Why I Believe In A Better Tomorrow

The world today is confronted by the U.S.'s horrific attempt to build a global empire for its corporate leaders ("The War on Terror") with the U.S. military and all of its weapons of mass destruction at the forefront. To make matters worse, the U.S. is so deeply in debt and sinking into such a vast crevasse of overwhelming borrowings, it will never repay the people across the globe who in good faith loaned this money believing it was safe.

As an adjunct of this, the U.S. government is thoroughly corrupted by corporate lobbyists, the only ones whose voice matters. If that wasn't bad enough, the U.S. Supreme Court in "Citizens United" (2010) ruled that corporations are people and are free to inundate the political system with all the money they want. Now in their new "Super Pacs," they secretly spend huge undisclosed sums as they extend their ownership of the two party political monopoly that rules the nation.

In recent years, led by American companies, we witnessed corporate wrongdoing on a scale the world had never before seen. Instead of suffering the consequences, the result was record level government bailouts of corporations, many of whom are now deemed "too big to fail," record corporate bonuses and no-one held accountable for any of this wrongdoing. Nor have there been significant rule changes or oversight to prevent it all from happening again.

So in the face of this dismal summary of events, how can I believe in a better tomorrow? I see it in the faces of immigrants and their children. Hard working, determined people who often left everything behind in their old countries to build a better future in the U.S., often doing jobs most Americans won't do and pursuing a dream many Americans have forgotten. They don't seem to know success is a thing of the past and ultimately they aren't going to be denied.

I see a better tomorrow each time I visit the Silicon Valley, the San Francisco Bay Area's gift to the world. This incredible collective brain trust, with money from investors worldwide, spawns new companies that employ vast numbers of people in constructive endeavors. Apple, Cisco, eBay, Facebook,  Hewlett-Packard, Intel and Oracle are but a few examples of major taxpaying companies that provide numerous people with jobs and employee benefits, which in turn support massive numbers of small businesses that serve them. It is these prosperous ventures that provide people the money to pay for housing, shopping and other joyful enterprises while also paying for schools, hospitals, parks, police, fire protection and other perquisites that benefit people. For in the end, we all want to live a happier, better and safer life.

I also believe that America will start to produce top quality products again, much as it did in the past for it has thousands of tiny U.S. based manufacturing businesses seeking a chance to develop. For this to happen, it would take a President to actively promote buying "made proudly in the U.S.A." to the American people, while also explaining the connection to buying homemade products with jobs many Americans so desperately seek. This would create demand and with that demand, U.S. retailers would carry far more U.S. made products in their stores. I say this with compassion for Chinese and other low cost workers, many of whom work under sweat shop conditions with little or no health care and no consideration by their employers for labor or environmental laws that would be enforced were they to produce in the U.S. I ask for global understanding for until the U.S. produces vastly more of its own goods, it won't get back on its financial feet.

I also believe Americans will take back their political system. I see it in the fits and starts of the Occupy Movement, see it in an organized effort to recall a Wisconsin governor who attempted to end public employee collective bargaining and I see it in the public's emotional involvement in presidential and congressional races in which their vote currently means nothing. But they won't admit they have no voice because each of us needs to feel our voice matters. And our voices do matter for collectively, we could take control and determine the direction of our nation, while also instituting Constitutional Amendments requiring only public funding of elections, which will squeeze out the lobbyists, and sharply reduce political campaign times to 45 or 60 day periods to control campaign costs.

Men and women are incredibly clever and resilient and given the opportunities, can overcome the horrors of poverty, sickness and war to uplift the world. There is no acceptable reason today that children should starve to death or die of sicknesses long conquered in other parts of the world. And war is based upon men's greed and desire for power, however it is sold to the people who fight it. We as mankind can overcome this terrible tendency that has plagued us for ions if we are determined to do so, especially as television, computers, cell phones and other technology shrink the world and show us how much alike we all really are.

I grew up in a deeply segregated U.S. and as a young man witnessed the civil rights movement succeed. As a young man with little money, I was given educational opportunities by taxpayers who willingly sacrificed so my generation could attain more than any generation which preceded us throughout history. Now it is up to us to take control of our corrupt government, end our wars and to sacrifice some of our resources as well so future generations can rise from our shoulders and not from a rut in the road in which we placed them. I believe that after a time of turmoil, that is exactly what is going to happen.

Dick
This piece was partly inspired by "Why I Still Believe in the Future," by Bernard Baruch (1870-1965), which he read on CBS radio in 1953 and was reprinted in The Wall Street Journal on 11/20/10  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703326204575616882853314688.html?mod=WSJ_topics_obama