There Will Be a Settlement
“People can stand only so much, and one of these days there will be a settlement…”
— Harry Truman
Harry Nailed It
As much as politicians tell us that they’re on our side, Americans know better. They know it when they gasp at the prices of gas, needed prescription drugs, and necessities at the grocery store. Many wonder what they’ll have to give up in order purchase those staples.
What people also know is that no matter how serious a problem is, and no matter the breadth of its impacts, the result will always be the same: our Representatives will take no meaningful actions to resolve it. Politicians and they’re high-priced consultants play Americans for fools, but they’re not really fooling anyone. Expanding on the quote above, Harry Truman—who served the country as soldier, judge, Senator, Vice-President, and President—said:
“It is a pity that Wall Street, with its ability to control all the wealth of the nation and to hire the best law brains in the country, has not produced some statesmen, some men who could see the dangers of bigness and of the concentration of the control of wealth. Instead of working to meet the situation, they are still employing the best law brains to serve greed and self-interest. People can stand only so much, and one of these days there will be a settlement…”
The question we have to ask ourselves is whether we are willing to make the effort necessary to take back our democracy from special interests and partisans who are unable or unwilling to get anything done. After being sold out for so long in so many ways, plenty of people feel that nothing ever changes, regardless of whether or not they vote or who gets elected.
But as hopeless as things may seem, they’re not. We can reclaim our democracy if we invest just a little bit more of ourselves into doing so. You don’t need to quit your job, read five newspapers a day, or memorize the complete text of the Constitution. But Americans do need to better educate themselves about how our political system works, and then take a greater role in public decision-making.
Most politicians are creatures of the wind. They will not reform themselves, but they will respond to public pressure if they feel that the wind might be strong enough to uproot them from their political perch. That’s why it’s so important to have a more knowledgeable and engaged electorate. The partisan debate is merely eye candy, distracting us from finding solutions to—or even just seriously discussing—the challenges we face.
Did You Know…?
In this famous image taken by photographer Byron H. Rollins in November 1948, President Harry Truman holds aloft a copy of the Chicago Daily Tribune, with its erroneous headline proclaiming that Thomas Dewey had won the election. Truman, with 303 electoral votes, soundly defeated Dewey, with 189; Truman won the popular vote by more than four percentage points. The blunder revealed problems with how polls are conducted and interpreted, and highlighted the dangers of rushing the news.
GeorgeWasRight will focus on specific ways our political system has gotten off-track, along with the ways we might best address them—not as partisans, but as Americans, with common interests and goals. So many people are justifiably fed up with a dysfunctional political system that, time and again, prioritizes special interests and partisan advantage over the public interest. We may indeed be close to the settlement about which Harry Truman spoke. With the necessary commitment, we can get on a path for a much better political future.