The answer is ... 10%.
That means 90% of us don't trust, respect or have confidence in our own government. And ... before we point a finger at corrupt legislators or greedy corporations, please notice that three fingers are pointing back to us. The sobering question is, how is it that we the people have elected representatives that not only don't represent us, but in fact, we can TRUST THEM to not represent us?
The short answer is we have allowed ourselves to be caught up in a political scam as old as the Roman Empire, older probably. It's called divide-and-conquer, and until now the culture wars and a corporate media dedicated to producing lots and lots of heat, and very little light, has kept us confined to two separate and warring political tribes.
And now, the game is changing.
Progressives cannot fail to notice that conservative constituents overwhelmed their representatives with calls to NOT bomb Syria. And conservatives are likewise wising up to the difference between the Koch brothers' co-optation of the Tea Party movement, and that movement's original populist premise.
So here is the news that the mainstream media (liberal to conservative, from Fox to NPR) will be the last to report: There is a new conversation emerging that is bringing left and right front and center to address one common realization -- we have all been hoodwinked by the same cadre of winking hoods.
What will happen when awakening progressives and awakening conservatives begin to speak with one another and compare notes? What lies did they tell YOU? What lies were YOU told? You can bet that a likelier story will emerge, and we will have the long-awaited chance to overgrow the current toxic and dysfunctional system.
And ... while it's true that the truth shall upset you free ... this evolutionary upwising that has begun requires a spiritual, psychological and political maturity that the body politic has never yet demonstrated. If we want to "overgrow" the system, we -- individually and collectively -- must grow up. Instead of blaming institutions, individuals and forces outside ourselves, now it the time to "gather under one big intent" and ask how we can face the music and dance together.
I happened to be at a conference in Washington, D.C. a week or so after Obama was elected in 2008. In my 40 years of connection with Washington, I had never seen the city in such a state of joy and ebullience. It was as if the Irony Curtain itself had come down, and that now finally we could be liberated from the most deadly political disease of all time, the Military Industrial Complex.
A lad and a lack, it was not to be. Not then, anyway ... no white knight (albeit a slightly darker white knight) would come and save us on a dark night. We have since lost false hope, and that's a good thing. Now finally we can wake up to a truer truth. We have met the leader we have been waiting for ... and it is US.
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