If you haven’t noticed, our government is dysfunctional. It always has been. When our Constitution veered off the noble course
offered by our Declaration of Independence it was bound to fail. It crashed first in a civil war that killed
more Americans than all the wars our nation has fought in since then. Abraham Lincoln (our most popular president)
once wrote our Declaration is our “Apple of Gold”. Our Constitution is the “Frame of Silver”
around it. Elected officials and the military must swear
to protect the Constitution. Not us, not
each of our fundamental rights, not our security, and not the health of our
environment which is the ultimate infrastructure sustaining our own health, wealth,
and security.
The Constitution did protect our right to defend ourselves
with muskets. And to freely speak or worship whatever we chose. But those freedoms are useless against viruses,
extreme weather conditions, failed states beyond of our borders, high paid lobbyists
putting oil and corporate profits ahead of protecting our most basic infrastructure…the
environment, cyber hackers anywhere in the world, a legal system lacking any
true justice, an economic system rewarding the ultrarich and ignoring the rest,
reactionary policies that are burying future generations in debt instead of
investments in prevention, and a fourth amendment that makes our Constitution a
suicide document instead of an system capable of the only legitimate function of
any government (according to Thomas Paine) which is protecting human freedom and
security.
If you have not noticed, things are worsening. Even after Trump
lost the election. It was even before our
nation’s Trump experiment a survey of US national security experts were asked
to rank our nation’s greatest threats.
They put terrorism on top. And if you understood the future we face from
the accelerating proliferation of every form of WMD - and the relative ease and
affordable access that any foreign or domestic terrorist has to acquiring it --
without a background check – you would understand this ranking. They identified our nation’s own ‘government dysfunction’
as our second greatest threat. Ahead of
Russia, China, N. Korea, Iran, and climate change. A pandemic wasn’t even on their list. It should have been. And it was in past decades. But this threat was then ignored.
I don’t blame politicians for this dysfunction. We have the government we deserved. The best that money can buy. Not the best at engineering sustainable
systems and structures to protect public health and safety. These are things real engineers swear an oath
to protect.
Those who first engineered the Constitution ignored
fundamental principles offered by the “Laws of Nature and Nature’s God”. They intentionally engineered it to work slowly.
Not a good idea now given the pace of change
enhanced by advances in science and technologies that are globally accessible,
increasingly affordable, and catastrophically more powerful. And also largely anonymous.
Our Constitution was engineer on good ideas at the
time. Like balancing power between three
bodies. But power to do what? Establish justice? Insure domestic tranquility? Provide for the
common defense? Promote the general welfare? Secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves
and our posterity? These are what the
framers intended. But they gave us a
flawed document doing none of these. It can’t without us making monstrous changes
in it. It did give us -“We the “People” -
that power and option. But we largely ignored
it believing the Constitution was sustainable without serious change. It’s not!
And here’s why.
First: It’s based on
a concept that sounds reasonable.
Independence. Yet that mental
construct exists nowhere in the known universe.
In reality, everything we know of (natural and human made) is made up of
systems and structures and everything…repeat “EVERYTHING” is
interdependent. NOTHING is independent.
Before 9-11 our CIA could not work with the FBI. We tried to remedy that after 9-11 by creating
the Department of Homeland Security in consolidating over a dozen federal agencies. But didn’t link it to the Department of Defense.
WTF???
Consider the continuing chaos sparked by Covid19. It was like an x ray exposing all the fractures
between our primary government departments and even our state laws.
Panels on C-span focused on any aspect of national security repeatedly
used several key phrases about what our nation needed: “A wholistic approach.. A “comprehensive approach” …a “whole of government
approach”. A “whole of society approach”.
And immediately after their suggestions for these - they cite the importance of
investing in “resilience”. Why?
Because consciously or unconsciously they know our government will not/cannot
do those things as it is. The separations
between agencies, states, political parties and human clans (business or social)
are to great. And our minds cannot accept
that fact that united we stand - and divided we fail.
Things change. Now, they are consistently changing for the
worse. Without adapting to change we
have virtually no chance of keeping our head above water or our nation above China
or catastrophic dysfunction.
If this projection leaves you hopeless…I highly recommend
adopted Vaclav Havel’s functional definition of “hope”. ‘Hope is not the expectation that things
will change. It is knowing what needs to
change. And working on it regardless of
how it turns out.’
You need to chose. Are
you going to be a passenger in this cabin on spaceship earth …hoping for seat
on the next rocket going to Mars? Or,
are you going to be a crew member on our mother planet – and doing what’s needed
to unite humanity and halt this insanity.
If that is your
course. Look no further than the need to
fund and achieve the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. They are likely our last
great hope of preserving what little civilization still exists.
