How To Achieve Total Real Change
 
The four-element plan and political strategies come from our primal urges for justice, ancient survival wisdom, early American history, Declaration of Independence, US Constitution, and Bill of Rights.

by Dan Ruuska     (v.03.09.10)

Intro: We can win more assuredly than after we declared change on July 4, 1776.
Part 1: America's huge treasonous problem.
Part 2: We the People's surefire full solution.

Intro: We can win more assuredly than after we declared change on July 4, 1776

We the People. Let's defend/restore/grow/secure the Self-Governance and Five Kinds of Public Good we won and built commencing in 1776, all under assault since 1980 by consolidated American wealth-and-power and their media machine, a modern domestic form of the consolidated-wealth-and-power enemy we indicted in our Declaration of Independence and neutralized during the American Revolution.

Several domestic powers -- once kept separated in accordance with the national/homeland security system of multiple supreme-law safeguards the Framers wired into our Constitution and Bill of Rights to protect America's self-governance and five kinds of public good against harm from within -- soon after our 200th Fourth of July began to consolidate into a wealth/corporate, federal executive/legislative/judicial, federal spy/blackops/military, red/blue political-party, mass-media, religious-right, unbridled concentrated power. And proceeded to do what concentrated power does, what the Framers feared and tried to prevent, what the enemy of 1776 did as documented in the central section of our Declaration of Independence: dominate and plunder the populace, wage war on self-governance and public good. They breached the national/homeland security of America's self-governance and five kinds of public good, including by first deleting public awareness of and then disabling the entire national/homeland security system the the Framers wired into our Constitution and Bill of Rights. They weakened the national/homeland defense of America's self-governance and five kinds of public good, so dangerously that We the People -- who by law have supreme power and are the government of America -- no longer know WHAT to defend against all enemies foreign and domestic: 1] principled Self-Governance; 2] the Five Kinds of Public Good listed in the first sentence of our Constitution, the common-good bedrock of our "more perfect Union" and the American Dream, the very purpose and high-quality product of real American democracy. During their unbridled pursuit of more and more wealth and power for themselves at the expense of others by whatever means necessary, they assault and wound "America": the self-governance and five kinds of public good won during the American Revolution, ordained in our Constitution, symbolized by our Flag, and produced by We the People during America's first two centuries. And in so doing they commit massive treason. They blind America to the wrong and harm they commit, including how they built up and operate a giant wealth-mining system and take our money at the rate of trillions of dollars a year and how they take our lives at the rate of more than fifty 9/11s a year as collateral damage during their selfish pursuit of wealth and power. Kept hidden under their patriotic and moral disguises, they are the very domestic enemy the Framers tried to prevent from ever arising inside our homeland: consolidated American wealth-and-power and their media machine waging war on self-governance and public good, a worse form of the enemy indicted in our Declaration of Independence for waging war on self-governance and public good. They grow stronger and stronger day by day. They hurt our self-governance and public good more and more. They trick citizens by the millions including churchgoers and our troops, and they indoctrinate and train our new generations, to help them do it. They have already made sure our standard methods of good citizenship and active democracy cannot possibly stop them. Worry not. We CAN stop them and reverse their many immense treasons.

Let's deploy and wield the democracy weapon/tool herein to wildly succeed. The four-element plan and political strategies come from our primal urges for justice, ancient survival wisdom, early American history, Declaration of Independence, US Constitution, and Bill of Rights.

Total Real Change, see top paragraph, would be modeled after and draw power from how we created America, see last six items in above paragraph. So why not call it American Revolution II.

It would not be a revolt like before. Just a long-overdue major maintenance and tune-up of our republic during which We the People unite and cooperate and carry out needed change:

• From "government of/by/for wealth-and-power" back to "government of/by/for We the People."

• From "rigged market-based democracy" (our new-since-1980 form of democracy that 1] frees wealth-and-power to consolidate and grow in strength and take/hoard wealth and power from the public, 2] fools the public to lend a helping hand, and 3] blocks the public from seeing or stopping it) back to "real American democracy" (our original form of democracy that builds and secures principled self-governance and bountiful public good).

• From "kakistocracy" (government by the least qualified or most unprincipled citizens, government by the worst) back to "republic" (government where supreme power lies in citizens who elect principled representatives truly responsible to them).

• From "America has a public trust that betrays the public" back to "America has a public trust the public can trust."

• From "wealth-and-power, capitalism, and the media rule and plunder America and deceive/manipulate We the People to assist" back to "We the People build and secure America's self-governance and public good and shepherd/regulate wealth-and-power, capitalism, and the media to help."

How easy and foolproof would Total Real Change be? Have a look:

• We outnumber the foe -- consolidated American wealth-and-power, the right wing, the domestic enemy -- by 10:1 to 500:1 to 500,000:1. See it as you zoom in on the foe from the wealth/corporate/religious foe-as-a-whole, to the wealth/corporate core that recruits and empowers and finances the religious-right core, to the 537 elected reds and blues in Washington DC who consolidate the foe and give wealth and power to the foe in return for cash and support they receive from the foe.

• The document of dissent we celebrate every Fourth of July teaches us how to succeed. It lists the injustices committed by the enemy of 1776. The many offenses -- the list takes up more than half of the charter, the entire central section, and begins with the enemy's refusal to assent to laws "most wholesome and necessary for the public Good" -- are remarkably similar to the assaults on America's self-governance and public good being committed by the domestic enemy of today. Such as their refusal to assent to laws most wholesome and necessary for just taxation, just banking, and just healthcare. See how a well-written Declaration of Total Real Change -- modeled after our Declaration of Independence, our first declaration of change -- would incite the public to launch and win American Revolution II?

• We are better armed than before. Because we possess the arsenal of moral/legal firepower born out of American Revolution I: our Constitution and Bill of Rights. Two examples: By law, We the People have supreme power and are the government of America. The first sentence of our Constitution -- it ordains the bedrock values of our nation and declares the purpose of all American law -- defines five categories of "most wholesome and necessary... public Good" that We the People, and America's laws/regulations and entire public trust, are morally/legally bound to foster and protect.

• The Continental Congress of 1776 instructs how to win big. During American Revolution II, a broad-based national civic-action congress of concerned citizens and groups -- after arising in national/homeland defense of self-governance and public good -- would unite/build/direct citizen forces to fight and neutralize the consolidated-wealth-and-power enemy like the Continental Congress did during American Revolution I.

• The national civic-action congress would spin off a new political party devoted to Total Real Change. Who would promote the attractive benefits of Total Real Change: After shutting down the giant wealth-mining system built and run by the foe, the foe would no longer take money from citizens at the rate of more than $10,000 per adult a year (more than $2 trillion annually). After carrying out the many health/safety/environmental measures blocked or weakened by the foe, the foe would no longer cause homeland death at the rate of more than fifty 9/11s a year (more than 150,000 deaths annually). And so on. See how the new party would easily trounce the two major parties who betray America today?

• Conservatives and liberals -- the 90% of the public being hurt by the right -- would unite/cooperate and neutralize the right wing and reverse the harm they inflict on America's democratic processes, representative governance, equal justice for all, unity/cooperation toward self-governance and public good, common defense of self-governance and public good, general welfare of many kinds, and liberty and its privacies and freedoms. How? By being good citizens. Like this: Help create and run the national civic-action congress. Help form and grow the new political party. Vote the new party's candidates into office and thus yank out the red/blue linchpin holding (consolidating) the entire foe together. Support the new party's efforts to restore/grow/secure the self-governance and five kinds of public good which the foe in collusion with elected reds and blues began assaulting two centuries after 1776.

• 200 million mainstream Christians, who practice the humane Christianity of those who wrote the five kinds of public good into our Constitution, could help defend America's self-governance and public good against assaults by the religious right -- by teaming together and politically overpowering the 30-million-strong Christian Right whose aggressive/inhumane brand of Christianity emerged a century after 1776. Today's Minutemen who keep and bear arms and by law are supposed to be "A well regulated Militia... necessary to the security of a free State," as well as our military and veterans, could also help defend America's self-governance and public good against assaults from within -- by teaming together and fulfilling the solemn oath to "defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic."

• In short. During a rerun of our history -- for the same core reasons as before, using the same key methods as before, but with greater firepower than before -- we would neutralize consolidated American wealth-and-power including their media machine, the right-wing enemy of today, and restore and grow and secure America's self-governance and public good. Just like our forebears neutralized the right-wing enemy of 1776 and created our nation of self-governance and public good.

This essay, which unveils the whole PROBLEM and outlines the full SOLUTION, introduces the democracy weapon/tool. A team coalition of America's pro-self-governance, pro-common-good best (such as the forthcoming national civic-action congress and new political party) can forge and hone the entire weapon/tool (including this essay) into full strength and sharpness and put it to winning use.

Circulate this essay to every concerned citizen and group in America to begin the process of Total Real Change.

Part 1: America's huge treasonous problem

Consolidated wealth-and-power -- an ancient political disease -- off and on over the ages, here and there around the world, has flared up out of dormancy and taken and hoarded wealth and power from people nearby and afar. Today inside America that history is repeating itself, despite foresight and care by the Framers to assure it never would.

America's self-governance -- unfettered democratic processes and truly representative governance (our democracy) -- and the product of American self-governance, the five kinds of public good listed in the first sentence of the US Constitution since 1787 -- equal "Justice" for all, "domestic Tranquility" necessary for unity and cooperation toward self-governance and public good, "common defence" of self-governance and public good including national/homeland security of self-governance and public good, "general Welfare" including its many social/economic/health/safety benefits, "Liberty" and its privacies and freedoms (the five-layer common-good bedrock of our "more perfect Union" and the American Dream, the very purpose of our democracy) -- are under stealthy mounting assault since 1980 by a small group of citizens: consolidated American wealth-and-power (the "foe," the right wing) and their media machine, a recently-flared-up domestic form of the enemy described in the main section of the document of dissent we celebrate every Fourth of July.

Today's illegal and dangerous fusion of many powers -- wealth/corporate power, federal executive power, federal legislative power, federal judicial power, federal spy/blackops/military power, red/blue political-party power, and mass-media power (the wealth/corporate right, 0.2% of the public) with Christian-Right power (the religious right, 10% of the public) -- into the consolidated American wealth-and-power now harming the vast majority of citizens (conservatives and liberals, 90% of the public) began in earnest around 1980.

That foe, aided by their media machine, stealthily breached the national/homeland security of America's self-governance and five kinds of public good. Skillfully, they continue to weaken the national/homeland defense of America's self-governance and five kinds of public good. And now during their "Pursuit of Happiness" -- their unbridled pursuit of more and more wealth and power for themselves at the expense of others here and abroad by whatever means necessary -- they assault and wound "America": the Self-Governance and Five Kinds of Public Good won during the American Revolution, ordained in our Constitution, symbolized by our Flag, and produced by We the People during America's first two centuries. They blind America to the wrong and harm they commit, especially how they take our money and our lives and how they transgress more corruptly than the consolidated-wealth-and-power enemy indicted in our Declaration of Independence for waging war on self-governance and public good. They trick citizens by the millions including churchgoers and our troops, and they indoctrinate and train our new generations, to help them consolidate and heist wealth and power and in the process hurt people by the millions here and abroad.

(How can we solve that whole problem -- that is, how can we stop and reverse that huge treason by a few -- and achieve the Total Real Change summarized in the first sentence of this essay and demanded by the first sentence of our Constitution? See Part 2.)

537 reds and blues in Washington DC (Presidency, Senate, House of Representatives) -- elected into power through the "rigged market-based democracy" the fusion replaced our "real American democracy" with during the last quarter of the 20th century -- pass/enforce laws that grant the fusion free rein to consolidate and take and hoard wealth and power from the public, give tax revenue and other public assets to the fusion, appoint federal judges including to the Supreme Court to protect and serve the fusion, all in return for monetary and political payment from the entire wealth/corporate/religious fusion. After they leave office, many of those reds and blues continue to serve the fusion as well-paid insider lobbyists while drawing lavish retirement benefits from the public they work against. All of this is aided and abetted by the fusion's "media machine" especially its print/radio/TV mainstream news.

Two centuries earlier the Framers -- heeding ancient survival wisdom passed down through the ages: "Keep wealth-and-power in check or suffer the dire consequences!" -- wired a national/homeland security system of many supreme-law safeguards (see Part 2) into our Constitution and Bill of Rights to prevent America's many separate powers from ever consolidating into a treasonous foe that could breach the security of and harm America's self-governance and five kinds of public good.

During the 1980s the wealth/corporate right enlisted the religious right -- a pessimistic/aggressive/inhumane brand of Christianity that emerged a century after 1776 and thus was not the Christianity of America's founders -- and gave them considerable political power. The resulting wealth/corporate/religious alliance grew the fusion's membership, and strength during elections and influence over the elected, by fifty-fold. (The alliance's symbiotic cooperation and mutual benefits, and toxicity to America and the world, are explained below and in Part 2.)

The "wealth/corporate right" includes their many right-wing foundations, institutes, associations, societies, and think tanks. Who formulate and promote right-wing doctrine such as: unregulated capitalism and aggressive privatization are good for America; unlimited corporate spending on campaign contributions and on political advertising designed to influence election outcomes and executive/legislative/judicial operation of government (all to gain more wealth and power for corporations at the expense of America's self-governance and present and future public good) are "free speech"; America was founded as a Christian nation; life begins at conception therefore federal law should protect rights of the pre-born; intelligent design is real science and must be taught as such in public schools. Who provide topics and sources for and produce content for the news media. Who skillfully influence the electorate, the elected, our judges, legions of public servants -- and our institutions including the family, schools, churches, businesses, communities, and military -- to think and act in the interests of the wealth/corporate/religious right.

The "religious right" includes their hundreds of hate groups and hateful congregations. Who hate racial/ethnic/foreign/gay/religious minorities. Who hate women having reproductive control over their own bodies (see Part 2). Who hate the very concept of secular We-the-People citizens providing self-governance and public good to ourselves and our posterity in accordance with our Constitution because 1] they believe that God and the Bible must rule America and because 2] if "real American democracy" (principled self-governance producing bountiful public good) flourishes here and spreads worldwide it would forestall the conflict and suffering necessary to trigger the "end times" they see prophesied in the Bible. Who pressure the wealth/corporate right to produce and fuel conflict and suffering here and abroad, especially to wage/aid war in the Middle East, in order to speed arrival of the "end of days" they yearn for.

The wealth/corporate right and Christian Right unleash their "attack machine" -- to attack in the media, on the streets, inside halls of democracy; to shout down and pillory opposition, to bear assault weapons to threaten opposition -- whenever it's necessary to attack democratic processes, representative governance, justice, domestic tranquility, common defense, general welfare, and liberty that stand in their way of gaining wealth and power. Such as when they attack humanity-driven universal healthcare that would produce a healthier public at far less cost (like other nations do) because it would cut profits for the rich, the deserving, and relieve suffering for the poor, the undeserving.

In 2001 the foe began adding a new power to their fusion: federal police-state power. (Three of its anti-citizen functions, and how rising police-state power weakens the national/homeland security and defense of America's self-governance and public good, are described below.)

The foe, a new strain of the ancient wealth-and-power disease similar to the strain documented in the main section of our Declaration of Independence, hurts us dearly. Like a dangerous microbial disease the members of the foe operate/cooperate automatically without central control or a thought-out plan, exploit and create weaknesses, trick defenses to attack, and evolve virulence. Over the past few decades they breached our security and overran our defenses and gained free rein to do as they please. And now during their unbridled pursuit of wealth and power they take five kinds of well-being wealth including immense sums of money and many innocent lives -- and supreme self-governance power -- from We the People. They do it to other nations, too, and the blowback including terrorism hurts America. All what the Framers feared. And tried to prevent with the several inoculations against the wealth-and-power disease they wrote into our 1787 Constitution and 1791 Bill of Rights (see Part 2).

(It's not a conspiracy by America's wealthy-and-powerful. It's just a recent flare-up of the same old wealth-and-power disease that We the People have to neutralize again. The Framers foresaw that threat and into our Constitution and Bill of Rights wrote the supreme firepower we need.)

Blowback from abroad ---- the natural human response to the foe's myriad unjust actions that harm self-governance and public good abroad: hurtful foreign policies and trade practices, extortive diplomacy, predatory "savage capitalism" by the USA-led World Bank and IMF and WTO, covert destabilization of civic/social/economic order, obstruction/destruction of democracy, installation of and aid to repressive regimes including by training and supplying their right-wing militaries, US black operations and military actions, and more, all to extract wealth from other nations (such as their natural resources, cheap labor, and public/private assets) and to exert power over other nations (including through a growing network of US military bases and US embassies which headquarter the foe's international dominate-and-plunder operations), all executed under news blackout here or under pretext of doing good ---- generates fear in America. Which the foe and their media partners magnify and stoke to control us for their purpose of taking wealth and power here and abroad.

(Perhaps the worst blackops and blowback ever? In the early 1980s, to fight Soviets in Afghanistan and funded 50-50 by America's taxpayers and Saudi Arabia, the foe recruited and armed Islamic fighters from Afghanistan/Pakistan and several other nations, set up and ran training camps in Afghanistan/Pakistan which became models for al-Qaeda camps, brought key jihad leaders to America and trained them very likely in some of the knowledge and skills used by terrorists today, built those fighters into a proxy military weapon, out of which arose the Taliban and al-Qaeda and 9/11, which power the foe's weapon of fear, a weapon the foe wields to hurt America's self-governance and public good vastly more than terrorism ever did and ever could.)

Few are aware of this war on America -- by Americans -- that began in earnest around 1980 and escalates today. Because the foe stealthily disabled our freedom of speech and of the press (the vigilant warning system established in 1791 to help protect our self-governance and five kinds of public good from harm by domestic wealth-and-power) as they stealthily built up their advertising/PR/news/entertainment, print/radio/TV/film/web media machine that controls and slants information and deceives and manipulates the public and neutralizes opposition all to help wealth-and-power consolidate and morph our "government of, by, and for We the People" into a "government of, by, and for wealth-and-power" they label "democracy."

During that stealthy subversion they consolidated all forms of media, and altered the core responsibility of mass media (from the original "protect and serve America's self-governance and public good"), into a media machine that protects and serves the wealthy-and-powerful few who assault our self-governance and five kinds of public good as they take and hoard our wealth and power.

The foe and their media machine have already made sure that our standard methods of good citizenship and active democracy -- reading and watching the news to stay informed, writing letters to the editor and blogging on the web, working on self-governance and common-good issues, whistleblowing in the public interest, engaging in principled dissent, advising our Senators and Congressperson, voicing concerns to the President, supporting a political party, voting in every election -- cannot possibly stop them.

(Worry not. Good citizenship and active democracy CAN become effective again. See Part 2.)

By law We the People have supreme power, are the government of America, are the state; our Constitution and Bill of Rights empower and direct We the People to "BE the State!" By law we supply principled self-governance and bountiful public good to ourselves and our posterity. By law we assure integrity of the public trust (especially our elected representatives and news media) -- and we watch wealth-and-power like a hawk and keep it on a short leash -- otherwise our self-governance and five kinds of public good (including the economy) are at risk.

But few Americans know about or perform that bare-basic good citizenship anymore. So how did the foe and their media machine disable the civic power and civic responsibility of We the People so completely? How did they breach the national/homeland security of America's democratic processes, representative governance, justice, unity/cooperation, common defense, general welfare, and liberty without detection or resistance from We the People? How do they continue to weaken the national/homeland defense of America's self-governance and public good without We the People knowing it?

In short, like this. During the past one-and-half generations the foe and their media machine gradually and stealthily altered our "real American democracy" -- a form of democracy that builds and secures principled self-governance and bountiful public good in accordance with our Three Charters of Freedom -- into "rigged market-based democracy": a form of democracy that 1] frees wealth-and-power to consolidate and grow in strength and take/hoard wealth and power from the public, 2] fools the public to lend a helping hand, and 3] blocks the public from seeing or stopping it. The result? Today's democracy does the opposite of the real thing: it assures that We the People keep on LOSING self-governance and public good.

That major subversion of our republic was enabled by their underlying subversions intensifying today: They breed irrational, selfish, aggressive behavior into the public to remove core wisdom-and-humanity from the public and thus crumble the very foundation of good citizenship that America needs for "real American democracy." They cleanse basic civic understanding from our public education and public mind to further disable the self-governance power and public-good power of We the People. They control and slant our media/educational information, and they deceive and manipulate us, to indoctrinate and direct us to perceive and think and act in their interest. Especially as dutiful members of their rank-and-file workforce: corporate employees, public servants, members of the military, who as a team protect and serve consolidated American wealth-and-power (instead of principled self-governance and bountiful public good, America's public/national interest).

All those subversions by the domestic enemy softened up America to make it easy for them to breach our national/homeland security, weaken our national/homeland defense, and heist our financial and well-being wealth and our supreme self-governance power.

Stunning examples of how they softened us up:

• The central section of our Declaration of Independence -- more than half of the document -- in fiery language of dissent describes the consolidated-wealth-and-power assaults on self-governance and public good that triggered revolt and birth of America. But we don't know that anymore because the foe and their media machine, in brainwashing effect, erased the entire section from the original charter and from all copies ever made.

• The very purpose of America, the supreme responsibility of citizens, the goal of "real American democracy," the bedrock values of our nation -- principled self-governance and the five kinds of public good -- are supposed to underlie and guide America's patriotism, citizenship, leadership, and all public and military service. But the foe and their media machine in effect purged that entire essence of America from our Constitution, cleansed it from our public education and public mind, and washed it out of our Stars and Stripes.

• America's five secular-moral precepts listed in the opening sentence of our Constitution -- from "establish Justice" through "secure the Blessings of Liberty" -- call upon We the People to provide far more human-to-human goodness to ourselves and our posterity than the Ten Commandments do (it leaps out when you place the two codes side by side and actually read them). Thus by law We the People serve humanity, not God. The foe and their media machine expunged that core truth and duty from America.

• "[T]he government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion" became "supreme Law of the Land" in 1797. Two centuries later, the foe and their media machine are removing "not in any sense" from that founding principle of our nation. They do it to empower and reward the thirty-million-strong Christian-Right base enlisted by the half-million-strong wealth/corporate base to help them take wealth and power here and abroad.

• The foe and their media machine trick us to believe that the President's oath of office, as specified in our Constitution, ends with "so help me God." It doesn't. It's political payment to the religious right, to help them merge church with state, in return for their political support of the wealth/corporate right. (The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, the President, and the news media gave such a payment to the Christian Right on January 20, 2009).

• True "conservatives" and true "liberals" are rooted in our Constitution and Bill of Rights. They strive to build and secure self-governance and public good. The "right wing" (the "foe") is rooted in the ancient practice of acquiring wealth and power at the expense of others. They are repeating the same two kinds of consolidated-wealth-and-power assaults that set off the American Revolution: waging war on self-governance and public good. The foe (10% of the public) and their media machine blind us it, disguise the right as "conservative" and the media as "liberal," pit conservatives and liberals (90% of the public) against each other -- all to breach our security, weaken our defense, and achieve Divided We Fall to their assaults on our wealth and our power.

• To eternally secure America's self-governance and five kinds of public good from harm by domestic wealth-and-power, the Framers wired a multi-safeguard national/homeland security system into our Constitution and Bill of Rights. One of those safeguards? Freedom of speech, and of the press, to warn the public about domestic wealth-and-power threats to the national/homeland security of America's self-governance and public good. The foe and their media machine erased our knowledge of that security system and quietly switched it off.

• From our public mind they also lobotomized the Social Contract: in return for paying the price of self-governance -- steady and strong civic responsibility, eternal vigilance and effort and taxes -- We the People, and our posterity, receive the five immense well-being benefits listed in the first sentence of our Constitution.

• To what extent have they warped civic responsibility? Originally, We the People (the government) undertook civic responsibility to "establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity" through democratic processes and representative governance and with help from the Bill of Rights. Today, "Justice" through "Liberty" and "freedoms" in the Bill of Rights are "entitled rights" to be delivered to We the People (the subjects) by "the government" (the rulers) in Washington DC. They warped civic responsibility into demanding rights.

• How far have they bent the meaning and purpose of free speech? Originally, First-Amendment free speech meant "freedom" to speak -- as in not being arrested, jailed, or punished for it -- to warn about and call for action against those who endanger or harm America's self-governance and public good. Today, "free speech" is the entitled right of self-expression -- even if such speech causes harm to America's self-governance and public good -- speech that is utterly devoid of its original purpose of protecting America's self-governance and public good.

• They also corrupted our understanding of the very essence of America. From the original "We the People govern ourselves and produce public good in accordance with our Constitution and Bill of Rights" including by constraining wealth-and-power, regulating capitalism, and separating church and state. To the new "We the People are ruled by and serve wealth-and-power, free-market capitalism, and a Christian-Zionist God." Through skillful use of their media machine, they persuade We the People to accept and grow and secure our domination and plundering by a worse form of the enemy of 1776.

• They make us think like the foe: "Government is the problem." Because government of/by/for We the People, during which we watch wealth-and-power like a hawk and keep it on a short leash, IS the problem for the foe.

• Few citizens are aware that "real American democracy" is a highly-principled form of democracy that produces and secures five kinds of public good. Instead, most of today's citizens believe that American democracy is a generic majority-is-right form of democracy. The foe generated that popular belief so they could easily morph "real American democracy" into the "rigged market-based democracy" they need to 'legally' take and hoard wealth and power. All they have to do is purchase (with campaign contributions) and manipulate (with their media machine and targeted political advertising) the majority-is-right outcomes they desire.

• And from our nation's soul they cleansed the supreme intent of -- and supreme responsibility for -- American law: all laws must be "made in Pursuance [of]" the self-governance and public good ordained in our Constitution; statutes and regulations that license wealth-and-power to hurt self-governance and public good (there are many of them) are illegal laws that have no place in America and must be expunged by We the People who have supreme power and supreme responsibility to do so; because the Preamble is The Law that governs all law produced through the Articles and Amendments -- which means that all laws must pass self-governance, justice, unity/cooperation, common defense, general welfare, and liberty tests in order to be legal.

• Harm by terrorists, we are often told, is the most dangerous threat to be fearful of and vigilant for and protected from today. But we are NOT told how "National Security" and "Homeland Security" EXCLUDE major elements of genuine national security and genuine homeland security: blaring Red Alerts for, and crushing national-defense and homeland-defense responses to, assaults by domestic wealth-and-power and their media machine on America's democratic processes, representative governance, justice, unity/cooperation, common defense, general welfare, and liberty -- assaults that inflict collateral homeland death at the rate of more than fifty 9/11s a year (30,000 deaths/year by not enforcing air-pollution laws, 20,000 deaths/year by making healthcare unavailable to millions, 100,000 deaths/year by blocking prevention of medical mistakes, plus several thousand deaths/year from their many other assaults on self-governance and public good). The foe and their media machine rain vastly more death on America than terrorists do. Hot news they keep out of the news.

Other huge betrayals that we can also stop and reverse:

• In the 1980s the foe -- aided by reds and blues we elected and judges they installed -- removed the Federal Communications Commission's Fairness Doctrine and many public-service requirements from broadcasting, began to loosen FCC restrictions on media consolidation, and commenced to cut funding for public broadcasting and muzzle its advocacy of self-governance and public good (the extortion: PBS/NPR, veer to the right to help wealth-and-power take and hoard wealth and power and get away with it, or lose your funding from Congress). That deregulation of the media industry and assault on public broadcasting led to the decline of "public interest" and "national interest" media content, that is, to a reduction of mass-media content that fosters and protects America's democratic processes, representative governance, justice, unity/cooperation, common defense, general welfare, and liberty. It gave rise to hate radio, religious-right television, and right-slanted print/broadcast news (especially on cable news channels). It removed barriers to growth of their advertising/PR/news/entertainment, print/radio/TV/film/web "media machine": their communications consolidation for controlling-and-slanting information, deceiving-and-manipulating the public, and neutralizing citizen opposition -- their mass-media weapon, their "soft" weapon, for taking and hoarding wealth and power.

• Why do they foster hate broadcasting? To add potency and viciousness to the right's opposition-neutralizing attack machine. To help the right breed wisdom-and-humanity and good citizenship out of We the People and thus weaken America's first line of defense against the right (see Part 2, Element 2) so that the right, especially their hate-radio and cable-news celebrities, can easily manipulate and rally those legions of citizens -- whose minds and hearts they damage -- to support and assist the right. Why do they foster Christian-Right broadcasting? For the very same reason: to help American wealth-and-power take and hoard wealth and power. (The toxicity of the right's wealth/corporate/religious alliance is further explained in Part 2.)

• To help build that media machine, in the 1980s the foe influenced our universities to blend advertising and public relations and journalism into "communication" in order to teach our new generations a new kind of journalism: client-serving journalism catering mostly to American wealth-and-power, the replacement for public-serving journalism.

• That breach and weakening of our "common defence" (of self-governance and public good) took place during a major assault on our "general Welfare." Beginning around 1980, the right wing swayed state governments to reduce financial support for higher education -- arguing that higher education gives private benefit and not public benefit therefore why should taxpayers foot the bill -- which forced colleges and universities to raise prices resulting in birth and growth of the lucrative student-loan industry (a branch of the foe's giant wealth-mining system, described in Part 2, that We the People can dismantle). Simultaneously, the right influenced America's colleges and universities to morph "public education" -- education that teaches what's needed to build and secure self-governance and private/collective well-being -- into education that teaches the mindset and skills (such as "communication") needed to operate and grow the right's power-usurping and wealth-mining operations here and abroad.

• As we watch the popular Red vs. Blue Show -- how red and blue are different democratic choices, how red and blue compete against and fight each other -- behind the scenes red and blue collude to serve consolidated wealth-and-power. For example. In 1987 the Republican Party and Democratic Party co-founded the Commission on Presidential Debates, a private corporation funded by wealth-and-power donors to both parties, which operates under the guise of being a taxpayer-funded federal commission, shields red/blue candidates from hard questioning by the public, shuts out candidates from other parties, all to cement red/blue monopoly grip on power, all aided by the media machine. The Commission and media machine assure that the #1 question about the #1 issue -- "How do you plan to stop and reverse America's spiraling losses of democratic processes, representative governance, and five kinds of public good?" -- is never asked during a debate. Corporations also fund the Republican Party's and Democratic Party's national conventions through a campaign-finance loophole created by reds and blues we elected.

• In return for wealth/corporate campaign cash (transmuted into protected free speech by red/blue-installed judges) and in return for Christian-Right-bloc votes (made effective by the right's suppression of voter turnouts), today's red/blue heart in Washington DC (537 elected representatives, 0.0002% of the public, the voter-removable linchpin holding all parts of the foe together) pumps wealth and power out of the public and into the consolidated-wealth-and-power few.

• The foe's rising police-state power -- established by reds and blues we elected, operating under cover of news blackout and spin by the media machine -- is executed by federal spy and blackops agencies, federal/state/local law-enforcement agencies, and domestic-operation units of the US military. Who surveil/coerce/injure/arrest/incarcerate peaceful citizens, especially public-interest activists and independent journalists, whose protests and truth could imperil the foe's taking and hoarding of wealth and power. Who in the process of performing those duties on behalf of the foe abridge/prohibit 1] "Liberty" and "freedom of speech [and] of the press" to sound alarms about and rally resistance to the foe, 2] "the right of the people peaceably to assemble" to protest or plan against the foe, and 3] "the right of the people... to petition [today's government of, by, and for the foe] for a redress of grievances." That growing police-state machine of domestic spy/blackops/police/military forces -- their "hard" domestic weapon for taking wealth and power that's well-protected by their "soft" media-machine weapon -- acts against the public like the Crown's spies and redcoats did in 1776.

• Rather than protect and serve the public/national interest (America's self-governance and five kinds of public good) as a media should, the media machine protects and serves the red/blue monopoly and rest of the foe including itself. They use "communication" skills to cloak/distort past and present events, carry out shift-the-blame/hide-behind-good deceptions, stoke/exploit fear, deaden/misdirect outrage and cooperation, execute divide-and-conquer manipulation (using the two methods explained in Part 2), all to neutralize opposition against their clients and to help their clients take and hoard wealth and power. Like this: They block and corrupt vital information that America needs to be able to function as a "real American democracy," thus they obstruct the democratic processes and prevent the representative governance needed by We the People to achieve full public good. They help the right erase wisdom-and-humanity and good citizenship from the public and from education, thus they weaken America's first line of defense against their clients. They hide their clients' wrongs and spin them into good. They dupe well-meaning citizens by the millions, including good Christians and our rank-and-file military, to help their clients immorally/illegally take and hoard wealth and power from people here and abroad. They suppress all alerts about domestic-wealth-and-power threats to the national/homeland security of America's self-governance and five kinds of public good. Assisted by hate radio and attack ads and cable news, they single out and discredit/ridicule/pillory individuals and groups who try to voice warnings and provide solutions, and they rile up citizens by the millions to think and act as rabidly. That full "communication" service has the desired effect: It enabled their clients to easily breach the national/homeland security of America's self-governance and public good. It weakens the ability and deadens the will of "We, the People" to "provide for the common defence" against their clients. It guarantees the mounting success of their clients' domestic-and-international heists of wealth and power. Our trusted news celebrities pitch in to help.

• So. In a stunning reversal of the national/homeland security and defense function of the First Amendment, today in America there is far more freedom of speech and of the press for those who assault and wound America's self-governance and public good -- as through campaign-contribution 'free speech' and a media-machine 'free press' -- than for those who try to protect America's self-governance and public good.

• The members of the right exploit and create weaknesses -- such as by executing two forms of divide-and-conquer manipulation (explained in Part 2). They trick our defenses to attack us -- such as by misdirecting freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, the right to keep and bear arms, and even our police and military and Homeland Security to help them take wealth and power from us. They evolve virulence -- such as by passing/enforcing more and more wealth-and-power-friendly laws and regulations, by installing more and more wealth-and-power-friendly court judges, by consolidating wealth-and-power-friendly media into a more-and-more-powerful weapon against the public, by breeding a more-and-more-rabid attack machine to destroy the ability and will of We the People to stop them. Those are examples of how the right wing -- the wealth-and-power disease -- exploits and creates weaknesses, tricks our defenses to attack us, and evolves virulence, all like a microbial disease.

• They strike from behind God-and-Country shields -- Bible, Ten Commandments, Cross, Family Values, Community Values, Moral Values, National Security, Homeland Security, Support Our Troops, Declaration of Independence, Constitution, Bill of Rights, Democracy, Freedom, Flag -- that protect them well.

• Deception is a weapon used against an enemy, against prey. The right's domestic enemy? Real American democracy. The right's domestic prey? We the People and our posterity.

• The right's assaults on our self-governance and public good are allowed by red/blue-installed federal judges, including justices of the Supreme Court.

• The assaults are aided by the Christian Right (a tenth of the public but a fourth of all voters) whose one-and-half-century-old unChristian form of Christianity guides them to seek the demise of America's self-governance and public good (as explained in Part 2).

• As a result of those and other subversions of our democratic processes and representative governance and common defense (of self-governance and the whole public good) -- multiple treasons that morphed "real American democracy" into "rigged market-based democracy" -- no matter who we vote for today the foe wins and America loses more self-governance and more public good. More so when we elect reds. Less so when we elect blues.

• Even the 'reforms' put into effect by reds/blues we elect and judges they select -- such as campaign-finance 'reform,' and political-advertising 'reform,' financial-industry 'reform,' healthcare 'reform' -- license the right to heist MORE of our wealth and power.

Unlike in 1776, today's foe is disguised as friend and is winning big with feeble resistance from the well-armed public they are busily taking wealth and power from.

Part 2: We the People's surefire full solution

Deploy and wield a potent democracy weapon/tool, CivicPowerUSA.org, to achieve Total Real Change. During which We the People defend, restore, grow, and secure America's self-governance and five kinds of public good all under assault since 1980 by consolidated American wealth-and-power and their media machine. This essay introduces the weapon/tool.

The surefire full solution to America's huge treasonous problem -- contained in the weapon/tool -- comes from our primal urges for justice, ancient survival wisdom, early American history, Declaration of Independence, US Constitution, and Bill of Rights. That is, the four-element plan and political strategies explained in CivicPowerUSA.org and summarized herein come from millions of people over the millennia, even from our DNA, not from this one concerned citizen.

A broad-based national civic-action congress of concerned citizens and groups created by We the People during Element 1 (see below) -- and the congress' likely spinoff, a new political party who during Element 4 (see below) could easily trounce the two major parties betraying America -- can forge and hone the weapon/tool (including this essay) into full strength and sharpness and put it to winning use.

Do it to achieve Total Real Change:

1. Defend against and neutralize the right wing (10% of the public) -- consolidated American wealth-and-power, aided by their media machine, who flared up around 1980 and are surging in strength -- who breached the national/homeland security of our self-governance and public good, who weaken our national/homeland defense of self-governance and public good, who take five kinds of well-being wealth and supreme self-governance power from conservatives and liberals (90% of the public), who thus prove themselves to be a domestic form of the consolidated-wealth-and-power enemy waging war on self-governance and public good described and indicted in our Declaration of Independence.

2. Restore, grow, and secure the self-governance power and well-being wealth the domestic enemy usurped: America's democratic processes, representative governance, justice, unity/cooperation, common defense, general welfare, and liberty.

Citizens would gain the amount now being taken from them by the foe, an average of at least $10,000 per adult a year (a total of more than $2 trillion annually). Collateral damage from the foe's unbridled taking and hoarding of wealth and power, homeland death at the rate of more than fifty 9/11s a year (more than 150,000 deaths annually), would cease. Those and the many other benefits -- when employed as hot selling points by the national civic-action congress and new political party -- would incite the public to yank out the foe's linchpin and replace the corrupt heart in Washington DC with a principled one: 537 representatives devoted to achieving the above Total Real Change.

How well-armed are we -- with supreme law and supreme power and other potent strengths -- to carry out this long-overdue major maintenance and tune-up of our republic? Study CivicPowerUSA.org.

Yes we can stop and reverse the foe's betrayals, and again have a public trust the public can trust.

Yes we can change our "theocratic plutocratic kakistocracy taking wealth and power from the public" that began to flare up around 1980, back into the "secular republic producing bountiful public good" founded in 1787.

("Kakistocracy": government by the least qualified or most unprincipled citizens; government by the worst. "Republic": a government or state in which supreme power lies in citizens who elect principled representatives truly responsible to them. See why the foe and their media machine cleansed that basic civic understanding from our public education and public mind?)

We can even remove the foe's judges from the Supreme Court and replace them with principled judges. Our Constitution instructs how because the Framers foresaw the possible need.

During Element 1 of the four-element plan, concerned citizens and groups wake up to the peril within and gather in national/homeland defense -- and create a broad-based national civic-action congress to unite and build and direct citizen forces to fight the foe (as the Continental Congress did during the American Revolution). As part of that patriotic effort the congress would:

• Issue a Red Alert to warn America about the foe (a modern version of Paul Revere's ride).

• Organize the foe's offenses into key categories: 1] How they harm our self-governance (democratic processes, representative governance). 2] How they harm our five kinds of public good (equal justice for all, domestic tranquility needed for unity and cooperation toward self-governance and public good, common defense of self-governance and public good including full national/homeland security of self-governance and public good, general welfare especially its social/economic/health/safety benefits, liberty and its privacies and freedoms. 3] How they switched allegiance and betray us (how they switched from protecting and serving the America defined by our Three Charters of Freedom to protecting and serving a domestic form of the consolidated wealth-and-power that triggered the American Revolution, how they breached the national/homeland security and weaken the "common defence" of America's self-governance and public good in order to take and hoard our wealth and our power, how they rigged our democracy so that wealth-and-power always wins and We the People always lose).

• State precisely how the foe and their media machine violate our Constitution's Preamble and Articles and Amendments in technicality and spirit (why not begin with the examples in this essay and elsewhere in CivicPowerUSA.org).

• List those violations of law, all those treasons, in a declaration of independence from the foe (why not model it after our Declaration of Independence, our first declaration of change, and call it a "Declaration of Total Real Change"). Use it -- like our Declaration of Independence was used -- to rally We the People to fight and neutralize the foe and reverse the harm they inflict on our self governance and public good won during the American Revolution, ordained in our Constitution, and produced by citizens during America's first two centuries.

The conservative/liberal civic-action congress would likely spin off a new political party: a party devoted to protecting and serving America and its citizens, a party with wide and strong voter appeal. During Element 4 (see below) such a party could easily trounce the two major parties betraying America (the red/blue parties currently protecting and serving the foe), and then spurred on and assisted by We the People carry out the Total Real Change promised in the new declaration of independence.

(While exercising provide-for-the-common-defense free speech during Elements 1 and 4, expose THESE offenses to every citizen in America: How during the past thirty years the foe grew America's incarceration rate to be the world's highest and five times higher than the international average [1% of the American public is behind bars, 25% of the world's entire incarcerated population!]; how the foe profits from it [including by privatizing prisons and bribing judges to send offenders there]; how it's unequal and unjust [most of our jailed/imprisoned citizens are poor and powerless and committed minor offenses while those who steal and kill the most, America's wealthy-and-powerful offenders, get off scot-free]; how it violates "establish Justice." How the foe's mass mining of public and private financial wealth [see below] violates "establish Justice" and "promote the general Welfare." How the collateral homeland death of tens of thousands of citizens a year, inflicted by the foe during their unbridled pursuit of wealth-and-power happiness, violates "establish Justice" and "promote the general Welfare." How the foe's war on Iraq, a decade-premeditated armed heist of wealth and power gone bad, violates the Geneva Conventions and Nuremberg Charter and UN Charter and thus violates Article 6 and the US War Crimes Act. How their planning/preparation/execution of torture violates at least the Geneva Conventions and thus violates Article 6 and the US War Crimes Act. How the foe's media machine is a treasonous accomplice. And so on.)

During Element 2 -- a long-term project to rebuild America's first line of defense against domestic-wealth-and-power threats to our self-governance and public good, that is, to again have a vigilant civic-minded clear-thinking American public -- we as a nation restore to public education, that is, to our schools and all other institutions that teach and influence our young, two vital areas of public instruction cleansed by the foe and their media machine during the last quarter of the 20th century: 1] Instill respect for others, personal/social responsibility, cooperation toward the common good, ability to perceive accurately and think critically (in the 1970s those teaching/learning goals were listed on our daughters' public-elementary-school report cards) -- that is, infuse into our young the core social/emotional/cognitive early human development necessary for adult maturity, good citizenship, and wise-and-humane leadership -- to sow capacity to fathom our Three Charters of Freedom as well as ability and desire to build and secure principled self-governance and bountiful public good. 2] Teach Civics 101 including the bare-basic wisdom, history, moral/legal principles, and citizen responsibilities contained in this essay. The foe and their media machine are busily breeding that vital wisdom-and-humanity and good citizenship out of the America. Element 2 would stop and reverse it.

During Element 3, through the national civic-action congress that We the People establish during Element 1, we ask the White House and Congress and Judiciary and red/blue parties and mass media to switch allegiance -- from serving their wealth-and-power clients back to serving America and We the People and our posterity -- and to carry out Total Real Change including all the reforms below. Hopefully they won't balk at becoming a public trust the public can trust.

During Element 4, through the new political party We the People elect into power to carry out Total Real Change should Element 3 fail, we enact and enforce vital reforms:

• Judicial reforms -- to build a public-serving Judiciary to complement the public-serving Presidency and Congress we elect into power. It would include removing right-wing judges from the Supreme Court, our Constitution tells how, and then appointing conservative/liberal judges who would foster and protect America's democratic processes and representative governance and all five kinds of public good.

• Corporate reforms -- to eliminate "corporate personhood" (which has never had a valid legal basis anyway) so that "corporations" are no longer "citizens"; to reinstate early-American "corporate publichood" (corporations exist to serve the public and are forbidden to hurt the public); to regulate corporations so they always serve and never hurt America's self-governance and public good (which would help corporations earn more money AND not shoot themselves in the foot). Today, corporations hold power over citizens (like before the American Revolution). After reforms, citizens would have power over corporations (like after the American Revolution: Colonial Americans didn't like how their taxes collected by the Crown subsidized the monopolistic British corporations screwing them, so they revolted and ended those unjust practices).

• Monetary-system, taxation, fiscal, subsidy, privatization, and regulatory reforms -- to halt the $2-trillion-a-year (a low estimate) transfer of wealth from the poor and middle-class, from our federal treasury and national resources and public infrastructure, from our posterity, to corporations and the wealthy through the giant wealth-mining system the red/blue White House and Congress set up and run for their clients with approval from the Judiciary they installed. Some of their financial treasons, followed by how to stop them with reforms:

  • More and more consolidation/monopolism of financial corporations, rising pressure on citizens and businesses to stop forming capital needed for purchasing/saving/investing and to instead borrow and go heavily into long-term debt, growing need to pass off "too big to fail" financial-industry losses onto the public -- all stemming from the Federal Reserve System, its network of credit dealers, and the red/blue-appointed financial-industry insiders who operate the Fed and its credit-dealer network. The Fed creates money out of nothing, loans it out at low interest to credit dealers -- banks and other lending corporations including student-loan, home-mortgage, credit-card, and payday-loan firms -- who then loan it out to the public and earn vast interest/fee/penalty profits from that money created out of nothing. The Fed and its dealers lure and addict the public to live on credit and pay huge sums of interest/fee/penalty money to dealers. The Fed creates the supply, the credit industry deals it, they collude to keep street prices up and dealer profits high. For a typical citizen or business hooked on credit products today, their interest/fee/penalty payments to their credit dealers eat up a sizeable portion of their income. That extraction of wealth by the credit industry may exceed the total federal/state/local taxes they pay. Which impairs their ability to purchase goods and services or save for emergencies or invest. Which endangers their well-being and America's economy. (The US-based World Bank and IMF, who loan to nations, operate with similar method and purpose and do similar harm.)

  • More and more regressive taxation forcing those at the middle and bottom to pay higher and higher federal/state/local taxes as a percentage of their income and assets, enabling those at the top to escape paying their fair share of the federal/state/local cost of operating America's self-governance and public good. Today, many large corporations and wealthy citizens pay hardly any IRS taxes at all -- and some even receive money from the IRS -- because of the tax cuts, loopholes, shelters, relaxed accounting rules, and other forms of legal tax cheating created just for them by the red/blue White House and Congress we elected.

  • More and more federal deficit spending to avoid raising taxes and to enable reducing taxes to finance the upward transfer of wealth, burdening our posterity to pay for the bulk of today's welfare for corporations and the well-off.

  • More and more federal spending on subsidies, bailouts, and other gifts for the wealth/corporate right (the gifts include the lavish retirement benefits Congress granted itself and wrote law to keep secret). More and more federal spending on the expanding network of US military bases and US embassies abroad and on the foe's escalating dominate-and-plunder operations being executed from those bases and embassies. More and more federal payouts to the military and security industries for their products and services including a huge privatized shadow military. More and more federal spending to buy religious-right support for the wealth/corporate right, including federal expenditures that produce more war and blowback and fear and more human suffering all of which boost the Christian Right's "rapture index" marking nearness to the "end times" they yearn for. Within the wealth/corporate/religious alliance the symbiotic cooperation and mutual benefits work like this: the more war/blowback/fear and human suffering here and abroad caused by the wealth/corporate right, the more money to be made off taxpayers by the wealth/corporate right under the guise of keeping America safe and serving the national interest and doing good abroad, the more religious-right support for and political payment from the wealth/corporate right (as explained seven paragraphs below), and the easier to manipulate the public to consent to and serve and die for the wealth/corporate/religious right. Results? Total federal spending is skyrocketing. The size of our federal government, including all privatized/contracted/subcontracted services and personnel including foreign laborers and foreign mercenaries, is rapidly expanding. Concurrent with less and less federal spending to maintain and protect America's self-governance and five kinds of public good; the right calls it "starving government" to "shrink government" to have "small government" which they claim is good for America. All of it is financed by regressive taxation and deficit spending. Forcing present and future taxpayers to fund the foe more and more and America less and less. The bottom line? America's federal government is fast becoming a citizen-financed, posterity-financed enterprise for enriching and serving the right -- the right's dream come true.

  • More and more corporate privatization of public assets, public functions, and public services into for-profit enterprises -- hospitals/healthcare, schools/education, water supplies, energy utilities, roads, bridges, seaports, airports, prisons, the military, and more -- causing costs for citizens to rise. Two examples. 1] Privatized healthcare, for many Americans today, is far more expensive than food and taxes combined. 2] Privatized K-12 public education, targeted by the right to become a lucrative growth industry like their health-insurance and consumer-credit and student-loan and incarceration industries (how are they doing it? federal education laws including No Child Left Behind are forcing "public" public education to fail so that "corporate" public education can take over), forces America to pay a dangerous high social cost in addition to the higher monetary cost: in return for paying more money for privatized K-12 education (for income to charter-school CEOs, profits to stockholders, expensive corporate designed/supplied/graded student tests [a growing sub-industry], and so on) America receives a deeper breach of national/homeland security and a further-weakened first line of national/homeland defense in the form of wealth-and-power-controlled corporate-run education that DOESN'T teach the foundations of good citizenship -- capacity for respect, responsibility, cooperation, and clear/sharp cognition together with deep understanding of Civics 101 -- but DOES teach our new generations to think and act in lockstep with wealth-and-power 24/7 and blindly participate in "rigged market-based democracy" that hands control to and enriches wealth-and-power and drains self-governance and public good from America.

  • More and more corporate gouging of the public. Think Enron, securities/investment scams, reneging insurance companies, predatory lending of several kinds, exorbitant banking fees, escalating healthcare prices, and so on. All due to federal tolerance/unenforcement and de facto legalization of white-collar crime including fraud, federal approval of public-trust corruption including campaign-contribution bribery and members of the public trust becoming insider lobbyists for the foe, federal deregulation of corporations especially the entire financial industry, federal obstructions to legal recourse by victims to seek fair reparation, federal denial of bankruptcy protection for victims, federal blocking of consumer protection by states, and so on.

  • How to stop those 'trickle-down' 'free-market' practices? (Note: There is no trickle-down; they hoard it. There is no free market; they rig it.) How to end that two-trillion-dollars-a-year Reverse Robin Hooding of America? How to halt that mass mining of public and private wealth by the wealth-and-power few?

    • Reform the Fed and its credit-dealer network to serve the public instead of Wall Street; to begin, sharply cut the loan interest/fees/penalties that credit dealers can charge citizens, or perhaps better yet, replace our greed-driven credit system with a fair and efficient non-profit credit system owned and operated by the public.

    • Establish fair taxation; to begin, extend the Social-Security/Medicare/Self-Employment tax to all forms of income including investment and corporate income plus eliminate the income cap to make the well-off pay that full flat tax like the poor and middle-class do (this simple and fair reform, from a "payroll tax on workers and entrepreneurs" to a "flat income tax for all," would fortify Social Security AND generously fund universal healthcare), raise the effective IRS tax rate on high-income individuals and corporations way back up to the fair levels America had decades ago, and temporarily tax the assets of all well-off beneficiaries of the wealth-mining system to quickly pay off the entire national debt as Donald Trump proposed in 2000.

    • Minimize deficit spending; to begin, execute the five other wealth-mining reforms to reduce the very need for deficit spending.

    • Eliminate all welfare for the well-off; to begin, end all subsidies and tax relief to unneedy corporations starting with the agri/petro/pharma giants.

    • Roll back privatization; to begin, replace our unfair greed-driven healthcare system with a humanity-driven universal healthcare system to produce a healthier public at far less cost like other nations do (the Social-Security/Medicare/Self-Employment tax reform mentioned above would lavishly fund it).

    • Regulate and monitor corporations; to begin, as an emergency measure and in concert with Fed reform immediately rein in the entire financial industry by undoing all of its deregulation undertaken since the American Bicentennial, when the foe began building their wealth-mining system.

    • Carry out those six Real Changes to stop the foe from greedily draining financial lifeblood out of the public, that is, to end the right's mass destruction of purchasing/saving/investing power that citizens and businesses need for well-being and America needs for a healthy economy.

• Political-influence reforms -- media, lobbying, and campaign-finance reforms -- to accomplish these items of Real Change: The media would no longer assist the foe's heists of wealth and power, would no longer pillory citizens who oppose the heists, and would again protect and serve the seven major public/national interests ordained in our Constitution. Members of the public trust would be banned from ever becoming insider lobbyists, or any other form of insider hired gun, for domestic or foreign wealth-and-power. A $50-per-taxpayer annual IRS tax to lavishly fund all national elections would on the average save every IRS taxpayer at least $10,000 a year by eliminating campaign contributions and the unjust taking of wealth and power they buy, a 200:1 return on investment (which would put an end to the current practice: for every $1 they spend on campaign contributions, American wealth-and-power earns about $500 from the White House and Congress who extract it from present and future taxpayers).

• All the above reforms -- together with others including political-advertising reform (to end vicious and dishonest candidate/issue campaigning AND limit political advertising by corporations), voting-process reform (to end the several forms of election rigging ranging from thwarting voting to hacking the vote), and education reform (to revive teaching of wisdom-and-humanity and good citizenship, see Element 2 above, and to remove teaching of the mindset and skills that hurt self-governance and public good) -- are necessary for America to again have "real American democracy": principled self-governance AND the bountiful public good that principled self-governance delivers.

The Framers understood and feared humankind's ancient political disease -- wealth-and-power consolidates, inflicts harm on the public, which ignites the public to revolt and restore fairness -- and took measures to prevent the wealth-and-power disease from ever flaring up inside America. They created multiple supreme-law defenses against the disease, a kernel national/homeland security system to eternally ward off and suppress the disease: Democratic processes and representative governance to keep the disease in check and safely dormant. "[I]nsure domestic Tranquility" to maintain an undivided, undivisive We the People able and willing to unite and cooperate to fight the disease. "[P]rovide for the common defence" against the disease. "[N]o religious Test[s]" to prevent religion in public servants and in other members of the public trust from feeding the disease. Trial by jury as a direct citizen check against unjust arrest/prosecution, unjust courts, and unjust laws spawned by the disease (juries have supreme power, and supreme responsibility, to nullify bad laws -- laws NOT "made in Pursuance [of]" our Constitution -- such as laws that favor wealth-and-power at the expense of self-governance or any form of public good). Separation of powers, and separation of church and state, to prevent separate components of wealth-and-power from consolidating and growing into the disease. Freedom of speech, and freedom of the press, to sound homeland-defense alarms about outbreaks of the disease and to rally citizens to fight the disease. Surely our experts in Constitutional law can cite other founding inoculations against the wealth-and-power disease. The Framers wired all those safeguards into our 1787 Constitution and 1791 Bill of Rights. Beginning around 1980, the right wing and their media machine powered down the entire security system. We can switch it back on to deconsolidate and neutralize the foe.

Use the religion of the Framers, traditional mainstream Christianity, for the purpose of national/homeland security and defense of our self-governance and public good. Like this: The Christian Right ---- whose pessimistic, aggressive, inhumane, unChristlike brand of Christianity emerged a century after 1776 and therefore was not the optimistic, humane, Christlike religion of America's founders; who were enlisted and given political power in the 1980s by the wealth/corporate right to help the wealth/corporate right take wealth and power here and abroad; who as a reward for that support are allowed to and receive funding to infiltrate their religion into our self-governance and public good including our law, justice, education, healthcare, liberty, and military; who pressure the wealth/corporate right to produce and fuel conflict and suffering here and abroad, especially to wage/aid war in the Middle East, so as to boost the "rapture index" and fast-track the "end of days" they see prophesied in the Bible; who condone spending taxpayer money, violating our Constitution, sacrificing our troops, enriching the wealthy, hurting the poor, and burdening our posterity to carry out that piety; who in symbiotic cooperation with the wealth/corporate right assault separation of church and state and our self-governance and five kinds of public good as they strive for their religious goals of 1] divine rule of America in accordance with their literal interpretation of the Bible through leaders chosen by their unjust version of God and 2] speedy arrival of "end times" which they have faith as part of ending the world will end America and We the People and our posterity; who provide "born again" redemption services for immoral and lawless members of the wealth/corporate right to grant them escape from responsibility and to luster their images; who aid and abet today's domestic strain of the same wealth-and-power disease that killed Jesus (who paid the price for in essence teaching against the evils of consolidated wealth-and-power); who assisted by the media machine hide their immoral/illegal acts and ultra-inhumane hopes and hunger for power over others behind masks of "conservatism," "patriotism," "values," and "evangelical Christianity" (this writer was an evangelical-Christian alter boy); whose ACTUAL bedrock/family/community/heartland/moral/Christian/American values are thus hugely at odds with the principled-self-governance and bountiful-public-good values ordained in our Constitution and symbolized by our Flag; who are thus deeply and dangerously unChristian and unAmerican ---- can be exposed, censured, and overpowered by conservative and liberal mainstream Christians who outnumber them by six to one. After 200 million mainstream-Christian voters flood to the polls (during Element 4) to help America elect a principled heart into Washington DC and neutralize the 0.5-million-strong wealth/corporate right, the power of and harm by the 30-million-strong Christian Right dies also.

For example. Early America and its Christianity, a humane Christianity, respected the liberty of women to prevent conception and to terminate pregnancy before quickening (before the fetus can be felt to move), so much so that advice on how to induce miscarriage appeared in church newsletters. Today, in a resurgence of the late-1800s campaign against women's reproductive rights, the Christian Right and their wealth/corporate-right supporters are attacking that founding American liberty. Today, true Christians en masse can help stop that assault by "free[ly] exercis[ing]" their humane religion in accordance with the First Amendment to "secure the Blessings of Liberty" in accordance with the Preamble.

(The rightist religious doctrine that life begins at conception originated in the mid 1800s, soon after science discovered egg-sperm fusion. Since then, science has discovered that 25% to 75% [an average of 50%] of all zygotes/embryos/fetuses naturally abort, the rate largely dependent on the ages of the female and male conception partners. If that 19th-century religious doctrine becomes federal law -- which the Christian Right is striving for during their campaign to merge church with state -- then of course conception certificates equal in legal weight to normal birth certificates, and pre-birth death certificates equal in legal weight to normal death certificates, would have to be issued. Conception certificates would be issued at a rate two times higher than for birth certificates. Pre-birth death certificates would be issued at the same rate as birth certificates. America's official death rate -- death rate of the unborn plus death rate of the born -- would suddenly double to become twice the official birth rate. And cause America to be a laughingstock. Obviously the Christian Right has yet to think Pro Life through.)

Use the Preamble -- together with the Second Amendment -- for their intended team purpose of national/homeland security and defense of America's self-governance and whole public good. In response to a modern Paul Revere Ride launched by the national civic-action congress to warn America about the foe and to rally citizens to "provide for the common defence" against the foe, today's Minutemen who "keep and bear Arms" -- who were intended by the Second Amendment to be "A well regulated Militia... necessary to the security of a free State," but for years have been tricked by the foe to help the foe take and hoard wealth and power and in the process hurt their country and themselves and their families and futures in seven major ways (by helping the foe to harm America's democratic processes, representative governance, equal justice for all, unity/cooperation toward self-governance and public good, common defense of self-governance and public good, general welfare of many kinds especially economic security, liberty and its privacies and freedoms) -- would suddenly see the light, want justice, and en masse aim and fire their millions of symbolic flintlocks at the treasonous American enemy.

And ask our troops -- and our veterans -- to fully fulfill their solemn oath to "defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic."

Secret of success? We must unchain ourselves from the right's two forms of divide-and-conquer manipulation enslaving us: 1] They orchestrate us to focus on and chase single-issue bits and pieces of their wrongdoing (such as the fleeting hot issues of the moment) in order to prevent us from seeing and solving the whole problem as successfully as America's founders did (consolidated wealth-and-power is assaulting self-governance and public good so unite and cooperate to stop it). 2] They fracture the general public and the public interest into myriad self-interests and foment those divisions to compete and clash such as by pitting conservatives against liberals; during those softening-up assaults they insure domestic discord (in violation of "insure domestic Tranquility") which cripples our ability to cooperate, prevents a united state of America, and assures Divided We Fall. They apply those two basic divide-and-conquer tricks -- fragment the problem, fragment the public -- so very effectively that when we fight the right we help the right to achieve Divided We Fall. They divide the massive civic power of We the People into tiny, competitive, divisive, impotent fragments of power so that each and every packet of effort toward a particle of Real Change can be assailed and crushed easily.

So. Let's tap into our wellspring of civic power -- our primal urges for justice, ancient survival wisdom, early American history, Declaration of Independence, US Constitution, and Bill of Rights -- to build United We Stand against that divide-and-conquer treason.

270 million of us against the wealth/corporate-right and religious-right 30 million of them (10:1). 270 million of us against the wealth/corporate-right 0.5 million of them who enlisted and empowered the religious right (500:1). 270 million of us against the 537-member red/blue Washington DC linchpin that holds the entire wealth/corporate/religious right wing together (500,000:1). See the civic power of United We Stand?

Commence the ancient way. Unleash survival emotion and survival behavior embedded in our DNA -- moral outrage against unfairness and unity/cooperation to stop the unfairness -- the very "native justice" our Declaration of Independence speaks of, the same natural civic power fired at the enemy of 1776, the same innate political force for Total Real Change a national civic-action congress and new political party could direct at the foe. See why "establish Justice," and "insure domestic Tranquility" necessary for unity and cooperation, became America's #1 and #2 common-good goals?

To initiate Element 1, circulate this essay to all conservative and liberal concerned citizens and groups nationwide:

• Do it to spark the concerned public to connect the dots of current events and history into the clear big picture the foe doesn't want anyone to see: America's self-governance and five kinds of public good are under mounting assault by consolidated American wealth-and-power and their media machine and rising police-state machine, a worse form of the enemy of 1776.

• Do it to rouse all segments of the public -- being splintered and polarized by the foe, being harmed in seven major ways by the foe -- to start talking with each other, to begin uniting and cooperating and organizing to "provide for the common defence" against the foe.

• Do it to begin the process of creating the national civic-action congress -- who would warn America about the foe, draft a declaration of independence from the foe, unite and build and direct citizen forces to fight the foe, and spin off the new political party to neutralize the foe and reverse the immense harm the foe inflicted.

• Do it to alert and rally America to mobilize and carry out Total Real Change: From "government of/by/for wealth-and-power" back to "government of/by/for We the People." From "rigged market-based democracy" back to "real American democracy." From "kakistocracy" back to "republic." From "America has a public trust that betrays the public" back to "America has a public trust the public can trust." From "wealth-and-power, capitalism, and the media rule and plunder America and deceive/manipulate We the People to assist" back to "We the People build and secure America's self-governance and public good and shepherd/regulate wealth-and-power, capitalism, and the media to help."

Do it soon. Before the right wing and their media machine completely destroy the ability and will of We the People to stop them.