Skip to content

Our Digital Dust

Reflections on three fathers' experience and lives for our kids

November 9, 2017 – An Informed Citizenry

admin November 9, 2017 1 Comment

For those of you that don’t appreciate reading my long-winded writing, here is the tl;dr version.  We all have the responsibility to be an informed citizen.  We need to understand the principles behind the founding of our nation and we need to stay involved if we truly want to change it.   The rest is basic pandering to various interest groups and the odd funny aside.  For those of you wondering, tl;dr is shorthand for “too long; didn’t read”.

For those of you still with me, this is long, but, hopefully, worth it.  Leading up to Veteran’s Day, an event my coauthors and I celebrate and one which I am sure will be addressed appropriately, I wanted to engage in a little intellectual discourse about history, responsibility, and their relation to current events.  In an effort to keep things brief (at least briefer than it would be if I poured through all of my readings), I narrowed my historical look to the Russian Revolution, which occurred in October of 1917 and the election of 2016.  I am not implying an equivalence, but hopefully my points will ring through.

There is a widespread misunderstanding that the Russian Revolution was the lower class rebelling against the upper class.  While there are many, many nuances, and many reasons and actions taken, one key point, and one shared by most, if not all revolutions, is that is was of the middle class versus a permanent, impenetrable upper class.  During this revolution, much like the events leading to the fall of the Roman Empire, the fall of monarchies across Europe, and, indeed, the US revolution, there was a permanent upper class that was fixed in its position.  If a commoner was successful, they may have means, but not the access and respect accorded to the nobles.  This led to unrest and discontent among the middle class (those with some means, but no access), which ultimately eroded the pillars of the upper class and forced a sociological change.

One year ago, the United States, for better or worse, elected the first President who is truly an outsider in every sense of the word.  He has no foreign policy, government, nor military experience.  He is crude, thinks differently, and doesn’t respect the established norms of what our government has become.  This doesn’t mean he doesn’t respect the intent of the constitution to have the three branches separate, but equal, which is evident in his putting pressure on the Congress to actually legislate, but it is safe to say that he, at the very least is a wild card, and at worst, a ticking time bomb threatening to blow up the status quo.  (Disclaimer to the NSA and Secret Service, this is a metaphor/simile.  The words I used are not indicative of a threat, rather an attempt to provide a mental picture to my readers, however few they may be.)

While by no means the same, both the Russian Revolution and the 2016 election indicated an extreme dissatisfaction with the status quo.  Whether valid or not, many, many middle class personnel expressed their desire that the “nobles”, whether Tsars or legislators, change their behavior or be thrown out (okay, in the Russian Revolution is was not so benign).   Frankly, my (and only my) read on the election was that most of America finally got sick of both parties and wanted somebody to start to fix things.)

Now, most people working in government are good, honest, hardworking people, no different from you and me.  The business they work for is the government, but they have the same goals, desires, and ambitions of us all.  There is no us vs. them, and they should not be demonized for their service.   As with any company, there are the slugs that everyone points to as bad, but that is just not true for the bulk of the workforce, and thought difficult, the slugs can be gotten rid of.

One of the great aspects of our history is that our founding fathers understood that small groups in control of everything was a bad idea, so they actively sought to put in place a system resilient to those weaknesses…not a perfect system, but a hedge against abuse.  Our founders understood that power consolidated in a few hands leads to tyranny.  Their intent was that our government leaders would serve rather than rule, which is a point that has been minimized and lost as we have moved from unpaid leaders to career politicians.  Our founders never considered that future leaders would use the power of governmental authority to become part of a permanent ruling class, which could be every bit as divisive as a monarchy.  Yet, today we see Legislature, the Presidency, and, in some cases, the Judiciary, become family businesses, similar to monarchies or oligarchies around the world.  These were all shaken by the election of 2016, and are still shaken today.

So, why did I call this “An Informed Citizenry”?  Frankly, it is because there is a very critical need for the citizenry of the US to not just absorb content generated online and through other media, but to UNDERSTAND.   We need to understand the reasons for the decline of cultures of the past.  We need to understand the concepts, ideas and motivations of both the left and the right.  Most of all, we need to understand why the United States is different from the historical super-powers.

I will finish this post tomorrow, but I want to challenge those of you still with me.  READ the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers, and the works of John Locke and Francis Bacon.  Too many people cite them without ever knowing what is in them.  Don’t be “that guy”.   Second, despite your own biases (yes, we are all biased), read both left and right news sources in an effort to discern the truth, which generally resides in the middle.  In short, do the real work.  Ask the hard questions.  Challenge your own beliefs.  Truth will ALWAYS be revealed and is always better than believing or following a lie.  There is a desperate need for an “informed citizenry” today.  People who are not making decisions based on the Kardashians, the Twitterverse, or Facebook friends.  Their is a critical need for people to evaluate (not just encounter) opposing thoughts and to have the strength to stand up for what is true an right.  We have plenty of examples of good people doing nothing.  We were founded by good men doing the right thing.

To be continued tomorrow…plan your time accordingly.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

Related

Daily Post

One Comment

  1. Bob Hale says:
    November 9, 2017 at 7:57 pm

    Waiting for tomorrow.

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

November 2017
M T W T F S S
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
27282930  
« Oct   Dec »

Recent Posts

  • Lent, Life, and Liberty
  • February 15, 2021 – Dingo Dogs, Moose, and Retirement
  • February 10, 2021 – Sweetness
  • Stop Me If You’ve Heard This Before…
  • January 24, 2021 – Carpe Annos Singulos (Seize the Year!)

Recent Comments

  • ROBERT HALE on February 10, 2021 – Sweetness
  • Bob Hale on Stop Me If You’ve Heard This Before…
  • June Hale on January 3, 2021 – We are back for 2021!
  • June Hale on January 3, 2021 – We are back for 2021!
  • Bob Hale on Welcome to a New Year?

Archives

  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • April 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017

Our Twitter Feed

Follow @@ourdigitaldust

Digital Dust
@ourdigitaldust

  • We have a new post at #ourdigitaldust! New post: Lent, Life, and Liberty https://t.co/ZaH7BcXQ2u
    about 1 week ago
  • We have a new post at #ourdigitaldust! New post: February 15, 2021 – Dingo Dogs, Moose, and Retirement https://t.co/CA7u1k9ejn
    about 3 weeks ago
  • We have an updated post at #ourdigitaldust! Post Edited: February 10, 2021 – Sweetness https://t.co/mhcyfJNaNt
    about 3 weeks ago
  • We have a new post at #ourdigitaldust! New post: Sweetness https://t.co/mhcyfJNaNt
    about 3 weeks ago
  • We have an updated post at #ourdigitaldust! Post Edited: Stop Me If You’ve Heard This Before… https://t.co/SgIcjSPXk8
    about 1 month ago
  • We have a new post at #ourdigitaldust! New post: Stop Me If You’ve Heard This Before… https://t.co/SgIcjSPXk8
    about 1 month ago
  • We have an updated post at #ourdigitaldust! Post Edited: January 24, 2021 – Carpe Annos Singulos (Seize the Year!) https://t.co/RUSFg3hOVa
    about 1 month ago
  • We have a new post at #ourdigitaldust! New post: January 24, 2021 – Carpe Annos Singulos (Seize the Year!) https://t.co/RUSFg3hOVa
    about 1 month ago
  • We have a new post at #ourdigitaldust! New post: A New Day https://t.co/TyMm5AMnEp
    about 1 month ago
  • We have a new post at #ourdigitaldust! New post: Welcome to a New Year? https://t.co/xdeWTPs78Q
    about 2 months ago
Copyright © 2021. Our Digital Dust
Powered By WordPress and Silver Quantum