True Democratic process demands time & effort.
(EUGENE, Ore.) - For decades, in our nation, many informed sources have been reporting rapid growth of widespread fury by many, many citizens against policies forced upon them by “the powers-that-be” --however defined now. Patience is not a virtue of democracies.
Formation of new democratic-pattern governance worldwide, ever since our own, has demonstrated that without doubt, those pragmatic, always-massive movements are birthed in revolution, and that fury is retained. That invariably means rapid-upset approach to unbearable oppressions, of any kind: cultural, social or economic --even though, in any established democratic pattern, it may take considerable time.
That is root-and-branch for our own political upsets of the century, from Hoover’s Great Depression debacle through the formative years of FDR’s New Deal. Public demand for rapid action forced some rapidchanges, not always wise, or comprehensive, or even well-planned.
But the process worked: the changes were made, and they have shaped our lives ever since: Social Security, minimum-wage, civil rights, working safety, national superhighways, commonschool/college support via NDEA and GI Bill, et al, et al, et al.
On through the Johnson years and Vietnam, and then Reagan and all the consequences since, we’ve surely seen it repeated and even multiplied. We have not yet achieved truly effective and universal healthcare --killed in the Clinton era by determined, malignly-intended, private-gain attack.
The last eight Bush II-years of total collapse and its consequential catastrophic demands for still another transforming decade prove precisely the point on patience- demanded NOW.
It took the better working-part of a century to dig ourselves into this huge hole: Patience MIS-applied. Our own apathy --comforted by misinformation, cloaked by intentional distortion/perversion-- became the most important working tools for the contractors. (Read: “perpetrators”)
What we somehow failed to learn is that the key concept and consequence --forced upon us when this fury is once-again/released into action NOW-- is that anything worth doing in any democracy demands, first TIME, and then PATIENCE.
Given those, with consummate leadership lighting the way --and moving aside the massive mountains of resistance always encountered-- great and good things can be achieved
But many are already demanding a great diversity of immediate magniloquent --sometimes even massive-- new, direct, rapid, comprehensive, costly, and highly consequential first-shots from our President-Elect.
That’s a paryicularly destructive mistake in what must really be a long-endured, time-and-patience driven campaign --for truly enduring results --which it now is so very clear we must have or perish as a democracy. What we chose for transformative change on Nov, 4, 2008, will “go down in history” in decades to come.
We need to make sure we now begin-again, as did our Founding Fathers after the first frantic organizing efforts following the Revolution. “Begin-again” surely, certainly, without fail, demands we seek solid solace in full understandings of how we went so far-wrong, in so many consequential ways, with complicity and cabal-impact we failed to recognize --until Nov.4.
We must wait until our new leader “actually gets through the White House door”, before we begin-again the overwhelming pressures --now directly on him-- which have proven so impossible already for citizen comprehension and action --with a complicit mainstream media.
Answers, even via Congressional action --stalled into semi-permanent status/quo by offsetting very-strong private-interest, corporate-manpulated impacts-- must depend on time and study for “best-choice” policy, set by the President Himself. We must provide for him at least a sensible (read: “pragmatic”) time-frame.
We must allow him freedom-of-choice on the complex, interlocking Cabinet-relationships. Those can bring back into force the strengths, insights and forceful approaches missing so recently, so disastrously. Many learned from those painful lessons, including some now newly-named for this opportunity.
We must insist on carefully consolidated skillful cooperative oversight of those selected persons --which only the President can provide. That is his job, his consummate choice --his sole and very personal unfailing responsibility to us all, NOW.
THAT can provide the time we all know is needed, to rebuild relations with Congress; to confirm and conform to democratic dialog and discussion, to “hear the public voice” -- and THEN act.
THOSE are the very “conversations of democracy” we all know, deep within our “American exceptionalism” background, is what we must have NOW --even at the cost of more time and patience.
THE CONGRESS, our elected-representative shaping, directing, funding, and full-process mechanism for the main strengths of our democracy, must again be brought first to readiness, and then to regularity, in relations with the President and the agencies, for any new beginnings we may achieve. Our greatest danger in this “transformative new beginning” is, very simply-stated, the very same dangers continuing from all previous decades: Those who, for their own private purposes, still will undertake, support, and seek to apply the very same propagandistic and manipulative mehods they used in the past.
First and foremost, those mean, malign massive intentional misunderstandings are what has driven that long-building widespread fury reflected so strongly in the huge mandate achieved on Nov. 4th.
The same voices of “ NOT now, but LATER, or possible even NEVER !!” will be heard, laying on loud and long the same old political shibboleths, outmoded and fragmented dogmas, and the same old flim/flam. The overwhelming fact of widespread fury is all the answer we need to that failed, futile, foolish set of fancies. (You can easily check for yourselves, with friends, neighbors, anyone whose judgment you trust.)
That check-for-yourself situation can and should be an ongoing (very “pragmatic”) guide to what-and-how you dialog with everyone else about our current unavoidable situation.
IF you really want to see “American exceptionalism” again in action, now is the time to stand with and behind President Obama as he enters that White House door.
Your stance, your words-in-dialog with others, your trust and confidence --especially your many thoughtful conversations-- can provide the potential strength and unity we all have missed for so long, in so many ways. We know the destructive desolation and disunity we’ve found interfering with democratic progress for the past thirty years --and now we have the opportunity to prove what can be done, when we move irresistibly in the opposite direction.
The total impacts --as in the roots of democracy revealed in the “wisdom of crowds” over the centuries-- may well amaze you, but they are definitely there, We can utilize those major typical characteristics of our democracy now for our commonweal.
OR we can fall into the many traps set malignantly by those who wish only that we are again forced to failure --for their own private political purposes and personal economic gains --again.
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Henry Clay Ruark is the 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.
Op Ed: 'Pragmatic' FurySalem-News.com