiths, races, genders and sexual orientations rather than as an instrument of peace, dialogue and understanding among people in America? Why do people use their God as an weapon of hatred and condemnation rather than a force for love and peace?
Question #7. Why do we keep playing political parlor games with the poor? Why do we blame them for their poverty, ridicule, label and devalue them as useless and then politically stonewall their access to the basic means of subsistence that will allow them to live their lives with dignity each day?


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