Little do Americans realize.
“Checks and Balances” is a United States governmental theme. You see it everywhere—whether it’s in determining the state of your personal finances or when considering the limits of our nation’s political infrastructure. But I’ve come to realize that the purpose of “checks and balances”, as well as politics itself, is not the means to the same ends that the American Constitution proposes, and us, the American Zeitgeist, believes.
For example, the decisions that are made by our government, if it hasn’t become clear to most adults already, aren’t made with the best interests of this country’s people in mind. It’s concerning the interests of this country’s government. Let me explain.
If one actually paid attention to George W. Bush’s speeches, especially those that were meant to explain or rationalize his political decisions, touches on a little concept known as constituents. The first definition of a constituent as appears in the dictionary is something that serves to compose or make up a thing, or rather, a component of something. Ergo, if Mr. Dubyuh were referring to himself as the main representative of this country’s governing body (which is what I would assume, considering that is the general purpose of a president in addition to Commander in Chief of the military—the position he actually seems to be interested in being responsible for), then I suppose he was referring everything that composes a government, and whatever that is relevant to. Since our government is a culmination of officers either voted into or appointed their positions within a bureaucratic institution composed of the same people that it is meant to moderate – American citizens – this would mean that the biggest requirement, and one that can stand on its own, is to be an American citizen. This hence would mean that whomever George W. Bush was referring to, whomever he was excluding better not be an American.
But Mr. Bush has claimed, on more than one occasion, that those who oppose the “war in Iraq” are “not his constituents." Since this includes a rather large portion of American society, one is forced to ask, “then who are his constituents, if not the American people, despite their opinions?”
The United States government panders to itself and it’s own interests independent of the people. I am going to illustrate this fact by presenting pattern in the parties that our presidents have represented during what periods and why.
I am going to begin with Dwight D. Eisenhower, born David D. Eisenhower, in Texas, with my same birthday. This man was a general in the military, and a republican. Until that point, the majority of United States presidents have been republicans, but this term was so convoluted until then, it barely represented anything at all, what with the old republicans becoming democrats and the whigs becoming republicans, and then the Union and the Confederacy, and then the military generals, you get the picture-I suppose this would explain why Lincoln fared so decently with so little scandal, but was still considered a republican.
The point is that Eisenhower was where the republican-democrat pattern began. Now don’t get me wrong, Eisenhower may have been a republican, but he was one of the best. Upholding what he called “Dynamic Conservatism”, he sustained most of the pursuits of the “New Deal”, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s (a Democrat, I might add) brainchild. This supported welfare, social security, and the like, and thank God, because if Eisenhower was any less than a man, he would have been a staunch republican with orthodox conservative principles, and we may not have any socially beneficial programs at all.
Now, the American public loved Eisenhower, and it’s easy to see why. Ergo, he easily remained president for his two terms. But when the new presidential candidates were revealed to the public, the republican party, represented by Richard Nixon, couldn’t stand up to the savvy and handsome John F. Kennedy and his promises of an even happier American public with even more socially beneficial institutions. Unfortuntely, one of America’s best presidents to date was assassinated and he was succeeded by his Vice, Lyndon B. Johnson, as per the Constitution. Indeed, Johnson proved to be a viable president, but also one that loved to spend money. The republicans, although known to be heavy spenders themselves (every president that has gone to war insofar have been republicans, for example), used this above all as a leg-up on the democrats, who suffered from Lyndon’s high expenditures. From then on, due to misleading campaigning strategies, democrats were stigmatized with the assumption that they’d waste America’s money. He was only president for six years, as he served the remaining two years of Kennedy’s term, and four of his own, and was succeeded by Richard Nixon, the very republican who lost to Kennedy.
This is where the real republican reign began. Although some of his initiatives were very beneficial, such as his health care proposition for example, that resulted in Medicaid and health insurance offered to employees, there were acts committed by he and his administration that were more than dubious. This included tapping phones, attempts at stealing personal medical and psychiatric documents, and evidence that suggest that he, Nixon, planned on either terrorizing or assassinating journalists for criticizing his administration or the government.
People in the government today that served under Richard Nixon during his presidency include George Bush senior, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfield, et. al.
These indiscretions are known to the American people as the Watergate Scandal, an encompassing tarp over his evident corruption referring to his burglarizing a democrat’s room in the Watergate Hotel.
As you can imagine, the American public was very disappointed. Nixon was impeached and subsequently resigned. He was followed by Gerald Ford, another republican, but by constitutional default. He served the remainder of Nixon’s term, but didn’t impress the American people enough to warm up to the Republican Party. As soon as he finished Nixon’s term, Jimmy Carter, a democrat, defeated him. In fact, a democrat that served as another amazing president for the American people, spending some of the least of any president, cutting major extraneous expenditures by the American government, called for urban reform, separated and beefed up the Department of Education, and appointed record numbers of minorities and women to government and judiciary positions. He also moved to reduce United States reliance on foreign energy, and attempted to reduce energy expenditure in this nation in general. Unfortunately, the American people is used to doing what they want, and when one combines this to the hostage debacle in Iran, it’s easy to see why he was terribly unpopular after only four short years. In retrospect, I’m sure the United States sees the error of our ways, as Jimmy Cater was later granted the Nobel Peace Prize, and the end of his presidency led to another republican in office.
I’d like to highlight at this point that the norm is a republican in office, with democrats being the deviation.
I say that only because the United States Zeitgeist was pretty tired of Democrats at this point it appears. We didn’t want to have anything to do with big spenders who can’t protect our people and who ruin our social infrastructure, as said by so many republicans who continued to steer the perspectives of the progressively more conservative public, Jimmy Carter, a low spender with moderate foreign policy and no impending wars who attempted to improve American education and lower excessive spending and consumption, notwithstanding.
Riding on the trail blaze of an “energy crisis” and “safety failure”, Ronald Reagan was elected our next president. Indeed a Republican, he was a Democrat until he worked as a spokesperson for industrial giant, General Electric. Interesting. Ronald Reagan was the JFK of the Republicans, older as most republicans tend to be (in fact, the oldest president to be elected to date), but handsome and charismatic, with a history in film and radio.
Ronald Reagan described his main concern as a movement away from government reliance by the American people. This started out as a promising premise, one that would make American society more self-sustaining. What this actually meant, as per “Reaganomics” and his “trickle-down effect”, was that major tax cuts were initiated, especially those that would affect Big Business and the wealthy, and that a laissez-fair philosophy was adopted, again to the benefit of no one but the disgustingly rich and Big Business. This, at first, stunted the economy, but as GNP rose, our economy spiked. Unemployment rose to the highest it’s been-almost 11%-since the Great Depression, but as business grew and hired more people, it lowered significantly for the remainder of his term. Alas, it appears as though his fixes were short, quick, and self-serving, as Big Business remained the government's main concern from then on and continued to grow, flourish, and influence, but his successor, George Bush senior, reneged on his promises for further tax cuts and actually raised them, something that seemed to somehow only affect the middle class.
Ronald Reagan also began the “war on drugs”, an ambiguous $7 billion attempt at curbing “drugs” by initiating minimum sentencing and higher concentration on select urban districts. Criticisms include that it targeted ethnically specific demographics with it’s geographic selectiveness and sentencing disparities, such as for example, the difference between repercussions from powder cocaine and crack cocaine, the prior being far more lenient and the drug more commonly used by white collar executives, and the urban districts housing mostly African Americans.
The rest of Reagan’s accomplishments seemed strangely convenient. During his inaugural address, 444 hostages in Iran were released. He was credited for influencing the Cold War to its end. These were explained to be the result of his new ideals, especially those regarding the economy. The truth is that if those hostages were released during his inauguration, they were the result of something or someone preceding him, and the end of the Cold War resulted from extraneous military force amounting to billions in expenditures and trade embargoes, stunting the Soviet economy by engaging trade negotiations in order to render them vulnerable and pulling the old bait-and-switch. The USSR was then dissolved, and the following Soviet leader established a trade agreement with President Bush Senior, Reagan’s successor.
George H. W. Bush was the next president of the United States, as the American public remained reliant on republicans. Reagan and his new ideals supposedly improved America drastically, as said Bush’s campaign. Riding on Reagan’s shirttails, Bush enjoyed an easy victory.
His first implementation was to invade Panama, supposedly because Noriega facilitated the movement of drugs from South America to the United States, the droves of drugs imported from Europe and the Middle East notwithstanding. Then he invaded Iraq, and for entirely different reasons. In fact, it was supposedly because Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, and Bush claimed it was a “war on aggression”. This was called the Persian Gulf War, and it received much opposition. Even with Bush’s pretentious rationalizations, American society felt that we should mind our own business.
But this only led to more insufferable, lesser reported invasions. Desert Storm. The invasion of Mogadishu, Somolia in 1993. And many, many others. Most of these “mini wars” were kept secret. People wondered how it was funded under the wire. Some say it was black market trading. And many of them propose that much of the product that was traded was weaponry (sold to the Middle East!) and drugs from Europe and the Middle East. Because, you know, at that point, all drugs in the world came from South America, as far as the public was concerned. In any case, the Persian Gulf War and the coup de grace of Noriega lifted his approval rating to an amazing 89%. Unfortunately, “Reaganomics” began to fail, there was an economic recession, and he was forced to raise taxes to pick up the pieces. By the end of his third year, Bush’s approval rating was at an all-time low of 29%, nowhere near enough to win him a second term. Later, the New York Times reported on his response to seeing a UPC scanner as him being “amazed” by it, leading to the general belief that Bush was out of touch with the common working man. Somehow, in one short year with little to show for his remaining term, his approval rating jumped back up to 53%, but this little fabrication did nothing for his reelection. He suffered defeat at the hands of a democrat, Mr. William Clinton, another deviation in light of republican nonsense.
If you haven’t noticed the pattern yet, it’s an easy one: the United State government has interests in making itself more wealthy, pursuing it’s own goals and interests, and hindering the public from realizing its intentions with red herrings and false promises, and this modus operandi is delivered by the Republican Party. The Democratic Party, those who are considered liberals, are the movement away from the money-mongering republican philosophy and more in tune to the will of the people. They include Nobel Prize recipients, peacemakers, and economic beneficiaries, but they are only allowed into office between republican mistakes and misgivings.
In other words, one of the proposed “checks and balances” of our government is opposing political parties meant to represent the entire perspective of a naturally conflicted people with a common centrality. Unfortunately, it turns out that the republicans are the government and the democrats are the scapegoats.
This isn’t to say that I fully and thoroughly support democrats. But far more than republicans, that much is certain.
If Americans only knew. Do not allow them to pull the wool over your eyes.
