Brody's Scribbles... The World Watches

By Desmond Rutherford (Adelaide, Australia) OCT 28 | The USA, the United States of America, is about to go to its midterm elections. Congress- the House and the Senate, will both have new members elected from every state in the Union.

The rest of the world has seen this happen many times, and always with some fascination as the American people elect its representatives who by and large will be the guardians of the free world or as President Kennedy put it, “The watchdogs on the wall of the world.”

This time however the world watches the election with fearful trepidation.

This time the world can see the hateful, the bigoted and manipulative process that threatens to destabilise the United States and its constitution.

The people of “We the People,” fame are about to face the most stringent test of their political lives. 

The constitution is under threat from people who have difficulty in understanding its content let alone its intent. Issues concerning equality of the people, in particular LGBT people, as well as immigrants and the welfare of all the people of the USA are being corrupted as we watch. The corporate greed is but one problem, the political corruption another, and the one thing that should never have happened, given the first Amendment of the Constitution, is that America is threatened by theocracy. That it is a Christian theocracy that threatens is dumbfounding.

This is wrong.

Now before I am accused of meddling in matters that do not concern someone from a country other than the United States, let me say that the rest of the world has been grateful for the many times that America has assisted the nations of the free world in times of war, natural disaster and terrorism, but now the world needs to assist the American people.

We humans are no longer isolated groups of villages spread around the planet, we are one species interacting with each other at every level of life on this world, and nowhere is there a more important attempt to form a government based on freedom and the pursuit of happiness than in the American Constitution; the United Nations' good intentions notwithstanding.

The world must now tell the people of the United States of America that it is under attack from extremists already in its own midst, by people who would stifle free enterprise for their own profit rather than for that of the people, and who would enforce forms of slavery that amount to wide spread poverty and bullying.

The free world owes it to the American people to let them know they are being induced to forsake their hard won constitution for the sake of religious bigotry, and superstition. 

The world may have argument with many of the ways which dominate American life, but it is obvious that the people are, in this election being lead to the opposite of that which their constitution sets out as the aims of a free people.

There were those who tried to warn the German people what was happening to their country under the Nazis, but too few listened, too few realised the horror they represented. 

This time the danger is not in the Whitehouse, yet, however subject it is to the whim of political establishment, this time the threat comes from the manipulative rightwing media, from the religious bigots and the massive greed of the corporate wealthy who will do anything to keep their riches for themselves even to the point of their own demise. Such are the wages of avarice, but the people end up paying the cost.

The world must encourage the American people to vote, and not for the rightwing destroyers of their nation. We must believe that a true majority of the people would not relinquish liberty, equality and the pursuit of happiness for establishment of a religious government, on a whim, or because some television shows frightened them with corruptions of facts.

The world is now the watchdog on the freedoms of the American people, and by extension the freedom of all humanity.

Without belief in the natural goodness of human beings, life becomes intolerable. It has to get better than the campaign tactics we have seen in this election. Vote, please, all our futures are at stake.