“American Spirit” Demands Essential Strong Support.
(EUGENE, Ore.) - Any single leader can ONLY “lead” when the many make sure to follow --and find ways to support that leader in what they know must be done. Any successful business entrepreneur rapidly learns that it takes the entire team to win. Ask any sports championship coach.
Democracy demands determined, definitive and deep support for ANY leader. That’s the main-point of the political principles involved in any demonstration of its unique capabilities.
In crisis that support shapes and can determine success OR “failure”. That “failure” can be actual OR only “political”’-- so perceived by the people via impacts of perverted propaganda and distorted demands.
Those demonstrate only the continued determination of the few, seeking to shelter their already-attained privileged positions.
In any crisis, we tend to demand of ANY elected leader rapid, sure proof of positive forward progress, forgetting that inevitably, inexorably, inescapably, WE, TOO must “lead”.
What WE do will make-or-break ANY leader. What we CHOOSE to do should be by thought and reason - unmoved by anything but our own responsibility and accountability.
This is the universal historic key to all “success” in our American democracy: IF ALL are to succeed --as democracy surely contends is possible, desirable, achievable-- then ALL must participate, providing mind-and-muscle, to win the blessed benefits for ALL.
Our Founders never, ever insisted that ALL must “succeed”, no matter how defined.
But they risked their lives for the basic principle of full opportunity for ALL to do so. THAT surely implies willing, cooperative, combined and continuing support for leadership, clearing the way and consolidating the components for national success.
The “wit, wisdom and will of the American people” forms and provides the real force of “the American Way”, we have been told for decades by our other successful leaders.
THAT “American Way” is NOW surely demanded more than ever in American history. Yet we find a small, determined, desperate and about-to-be-deprived group willing to sacrifice that simplest, most solid political-truth.
Surely we should have learned --in our nearly 250 growing years “as a unique democratic experiment”- how to deal with unholy, impure, unprincipled dissent. We can cope with disagreement and dissent on what we should choose to do --but when the people speak in democratic-decision-by-VOTE -- with controlling mandate for massive major changes --then we must ALL listen.
For ostensible “political principle”, those who did not hear the voice of our people on Nov. 4 continue to demonstrate complete willingness to cavil and complain: Then to constantly consolidate and coordinate every possible kind of negative effort and delaying/denying demand and distracting “development.”
They seek to devil, delay, deny --and if possible defeat WHATEVER President Obama presents to the despairing American public --in its greatest moments of distress since the Great Depression.
They present “the dark shadows of “failure”, in every way possible; then work to prevent any possible way for any real “transformative change” to move forwards as reality. They threaten to force that final very evident “ending point” they still seek, blindly oblivious to its wreaking damages not only to our nation, but to the rest of the world, caught in the complex circumstances clearly beyond any precedent.
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They fight futilely, and millions think foolishly against the very views they once upheld, fiscally and via national policies --in place, destructively, for thirty proving years.
They force --surely foolishly-- weakening the very weapons by which recession may be prevented from becoming OUR Great Depression --”all over again”.
Even economists have now learned what NOT to DO, given desperate, deepening search-and-test ever since, demonstrated by historic precedent from New Deal days and World War II.
Bretton Woods and world events following present not only guiding precedent but also warning symptoms diagnosed by those very actions --applied as the world has changed and in challenging ways never foreseen then or since.
World Bank, IMO, the Friedman-Hayek “Chicago Boys”, Chile, Russian implosion, North/South Korea and Iran-Contra, Afghanistan --finally Iraq preemptively attacked at cost of $ THREE TRILLION have NOW fully prompted any possible continuing confidence, much less trust, in policies from neo-con sources and cabals.
“Greed is good” and “Government is NOT solution but problem” have had their day --fully, firmly, finally on the record for what they proved to be worth.
To some fiscal-financial “standard sources”, that may have been billions --however temporarily held. For many Americans, “comfortable” has now become a bad-word --made so by the same men and means as was “liberal, by the workings of the same “noise machine” in operation for all these thirty years.
For many millions of Americans, “the situation” has NOW proven to be primary loss of any employment, of healthcare protection for families --even of return to “welfare days” with food boxes from the more fortunate. Given those reigning realities, “leadership” takes on exceeding and excruciating circumstance --undeniably demanding distinct demonstration of good-faith devoted, even dedicated, “followership” from the people --ALL of the people.
In no way does that desecrate or deviate from “the long-loved, highly-valued American tradition of dissent.” But it does provide a differing standard, demanding rational, reasonable, fact-based cogitation and true patriotic concern and consideration from ALL of us.
“Political principle” so-termed for so long, over so many testing situations (and past “burst-bubbles”!) must finally be seen for what reality has shown it to be.
A miasma, a dogma, a deceptive guide to past prerogatives, purged by plunging economies worldwide of any present meanings ever once so wrapped.
Greed is NOT GOOD for the great-many. As life value it has been de-valued --as in “de-regulation.” As guiding attitude it has been disproven-- outrun around the world by the many diverse, diffuse, and potentially damaging situations arriving --willy/nilly-- via “globalization”.
As “political principle” it has become unmistakably and irretrievably tested --and found destructively damaging and desperately wanting --as in preemptive snatch for power-and-oil in Iraq.
NOW our government has been proven once again the precise and only prime source for some situations: When it is the ONLY sensible and the single sole succoring-saving component citizens can count on within their reigning lifestyle and financial foundation.
Given even beginning-time, demanded action to preserve and protect financial-system components has already started its healing influence: loans again are getting made, as basic capital emerges from frozen-trust and fractured confidence within the fiscal/financial system.
YOU can get what you need to pay for, with due diligence, and diversity of source-search. WE can get what WE must have as a nation for “leadership”. to provide what we MUST have for concentration on the commonweal, on Congress, on cooperation over competition and further corporate consolidation.
WE CHOOSE what we DO and MUST DO. One can see it happening every day, in every open dialog channel, as we either share-and-learn OR debate and descend still further into “political-principle” depravity.
That Second Great Depression is simply waiting for what we CHOOSE to DO.
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Henry Clay Ruark is one of, if not the most experienced, working reporter in the state of Oregon, and possibly the entire Northwest. Hank has been at it since the 1930's, working as a newspaper staff writer, reporter and photographer for organizations on the east coast like the Bangor Maine Daily News.Today he writes Op-Ed's for Salem-News.com with words that deliver his message with much consideration for the youngest, underprivileged and otherwise unrepresented people.
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