If you think that majorities of Democrats in the House and the Senate -- undominated by growing and threatening citzen action -- will change anything now, you just don't understand our massively corrupted governance. You're living in a bubble.
The Democrat politicians and the DNC are working for themselves. They still think that they're self-employed. Their useless, unfocused message is that they stand for everything -- they've got something for everyone.
If they were working for the people, their message would be a clarion call of utter simplicity -- (1) bring down the Bush-Cheney abomination, (2) rip the Bush-Cheney anti-law regime's unconstitutional statutes out of our legal fabric, and (3) make significant constitutional changes to ensure that nothing like the dual-party, three-branch, Bush-Cheney despotism can ever again be perpetrated against the American people.
It's the message that
Kos and Armstrong missed in their recent book,
Crashing the Gate.
How could they have missed something so fundamental and apparent? The reason is important. As with the Democrats, the DNC, and most Americans, Kos and Armstrong are still caught in seeing governance itself from the government's point of view. They see democractic markers all around them, but governance itself they see only as what is done vertically by hierarchies of politicians and government.
As soon as they and others begin seeing governance from the people's point of view, the world will change for them. When they see and notice horizontal governance done by nonhierarchical citizens in referendums, the world will change.
We all see elections. But very few notice that the reps are elected in referendums. Elections are just one of the eight people's governance components done in referendums. (See Extraordinary Rights Of Americans", posted on DD Revival, 24 May 2006.)
Seeing governance from the people's point of view is easier said than done, of course. Nearly everything you've read about US governance in your entire lives has prompted you to see it from the government's point of view. The people's point of view is pejoratively branded 'populism', 'socialism', or 'communism'. In our ideology-driven party-line voting, such labels are poisonous emotional propaganda triggers, keeping most people from examining the evidence. Cut through the ideologies, however, drop the labels and go looking for governance from the people's point of view, and, suddenly, you're seeing it with the eyes of democracy.
Seen with the eyes of democracy, the massive corruption of our Constitutional governance demands that growing and threatening citizen action dominate the activities of politicians.
The three-pronged starting point is (1) a standardized "tough-love" pledge for candidates, backing impeachments and a new "Independent Prosecutor" law, (2) process began for a stand-alone Constitutional amendment requiring that all new Constitutional amendments be ratified by national referendum, and (3) process began of reducing about 10 corrupt state legislatures from paritisan bicamerals to nonpartisan unicamerals with CAI's (constitutional amendment initiative, petition process) on the successful 1934 Nebraska model.
Without citizen action to dominate the politicians, we are just begging for more catastrophies to be piled on -- by the Bush-Cheney Illegitimacy and by the bought-out, sold-out Democrats.
But that is the way it has been with American bubbleers for-freaking-ever. Catastrophe piled on top of catastrophe ad nauseum until, finally, the bubble goes pip. It happened in the Reform Era, when horse and buggy citizens fought the good fight against massive corruptions that were butchering them for profits and power.
Somehow, the Bush-Cheney wall-to-wall corruption-butchering of citizens, institutions, international sensibilities, and world peace -- for profits and power -- just has not been massive enough yet to pip the bubble. Now, it looks like we let them pile on one more world-butchering, deceitful catastrophe -- Election 2006.
No help from the blogosphere in sight. Engine of organizing potential and parallel-processing human resources beyond anything civil societies have ever known -- lying fallow in seriously wishful fuzz-think. Snarled at the netroots by still-unrecognized agents provocateur -- diahrea-mouthed cheerleaders for go-nowhere yakity-yak, but also highly skilled trolls, flaming anyone who has action-item ideas offensive to money-power.
No pip in sight.
Just money-power predators, Repubs and Demos, who see civil society as their very own food chain, laughing all the way to the stateless, global bank.
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Notes
1. Bringing down the Bush-Cheney abomination can be more quickly done in the election of an impeachment and removal Congress, Election 2006. However, no changing of the top names after either Election 2006 or Election 2008 will alter the nature of money-power's despotism. That abomination is here to stay until we re-write the Constitution and, consequently, build a new political dynamic -- through the 2nd Nat'l Constitutional Convention. See "Bush-Cheney Trainwreck -- Undo", Part Two, Renewal Objectives & Interactive Tools, posted on DD Revival, 17 May 2006.
2. I've not written my suggestion for a tough-love pledge yet, but it's coming. And you don't have to wait for mine. Write up your own and get it on a blog. We'll talk. If you're curious about past uses of tough-love pledges and their successes with candidates and their constituencies, read Randy Shaw's 1996 book, The Activist's Handbook: A Primer For The 1990s And Beyond, University of California Press, Berkeley.
3. "Consent of the governed" -- not consent of the totally corrupt representatives -- is key to the next wave of citizen action (2nd Nat'l Constitutional Convention). The first thing needed for "consent of the governed" is a Constitutional amendment specifying that all future Constitutional amendments be ratified by national referendum, preferably with "double majority" approval. The double majority is an approving majority of all those voting, plus a majority approval of those voting in a majority of states. It maintains the integrity of simple majority decision-making -- no two-thirds majority approval that is really a one-third minority veto -- and is the legitimacy mechanism used in Swiss national lawmaking since 1891. This stand-alone Constitutional amendment should be part of the three-pronged beginning of citizen action dominating the activities of politicians.
4. A starting-point discussion of why and how to reduce corrupt bicamerals to nonpartisan unicamerals -- and in which states -- is also in ""Bush-Cheney Trainwreck -- Undo", Part Two, Renewal Objectives & Interactive Tools.
Stephen Neitzke
Direct Democracy League
http://ddeague-usa.net
DD Revival -- The Blog
http://ddrevival.blogspot.com
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© by Stephen Neitzke, 2006. "People's POV" is an extract from the updated, "Spineless Demos -- Redux", originally posted on DD Revival, 26 May 2006, and updated 29 May 2006.