My fellow Americans, Republicans, Democrats, conservatives and liberals, we have reached a threshold that should cause us to cast off our political bias and consider the broader picture asking the question: what sort of country should the United States be, to both her constituents as well as in the world?  What is her essence, is she kind or is she a divisive, is she uplifting or oppressive. Every nation has sociopolitical challenges, and sadly, politics is said to be the greatest reflection of man’s essence.  Man is flawed, and his flaws are expressed in political systems, that when left unchecked go through periods of decay.  Sadly, most of us do not know our own country’s history, this is not the first time our citizenship has cycled through a period of discomfort due to the affairs of government.
  I believe that a republic of noble cause, should conceal our human flaws.

Today, our great nation is being held hostage by the politicians who we have elected and entrusted with our well-being.   Those who wield power have deliberately factionalized us with populist narratives, that make us incapable of having the dialogue and discussion that is necessary for democracy to work.  If you feel an emotional response to any of their talking points, good or bad, you are under their influence. They are driving your emotions, rendering you incapable of having reasonable discourse and making rational decisions about our nation’s governance.  They want us to pick a side, buy into their agenda, as it supports their fostering their own political and financial gains. I won’t bore you with academic footnotes, or a long-winded explanation as most of us don’t have the patience or background to fight their way through, I will leave a few at the end of this article if you wish to check my logic.

When our founding fathers created this nation two hundred and fifty years ago, they crafted  a constitution that would be the foundation for our nation’s governance, they understood man’s “human flaws,” thus creating checks and balances to keep the government in check.  What they could not account for are the faculties of human nature and self-interest, that creep into political systems, rendering these checks and balances impotent.  Since man is easily swayed by her emotional reaction, it invariably sets the playing field for our leaders to alter the government to support their interests and those of their supporters.  Our “Conservative” Supreme Court, that has become a rubber stamp for our Executive branch’s policies, it is the downstream effect of a system exploited. To be clear, both right and left are guilty of exploiting power, and we the People rarely reap the rewards of their deeds. The idea of democracy dates back over 2000 years, predating the birth of Jesus, and the human inclinations of power and self-interest, are the reason that many great philosophers believed it could never work.  Personally, I would like to believe in democracy, but we need to make changes so we can avoid these dangerous periods of recurrence.

I ask, do you want to live in a country where there is no safety net for the weakest and poorest of our citizens? I believe that a country’s value can be measured in how she treats its poorest and weakest citizens. Currently, we see democrats and republicans injuring these individuals to preserve their agendas, as they sit with full bellies atop their ivory tower.  Healthcare is a far more complex issue than it is made out to be, but I assure you that the problems lie not in governmental policy, but in corporate greed that seeks to increase their bottomline.  Insurance companies, hospital systems, pharmaceutical companies wield an inordinate amount of political influence, through their ability to support and fund politicians.  Our career politicians are not motivated by
an” American ideal,” their principal goal is to get re-elected and fill their own pockets. I am not anti-capitalist, but capitalism must be tempered by moral responsibility, a government by the People and for the People.  If this were the case government should put aside their political and corporate interests, to assure that the People are protected.  Both sides have failed. 
I will not engage in the finger pointing that we see in the media, and on social media where everyone is a self-appointed expert: this only serves to play into their hands and widen an already massive and deliberate divide.  Sorry, that would be promoting the emotional reasoning I referenced earlier, that weakens and divides us. Instead, I ask, why can’t our elected officials keep the government open, pay government employees, give people their grocery money and remove the pain and suffering of our citizens and sit down together to evaluate the issues with clear heads, so that are government becomes an expression of the People, all of the People, not just  corporate and political interests of the few. If you think it is good to withhold food money from the poor, not pay our air traffic controllers or military, or to fix a healthcare crisis from the top-down, pushing back against the entities that have driven costs up and services down, maybe we live in a different country.  Most of the people who make policy have never been hungry, uninsured, or felt the pressure that so many Americans live with daily.  On a final note, a house divided cannot stand, we are divided against ourselves, hateful narratives have managed to force us away from democracy and into tribalism.  We need to fix the problems and stop being part of them.

Michael Nelinson
11/8/2025

Fukuyama, F. (2014). Political order and political decay: From the industrial revolution to the globalization of democracy. Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Herder and Herder.