The Meaning of the Revolution

Every revolution needs meaning, begs for it, chases it like a snake's tale.  Cuba has been having one continuous revolution for three or four generations now, depending on whom you ask.  The American Revolution was a mercantile one, arguing that Free Enterprise is a basic Human Right.  It was not a revolution based on solely on a set of ideologies determined to deconstruct and then reconstruct a system, a set of principles and social mores.  It was about Business.

America is still all about Business.  The Bush Administration has circled the wagons around Big Business, treating these massive Corporations as thought they were rugged pioneers settling the heathen.  The rest of us, of course, mean nothing.  No one in the Bush Administration is circling the wagons around the average Joe. 

If the Founding Fathers could see us now, they would worry that Monarchy and its entitled privileged class has been replaced by Big Business and its privileged Lobby class (the only Americans with direct access to Lawmakers); they would worry that the Presidency is now conferred rather than duly elected; they would be shocked that gross excess has replaced the notion of hardwork and fellowship; they would be alarmed by the self-celebratory pop culture that dominates the news and the media; they would be more alarmed at the media for being the weakest link in the chain of democratic ideals; they would be sickened by the sheer number of graduating High School seniors who are functionally illiterate; they would be heartbroken by the likes of Cheney, who has ruined America's image abroad; they would be devastated by a war of aggression in a foreign land; they would cry at the gutting of the balance of power and the packing of the Supreme Court with mediocrity and ideologs placed there not to be a beacon to Constitutinal Law but rather to gut that very document; and last but not least they would be horrified at the litigious society that we have allowed to fester under the guise of Justice.

What would they be proud of?  I wish we could ask them.  But if they were alive today, Fox News would no doubt attack and eviscerate them for the sake of ratings.

Tags:   Bush, Cheney, imperial presidency, revolution

© All rights reserved.

Posted on 7/5/2006 ( Permanent Link )
 Send to Friend