With my new book An Unlikely Truth coming out, I've had a few interesting days recently.
Among several interviews I did last week, I ended up on a right wing radio
talk show. We only had a few minutes but the host immediately challenged
me with . . . "Well, since money is free speech, how can you get the
money out of politics? And why would you want to?"
For one of the few times in my life, I was speechless.
Of course, you and I know the answer to that question. But it's a VERY LONG ANSWER!
It's an answer that goes to the very core of the values each of us hold about
our country, about our system of government, about what democracy means
and how it should function in a free society.
Then something occurred to me.
This guy threw me a spitball.
He fired a pitch covered in slime, lubricated with the mucous of his warped,
partisan, and corporate view of America, meant to slip and slide off any
attempt by me to give it a good smack at least into the outfield, if
not the stands.
Therefore . . . there was no point in even trying to answer it.
If you think that spitballs are not in the spirit of good sportsmanship, not
aligned with the greater good of baseball and fair play, you don't
attempt to discuss it with a pitcher who has just won his last 15 games
throwing the spitball.
You talk to people with some perspective, people who can look at our national
sport, see it as only being fair, competitive, entertaining, and a contribution to
our culture, when we all recognize that the integrity of the sport is more
important than winning a particular game.
As a result, it was long ago decided by fair-minded, concerned members of
the baseball community:
Spitballs are the unsavory choice of slime balls.
And the guys who insisted on throwing them were given an ultimatum:
Stop throwing spitballs or you can't play the game.
It's the same with politics. We can't expect Congress or any of our national
leaders to do the right thing about Citizens United or the corruption
of our system with truckloads of corporate money, when these are the
very people who are benefiting from this heinous mutilation of American
democracy.
If the current crop of lackluster elected officials don't want to play the game
with honesty, distinction, respect for the American people, and
reverence for representative democracy, they shouldn't be allowed to
play the game.
Spitball politics in the form of legalized bribery by lobbyists, play-for-pay
politicians, and corruption of our political system by deep-pocketed
oligarchs, is destroying America, or at bare minimum turning it into
something we barely recognize.
No more spitball politics, I say.
If our current crop of weak-kneed elected officials don't have the courage and
integrity to adopt sportsmanlike rules by legislatively ending Citizens
United immediately, they don't belong in the game.
If a politician can't embrace and play by sportsmanlike rules, one strike and he's out!
______________________________________________________________
I am doing what I can to address the destruction of our democratic system.
Without taking back our government, nothing will change.
In my new book, An Unlikely Truth, I offer an electoral strategy which I believe
can effectively remove the crooks and liars from office, and begin to restore
representative democracy to America.
An Unlikely Truth (Literary Vagabond Books) will be released worldwide on March 24th.
[ This originated at the author's personal blog site . . . http://jdrachel.com ]
