In my judgment, the United States has never been riper for a change of government in its history. By "change," I don't necessarily mean a new set of legislators or another face in the White House. I mean something completely different that has little or no similarity to the democracy envisioned by our Founders. I can't predict what it will look like, but I feel it's coming, and here's why:
The strength of this country since its inception has been unity. The very name of the country - the UNITED States, indicates the importance of unity in our survival. "United We Stand" was one of our early flags and, despite a war that tore the country apart, we came back together-more or less - in the face of threats from outside enemies. The more powerful the threat, it seemed, the stronger the bind that united us, culminating in the near-miss of World War II followed by our eventual world leadership. So why worry now?
We should worry because we've forgotten that unless unity keeps getting renewed, it has a habit of slipping away. This requires common purpose and a strong belief in our Republic, which used to be drummed into our heads daily, even if some considered it overkill. Now, thanks to a constant chorus mostly from the Far Right, trust in our representative form of government is hovering around twenty-five percent and, as anyone can figure, it's difficult to pledge allegiance to something you don't trust.
Second, the government itself isn't doing much to renew confidence in the principles the nation is supposedly built on. We've been so anxious about bad guys destroying our freedoms that we've been spending billions doing it for them. Foreign leaders complain about America as the world's biggest snoop. We foam at the mouth about Edward Snowden when he tells us that our government has been opening our mail, intercepting our electronic correspondence and generally sticking its nose- illegally - in everybody's business. Where in the Constitution does this say it's okay to do this? On top of that, it seems the government can't even get a web site right. Malevolence or incompetence, it doesn't enrich the country.
Moreover. there's a general feeling that the deck is rigged toward the people and insitutions with the most money. People seldom will say that rich and poor have an equal shot at life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness because they don't. Polls that once showed most Americans thinking their kids would have it better than they do no longer show this. The spirit of youth and vitality that marked the Kennedy presidency and, sadly, also marked the Obama inauguration, isn't in evidence. Newscasters speak of how much money a candidate has stashed away for a campaign rather than what he offers the country. The bloom of democracy, in my opinion, has been replaced by a sense of decay and that anything is available - if you can pay for it. Even with the Affordable Care Act, millions will still be unable to care for their families in case of catastrpohic illness.
As inequality grows, confidence in our country falls. This increased income gap is a cancer that has become a part of our government and which has, inadvertantly or not, ushered in the plutocracy that now threatens us from within.
With such a lethal combination, it seems we might be pretty receptive to someone who could:
1.Reinforce the feeling that the government should be abolished since it's so ineffective.
2.Offer the alternative of a strong leader who would run the country like a business, eliminating "waste,"which would be defined later.
3.Persuade the people to replace the inefficient government agencies with appointed leaders who would take whatever actions needed to speed things up.
4. Use the military to assist local law enforcement in enforcing the free market and eliminating laws that hampered it.
The saddest part of all this is that, as long as the people would make a living wage, they might think everything was fine. Americans have been indoctrinated against revolution despite its role in starting the country to begin with. What we rebelled against was a lack of representation and a feeling that we couldn't control what was happening to us, which is exactly what we're erxperiencing now. The difference is that in the Founding days, we had giants like Washington and Jefferson. Now we have nidgets.