I met a man from Estonia a couple of summers ago who told me that he didn’t know where America was. “What is that country?” He asked me. It was kind of a joke to him. You see in Estonia there is no America, there is only “Oooh-Sa,” which is what they call the U.S.A. “America is two continents joined together by a narrow ismus,” he explained to me. Which meant that to his mind everyone from the Northwest Territories to Chile was an “American.” “Dude,” I said “ There’s a lot of people who would be very insulted by that statement, most of whom don’t even live in the United States.”
If you measure generations in the most common way then I’m 22nd generation American, with family here long before the United States. However that doesn’t make me any more of an American than anyone else in the USA, that was what the American revolution was about, among other things. From the newest citizen to the oldest family it’s still one person, one vote. It used to be “one man one vote” but we fixed that. It used to depend a lot on the color of your skin, but we finally got that fixed that as well.
Although the country began with a single set of principles and rights we’ve been modifying them all along. It’s a long hard process, everything in a democratic republic is, but we get it done just the same. We’ve been fixing things for a very long time in this country, and we’re at it still.
We make mistakes, enact dopey rules (see:prohibition) but eventually we figure it out. The reason is we make mistakes out of faith in ourselves and love in our hearts, and those drivers never leave you alone. They won’t let you leave a bad situation un-fixed. It’s been a long 235 years, but not as long as the 381 years my family has been struggling in this country. However, as independent and equal as we might have felt it wasn’t really possible until 235 years ago.
Our family also has a long history of “Fixing” this and that. Long before Cooper John Gray was fomenting the Whiskey rebellion, other Grays were throwing off somebody’s “yoke of oppression.” We’re a feisty bunch , always looking for something to “fix”. We’ve been revolutionaries since the Massachusetts Bay colony, Indian fighters since the Pequot war, traders, explorers, farmers, bankers, and soldiers long before my great, great uncle William Tecumseh Sherman showed the world what a war of attrition was really all about. Nice man actually, but had that terrible streak of purpose that seems to haunt us.
There are two signers of the declaration in our family, Roger Sherman and William Carroll. I’m sure, it was almost impossible to hold them back when it came time to sign. I put it all down to Ragnar Lothbrod, our oldest traced descendant and his sons Hoffa and Hubba. Before there were Grays in Scotland, there were Lothbrods burning towns on the Volga. The name Gray is from a town we were given (read:bought off) in what is now France. That was just before the family headed off to “fix” England in 1066. It’s doesn’t make any difference now of course, we still have to pay for the mustard like anyone else.
The revolution was about that as well, a freedom from the tyranny of blood lines and privilege. It was an entirely new idea in formation of a country, an attempt to create a society of total equality. Of course some of the base principles got left on the cutting room floor, the abolition of slavery for one. That was a bigger fight to come. And it still exists in our country even today, but we’re still after it.
We didn’t get everything quite equal, some nuts were to big to crack right away. It’s amazing that we managed to stamp out rank and privilege. One of the biggest we haven’t got to is the power and influence of wealth. That’s the challenge for the next 235 years.
It’s the one thing that has managed to eat away at our equality and resists all attempts to control it. Even though an ordinary everyday American has little hope of beating a wealthy individual or corporation in court and becomes totally subject to that power, he or she is loathe to change the balance on the remote possibility that one day they might be wealthy and powerful themselves. The privilege of the wealthy is every bit ingrained in the American heart as was the privilege of “pure blood” in the countries the first settlers left.
Sometimes the government we forged so long ago manages to stand in the way of the wealthy and powerful and helps to even the score. It’s various agencies and departments are at least big enough to level the playing field. Still, the game’s not over yet, and it looks like it’s going to be a long second half.
It could spell the ruination of all we’ve worked to build, the end of the grand American experiment. And very much like the doom that the founding fathers saw in ever mounting taxation without representation, cutting it off sooner rather than later is probably the better method. It’s every bit as dangerous a revolution as the first, to limit the influence of wealth and power on the government itself. But I’ll bet we get there eventually.
Copyright Prentiss Gray 2011
Prentiss Gray is a writer and columnist and currently writes the Domesti-Tech Blog for Gannett. He can be reached through his website at www.prentissgray.com
Prentiss Gray
Prentiss Gray is a writer/columnist/blogger from New Jersey. After 27 years as a Information Systems consultant and the death of his wife of 21 years, he returned to his roots as a writer, creating the national column Adventures of the Lone Dad/ Daddy chronicles. He now Blogs for Gannet on domestic technology, and writes feature pieces and stories for general publication. He is a member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors and contributes to Bloomberg News, Daily Record, Gannett and the Tribune Syndicate.
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A Ha! So now we see where you get your relentless style. Well done Prentiss. You’ve got me thinking about rich and wealthy. Do they have better lives than the rest of us or just more influtential? We’ve certainly seen enough of them fall on their faces. I wouldn’t want to be Arnold Schwarzenegger or anyone in the Kennedy family. In NYC no one runs up to celebrites. It’s sort of a conciet. Like so what? But then maybe that’s a particularly American attitude?
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I like the way you took “all about me and my glorious heritage” and worked it into “we need to penalize the rich”. Why is it the Liberal base is among the alleged educators whose product is dumb downed schools, the least educated or accomplished who live in inner cities for the most part, or nearby suburbs? Is Progressivism driven by fear, jealousy, poor me I am a victim, or what? If you extract the very magnificent and creative artistic minds who by nature (and historically) are liberal, one thing is certain, it is a herd mentality dominated by the weakest links, and suppressing obvious or historical truths.
It is far too easy for me to see where you have still not heard the “pop”, that sound made when your head emerges from the rectum and a new perspective emerges. It is much harder for me to see my own like malady, and the fact that I think I am going to hear the “pop” before too long. Yes, I am undergoing some for of metamorphosis about conservatism as we know it. It becomes increasingly clear to me that those of us writing, arguing and defending Dems and Republicans are just the “useful fools” Lenin referred to.
We operate under the illusion we are changing the world when in fact it is the Ultra-Rich like Soros, Kennedy’s, Bush’s, DuPonts, Rockefellers, Rothchilds, and numerous European names we seldom hear, and the like who are pulling all the strings behind the scenes. I paraphrase former Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, who once said, “Washington is controlled by a very small group of men, and always has been.” They don’t really give a damn about us, it is all about power and wealth. The rich we know are peasants in the world of the above names, as well as Gates, Buffett, Carnegie and several other well known bastions of generational wealth.
Nothing of lasting consequence will happen without the approval of this powerful inner circle. It was names like these that funded the Nazi’s, Russian Bolsheviks and Saudi oil development, for a piece of the action of course.
Were we to live long enough, which I won’t, we could end up as guerrilla allies fighting oppression of the rich and powerful. But that is unlikely to happen because the bond slaves of Socialism are are being led to the graveyard whistling as they go, thinking others are willing to support them. When the coup is complete and the generosity of the kingmakers begins to wane and they decrease the quality of life, it will be too late.
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I have no want to penalize the rich, I only want to curb the undue influence of wealth. It seems to me that that will be a very difficult undertaking. We have to seek the fine line between corporations and individuals being as successful as they can and the effect that delivers tremendous governing power to those with wealth. We elect our representatives and then they come under the influence of corporations large and small, vested interests and any one of the million ways wealth can tip the tables. I think a good start would be to only allow publicly funded elections.
Rich people and wealthy corporations are not necessarily bad, or even bad influences. Neither are Pacs and lobbyists, often they are responsible for educating congress as to the full extent of the impact of the issues they deal with. However, there are no checks and balances to the Lobbying system. I would very much like to see a few ideas on how that could be accomplished.
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Is another spurious algorithm at work?
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You used the word “Nazi” which is on the list I published, so this comment when into the spam file for review.
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The government nose has a brown spot on the end from their proximity to huge business interests. Business isn’t the enemy of people. Greed, corruption and narcissism are.
What we have today is neither capitalism nor democracy. We live in a corrupt society controlled by narcissists both governmental and business, blended into a bland but malignant growth of cronyism, and manipulation, where we the employers are but the complacent host from which the tick feeds, one way or the other, depending on where the money lining their pockets is coming from…
I say lets revert to the concepts of the last revolution, and we will all end up in a better place…
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Very nice Prentiss.
I will say this and then I’m sticking to my nonpolitical stance. Keep squeezing the little folk and there will be a revolution and as Gil Scott-Heron once said, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. Or was that the Last Poets? I checked, it was Gil Scott-Heron
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When I checked I used Wikipedia
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You are in the ballpark Prentiss when you talk about controlling the money flowing into elections. However, using public funds is just another way to steal from us. Who gets to be a candidate and then who is entitled to monies requires a decision process that will be corrupted to serve the same influential stakeholders.
Michael Crumling is spot on accurate. The $24 question is “how can the people fix it, which is to say get their country back”. I fear the only way is a revolution, which embodies a whole new set of problems and unintended consequences by the time the dust settles.
It is my theory that all this “tax the rich” talk going back and forth is a “red herring” posited by the ultra wealthy king makers. Someone who makes $550,00 a year on up to a few million is rich by our standards perhaps. This would include business executives, inventors who patented a product, entrepreneurs who invested their savings to start businesses and then brought them to better than most success, etc. That is what the American dream is all about and why people from all over the world want to come here. The freedom to succeed or fail is a wonderful gift. In fact, these people do pay more taxes, in fact the top 10% of earners pay something like 95% of all taxes. The people like us in the middle income salaries pay some,and those in the lower income brackets create debt,virtually contributing nothing to the “pot of money from taxes”. They in fact receive more than they pay for. None of the people in this paragraph determine which direction this country goes toward. That is reserved for the ultra wealthy who control the political process in this country and world wide. I am talking about people of extreme wealth for generations who literally own the politicians.
Names like Rothchilds, DuPont, Carnegie, Harriman, Bush, Soros, Rockefeller and others are the “old and elite rich”. The have been rich for generations, lived privileged lives and dictated the terms of our ability to earn etc. Fostering class warfare between you and I and successful business people who earned their success is a distraction, or red herring. In fact. they run the country while we tear ourselves apart fighting the enemy they set up for us. And, at the same time they make it tougher for upstarts to penetrate the real veil of ultra wealth that they belong to. They are laughing all the way to the bank. They own everyone in Washington with influence, and in fact are on the same team.
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By setting up fake “talking point” arguments about meaningless BS, the effite and elite keep us all busy arguing over nothing in the right hand, while the left hand picks our pockets and puts the handcuff on us… so true.
In their minds, they own the country and we are but the tenants and the help…
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It is important to understand how the House of Rothschild unintentionally aided the rise of the Third Reich. We should be cautious…
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