In an age of resurgent white nationalism, shrunken national monuments, blatant lies on everything from inauguration crowd sizes to severity of tax cuts to the physical beauty of a border wall, habitual sexual harassers being exposed left and right, reckless tweets from our own President, and a general political atmosphere based on simple answers to complex issues, perhaps nothing is sacred. Maybe we shouldn’t expect anything to be off limits or too ridiculous for Trump and his kind, but we should never accept this as normal or okay.
Corporate and special interest money has been swelling the coffers of politicians for decades, yet has become more dramatic in light of some rather recent Supreme Court Decisions. Notably with the Citizens United case in 2010, politics has become ever more influenced by those most willing and able to fund the machine. Scores of competing billionaires, millionaires, corporations, lobbyists representing dozens of industries, unions and political action committees all jockey for position and influence, very often at the expense of the average voter.
There are times our interest overlaps with those of the wealthy and elite, but we are nearly never the reason why things go our way in politics. The best we can do is form powerful lobbies, like the NRA, wether you agree with it or not, to speak on our behalf. Aside from these single-issue organizations, the nation and economy is increasingly run by and in the name of those paying for it. We are not yet a tyrannical oligarchy like Russia, or a single-party dictatorship like China, but our crony capitalists are running most of the show.
We’ve faced situations like this in the past, notably in the Gilded Age of the late 1800s, and we’ve emerged stronger, freer, and more prosperous every single time. But freedom and prosperity truly are not free. Our government is meant to be a tool of the people, a body through which our collective will can be shown. It was developed with plenty of checks and balances in the system to prevent both rule by whim of the masses, and rule by powerful yet corrupt individuals.
What our Founders could not have easily imagined, however, is how America would look today. Industrialization, automation, information technology, mass transit, dozens of multinational corporate juggernauts, the world has changed drastically since the creation of our country. Just as the branches of government provide checks and balances on each other, unions and the government represent the people when dealing with business.
We should absolutely support business, especially small and startup companies, they’re the backbone of our country, and keeping the market as free as possible has proven to be the greatest source of wealth creation and innovation. The unfortunate reality is, however, in areas where expensive infrastructure is needed, such as electricity, cell phone service and emergency medical services, there are often few options around a specific area. For example, where I live, there is no competition to Comcast in providing cable internet access, and if someone in my family suddenly had a heart attack or stroke, there are only two hospitals I can take them to.
This leads to effective strangleholds on various markets, with one or only a few companies providing a service. This allows for huge artificial manipulation of the price and quality of service, and we have seen this reality time and time again. Simply put, the free market does not work on behalf of the People in such circumstances. Yet, the government can intervene to represent our will. It can be the guaranteer of a free market and prohibit crony capitalism. Our government has done so in the past, and in the most successfully run countries on the planet, they do quite often.
This leads us back to the internet and net neutrality. The regulations put in place back in 2015 ensured a free, open and equal-access internet service for everyone. It is arguably the purest example of the government being used on behalf of the People to ensure a free market. There were dozens of utility exemptions given to the industry, from the government declining to set price limits or speed requirements to emergency medical services being allowed traffic priority. Nonetheless, it wasn’t enough. The large internet service providers want as much control over their market as possible, at the expense of the rest of us, and Ajit Pai and his FCC just handed it to them.
It is well past time for America to collectively wake up, to realize the Left versus Right political rivalry is much more showmanship displayed by a sensationalist media than reality, and it is in fact time for us to reclaim our say in matters of state, to reassert our voice in our government, to demand our Voice truly represents us again.
Every politician wants you to believe they are the one who will stand up for you and your interests, but until we curtail the influence of big money in politics and eliminate the ability of politicians to choose their voters through gerrymandering, a free internet is but one of many losses we’ll continue to sustain. It’s time to collectively grab our government by the balls and remind it who our representatives serve. We dictate the course of this nation, every vote counts if you make it, we are the masters of our collective destiny, and it’s about damn we start acting like it.
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