Since most Americans just listen to information coming out of their tribe’s mouthpiece, they are not engaged in critical thinking to ascertain the truth of any particular situation. Politics is the focal point for a lot of this less-than-perfect information. And since SCOTUS declared that corporations and businesses were people – just without the blood of most human beings – they can spend any amount of money they want, in any way they can get away with, to influence political decisions in their favor, leaving what’s best for the planet and the people to swelter in the doldrums.

About the time I graduated from high school (1970), things started to take a turn for the worse: division overtook the quest for (a more perfect) union. LBJ had brought in many new and great programs, but he had lied about the Vietnam War: distrust of government ensued. Goldwater fanned that spark into a bonfire when he stated that “Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice”, setting the stage for increased covert lawlessness by federal government officials in pursuit of power and control. Caught in crimes and lying about it, Nixon had Watergate and resigned. More distrust. Reagan then stated that “government is the problem”, steering the narrative and false promise that capitalism and the free market (read: greed & grift) should guide our economic ship. And then Clinton decided to compromise with the free marketeers who had taken over Congress and started the “normalization” of cutting of programs for the poor, supporting tax cuts for the rich who were supposed to “trickle down” the benefits to the rest of us; it never worked. After 9/11, Bush2 then declared war on anyone the government thought as an enemy: violent retributions ended up only getting lots of military and civilians killed and kept America in perpetual wars. Bravado hid more distrust. Worst of all is Fuhrer Draco-II: corruption, grift, self-aggrandizement, manipulation, retribution, racism are his calling cards. Some readers here voted for him.

The vote once protected democracy. But now Reuters reports that “A judge in Delaware, where many big U.S. companies are incorporated, ruled on Tuesday that a small town that allows corporations to vote in municipal elections was not violating the state’s constitution” and that “the beach town of Fenwick Island was not diluting human votes by allowing companies and other legal entities that own property to cast votes in municipal elections.” There are more corporations in Delaware than people in the state. If confirmed by the courts, the new precedent means that now corporations representing the rich can not only out-finance people to buy more elections, they can now vote in them, and could theoretically elect themselves as representatives! The best that money can buy destroys democracy.

American democracy is literally on life support. You are the doctors that can heal the sick patient. Get out and vote while you still can: No MAGA, No Kings, common sense, save democracy, people and the planet first!!

Bob Bates

Tullahoma