LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
The 14th Amendment is unequivocal: “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens... nor deny to any person... the equal protection of the laws.” And the 14th Amendment ended with what should have been a knockout punch to inequity: “The Congress shall have the power to enforce... the provisions of this article.” Yet it took another 96 damn years for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to be passed. And it’s been 56 years since then, with minorities and the marginalized still treated like crap. No wonder we’re mad at ourselves. Meanwhile America has been undergoing changes that exacerbate this underlying fury and make even the majority of Americans dissatisfied with our country. The result is much worse than protests. We are not a polarized society. To be “polarized” assumes two poles, such as a MAGA-hat-wearing Arctic and a BLM-poster- carrying Antarctic. The situation is much more complex than that. We are a Big Bang society, with the American singularity flying apart in every direction at the speed of light. Three enormously powerful forces are causing America to be blown to smithereens. 1. A disconnect between the government and the governed... Government size and scope has expanded to the point where it has become a universe of its own, in a galaxy far away from ordinary citizens. The sovereignty of America is supposed to reside with the American people.
But who among us got to vote on whether to close down our economy and lock ourselves in our homes for months? A black hole of bureaucracy has been created, sucking every aspect of government accountability into its dense and incomprehensive abyss. The political classes are space aliens living on another planet ruled by different laws of physics where the only gravity is fundraising, the only thermodynamics are their quarrels with each other, and where the sun shines out their asses. 2. A disconnect between our economy and our home economics... Finance is decoupled from the business of making a living. They are flush with cash and well-provisioned with goods over at the stock market while we, at the supermarket, scrimp on house brands – Okey-Dokey canned beans, Have-A-Loaf white bread, and Good- E-Nuff bathroom tissue. The business of making a living has been divorced from work. The work has been shipped overseas where people are willing to do it for pesos or renminbi or rupees instead of money. Money has lost any relationship to value. George Floyd was arrested – and killed – for spending twenty dollars in the form of a banknote that had no actual value. The U.S. Senate and House of Representatives are spending hundreds of billions of dollars in the form of banknotes that have no actual value. Are members of Congress at risk of police brutality?
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June 2020
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