It is nearly a certainty that throughout history, every human being on Earth that ever lived, or is alive today, has experienced a feeling of being upset or annoyed, especially because of their inability to change or achieve something. The way people deal with frustration depends entirely on their mental state where a person who is out of touch with reality and pushed to the brink may grab a firearm and start shooting, a mentally-balanced person who believes their government is not attending to their needs may write a letter to their congressional representative or sign a petition.
Since teabaggers and Fox News seized control of the Republican Party directly after the 2010 elections, there has been a preponderance of petitions decrying everything from the Christian right’s attacks on women and gays to the Supreme Court’s unwavering devotion to corporations and Catholic dogmata. It is true that Americans opposed to losing their democracy to religious and corporate fascism are rightly frustrated, but it is just as frustrating that any American is under the delusion that signing a petition is ever going to achieve or change anything, or prevent America’s slide into a corporate theocracy.
There is an inconvenient truth Americans are going to have to come to grips with even though it is painful; no amount of signatures on a petition equals one vote at the ballot box, one vote in either house of Congress, or will overturn a Supreme Court decision. One wants desperately to believe that Americans understand the gravity of the Supreme Court setting a precedent that, in effect, can abolish legally passed laws and eliminate long-standing protections in the United States Constitution, but sadly that is not the case. If the American people were aware that only through their votes could they affect change, it is possible that a close vote in 2000 would not have given the Supreme Court the opportunity to appoint George W Bush as president who followed his father’s footsteps and installed two hardline religious corporatists on the High Court.
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What Americans now hopefully understand is that what corporations, Wall Street, and the religious right want is how Republicans legislate and how the conservative Court will rule. For example, there were campaign finance laws on the books that the Koch brothers did not want. So they marshaled assistance from Mitch McConnell, Citizens United, and Supreme Court Justices Scalia and Thomas to give corporations personhood and free speech rights. Justifiably enraged, Democrats and those on the left began a campaign to “overturn Citizens United” replete with several petitions, appeals for donations, and no awareness that only a Constitutional amendment can overturn Citizens United; an amendment that will never get out of the Senate or garner enough state support to pass. Then, the Kochs did not like donation limits in the same campaign finance law and through McCutcheon appealed to the conservative court that promptly abolished limits they did not want.
Directly after the High Court redefined the Free Exercise Clause to abolish the Establishment Clause in the Hobby Lobby decision, women’s advocates and Democrats immediately took steps to reverse the contraception part of the ruling to protect women’s reproductive health. The religious right did not want the contraceptive part overturned and Senate Republicans dutifully gave them what they demanded and blocked the attempt to “reverse Hobby Lobby.” The bill was doomed from the start because even if there were 80 Democrats in the Senate, the bill had no chance of even coming up for a vote in the House of religious right, much less pass.
For years the religious right opposed the Constitution’s Establishment Clause by insisting that Christians owned the exclusive right offer prayers before government meetings, and because they wanted the Clause abolished from the nation’s founding document, a week prior to Hobby Lobby the High Court ruled it is now Constitutional for Christian-only prayers at government meetings. Within a couple of weeks, a man applied to give an opening prayer at a city council meeting and when he was denied because his application showed he was not a Christian, the man went ballistic and said it was unconstitutional. City leaders wagged their fingers at the man and informed him that according to the Supreme Court, it was Constitutional to establish a Christian-only prayer statute and that he was patently wrong.
This week the White House and Democrats are attempting to halt American corporations from moving their corporate address out of country to avoid paying taxes, and because corporations want taxes cut drastically or they will leave America, Republicans gave the President and Democrats two options straight out of the Koch-corporate playbook; cut corporate taxes or they will change their addresses and pay no taxes whatsoever. The American people overwhelmingly believe corporations must pay their fair share in taxes because they use taxpayer-funded infrastructure, law enforcement, and fire protection among many other services, but because corporations do not want to pay, Republicans will see to it they do not have to.
After the Sandy Hook school massacre resulted in the deaths of 20 small children and 6 of their teachers, the public overwhelmingly, by over 90%, agreed with the President that minimally, there should be universal background checks for gun purchases. The NRA said no and Republicans dutifully blocked what even most NRA members believed was a sane gun safety law. These, and myriad other, examples should inform the American people that this country is bound to the Christian and corporate prerogative and although it is woefully late to affect the conservative Court from dismantling the Constitution, their only recourse is at the ballot box; not signing petitions, organizing protests, or sending angry letters to Republicans in Congress.
Americans have to come to their senses and face a fundamental, and very painful fact; because the Supreme Court and Republicans serve the religious right and corporations, it does not matter one iota what the people want. They can gnash their teeth, sign petitions, and bemoan the fascist elimination of their democracy until the proverbial cows come home, but nothing is going to change and it is all down to not voting; particularly during the 2010 midterm elections. It has gotten to the point that even when Democrats do turnout to vote, Republicans in service to the real leaders in America, the religious right, Wall Street, and Koch-corporate fascists, oppose their chosen representatives as evidenced by obstructing anything President Obama supports. The American people twice elected Barack Obama to lead the nation, but because Republicans do not want him as President, they spent the past five years bringing governance to a veritable standstill and it is due to being inexorably bound to the Christian and corporate prerogative.
In the leadup to elections, there is a mantra espoused ad nauseum that “elections have consequences.” One never hears that petitions have consequences for one simple reason; they do not. It is true that turning out en masse to evict Republicans from Congress will affect change for near future, but those Supreme Court rulings giving the religious right and corporations control over Americans’ lives are here to stay. One imagines a different America if more Democrats turned out to vote in the 2000 general election that would have prevented embroiling Americans in two unfunded and unnecessary wars of aggression, and prevented an out-of-control banking industry from nearly destroying the world’s economy. A few thousand more votes would also have prevented a conservative Supreme Court majority from abolishing the Establishment Clause, voting rights laws, campaign finance laws, and the right to class action lawsuits against predatory corporations.
It is true Americans are frustrated with the path the country is on, but their frustration should be put to use educating, registering, and encouraging other Americans to vote instead of signing useless petitions to overturn High Court decisions. It is too late to even ameliorate the damage conservatives on the Court have imposed on America, and the Constitution, but there is time to stop any further damage Republicans in Congress are planning to unleash on the people whether it is privatizing Medicare and Social Security, or eliminating Medicaid, food stamps, environmental protections, and every other social program the Koch brothers, Wall Street, and religious right want abolished. If Americans should feel anything, it should be desperation because while they are signing petitions, the religious right, Koch brothers, and Wall Street are mobilizing their forces to finish what they began in 2000 and 2010 to get what they want; government beholden to the Christian and corporate prerogative and a quick end to democracy.
Audio engineer and instructor for SAE. Writes op/ed commentary supporting Secular Humanist causes, and exposing suppression of women, the poor, and minorities. An advocate for freedom of religion and particularly, freedom of NO religion.
Born in the South, raised in the Mid-West and California for a well-rounded view of America; it doesn’t look good.
Former minister, lifelong musician, Mahayana Zen-Buddhist.
