Miner Queries: Why do I bother?

4:26 a.m. Sigh. I blame my daughter, Charli. That long conversation we had last night about the upcoming election switched my brain on early.

While discussing the Iowa caucuses and her generation and her millennial brother’s cohort, she mentioned my Facebook feed. I mostly post highlights of my daily news reading to share as an alternative to the broadcast media poured in our ears. I know too many non-readers and folks that avoid politics. They remain willfully uninformed, and as my daughter pointed out, that hurts us all. She clearly understands the price she and her peers are going to pay for the civic laziness of her elders.

Flashback to 1980 and an election I know I am going to miss by 4 months. My father, from whom I inherited my news and political junkie-ism, was reading candidate policy proposals. He informed me, then a senior in high school, I’d be looking at less college financial aid under a Reagan administration.

Meanwhile, everywhere I turned in rural Iowa, people were besotted by Ronald Reagan. I can’t tell you what policies they liked. I don’t remember them ever talking policy. Instead I got the usual claptrap about his storytelling and likeability.

Even at 17, I understood it was an act. But then Reagan was an actor. It should have been obvious, but when it comes to voting I have learned the hard way, people don’t think. They react.

Which explains our current predicament.

Of course, my 12 years working in marketing communication and public relations at a medium sized insurance company also made me painfully aware of how our news and information is carefully crafted to work against us. My first day in the department, the boss who hired me pointed to a shelf with resource books, including one titled, “Words that Sell.”

We the people have been sold a bunch of messages designed to help narrow monied interests. We’ve been sold a bunch of entertainment to keep us voting stupid.

And I’ve spent the last two months watching hearings full of Republican congress critters (to use Jim Hightower’s term) that apparently also believe the lies they’ve been sold about Democrats and liberals. They seem to be totally ignorant of history, the Constitution and for those espousing Christianity, the Bible.

Small wonder though. We’ve had a cable news apparatus in place for 30-plus years now, not to mention Uncle Milton Friedman’s market fundamentalist version of capitalism for even longer. It can be boiled down to this simple description:  greed is good. But it’s been sold under the holy label of Capitalism.

And who’s sold it to you? Why those monied 1%ers who want it all – everything.

And how have they sold it to you?

By buying up every media source (including textbook publishers) they can get their grubby hands on and pouring “Conservative” news in your ears. By pouring political contributions into the political parties, but mostly to Republicans. By contributing funds to universities to fund new professorships, particularly in economics and business. By creating Conservative and Libertarian think tanks to develop research that supports their narrow ideology and suppressing any results that don’t fit said ideology. By creating lobbying groups to develop corporate-friendly model bills for state and federal officials to pass. By weakening public education to create a less informed electorate. By aligning with socially conservative religious leaders to convince voters to cast ballots against their own economic interests.

By co-opting labels like conservative, liberal, Republican and Democrat, left and right and by shaping news media to report spectacle over substance, they have sold voters lies.

I am sure many of my “conservative” friends think I am just a deluded “liberal,” or as I have been called: a libtard, creepy liberal or little girl. They prefer to stick with their adopted labels rather than consider that I care because we are getting walloped by the same economic forces. And I care that they have been missing from the civic conversation.

What I love about America can’t be expressed by waving a flag, thanking a soldier or wearing a damn pin. It can only be expressed by participating.

We live in a democratic republic, which means we must participate to preserve our rights.

Not just by voting. We must stay informed, communicate with officials, including protesting if necessary, pay our taxes and serve as jurists. It’s work. But I see a populace that has been ground down the point they have either given up or they believe a pack of lies.

I’m not asking you to believe everything I do. I’m not telling you how to vote. I simply want you to open your eyes and ears to new and more information. I want you to consider alternative viewpoints. I want you to engage your brains and think critically.

And for God’s sake, turn off the talk radio and cable news and read something.

Reagan was wrong

Probably the most damaging legacy Ronald Reagan left America is his oft-quoted statement: “Government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem.” That one sweeping statement rendered our democracy helpless and allowed government leaders to abandon leadership for profit and power.

And we the people fell for it.

Democracy, particularly American democracy, has always been about shared responsibility. In democracies, citizens are responsible for determining who represents them in government as well as for actively monitoring representatives’ work. Yet over the last 30 years, we’ve given up these responsibilities.

“If government is the problem, why vote? Why follow legislation and contact our senators and representatives with our opinions? It doesn’t make a difference.” This is the prevailing attitude.

And so more and more over the last 30 years, U.S. government has been influenced not by the people it was created to serve, but by corporations and wealthy Americans whose agenda is to further enrich and empower themselves. And not coincidentally, our media outlets, responsible for bringing us information about government, have covered less and less policy. Instead, their corporate ownership directs the focus to personalities, social issues like abortion, and deceptively titled legislation like No Child Left Behind or the Clean Air Act.

Make no mistake. This is propaganda, more commonly referred to as public relations in politically correct terms. And we’ve swallowed it hook, line and sinker.

But now that we’re in a real crisis, citizens are beginning to question things. I’ve waited a long time for this, because I believe government, and more specifically democracy, is the solution to our problems – when we all participate.

And that means more than flying your flag and putting red-white-and-blue magnets on your car. It even goes beyond voting. It means reading about local, state and federal legislation, and registering your opinion via phone calls, letters and e-mails. It means stepping up to serve in government if you feel capable. It means advocating for the causes important to you. And most of all it means questioning everything in search of the public good.

Reagan was wrong. Government isn’t the problem, but many of the people we’ve elected are. And with his attitude, he was one of them.