American National Government, page 1

I wrote this for an American National Government class. The prompt was on federalism. The protocol for the essay laid the foundations out in very positive terms.

But this is what I wrote. I wrote the truth. Ms. Mulholland, if you're reading this, keep it up.

Federalism: A Brilliant Mistake

America is the land of the free, and the home of the whopper. I’m not talking about hamburgers, either. No, when I refer to whoppers, I mean the big lies that we are all fed every day by the government, and the corporate controlled media. We are told that the federal government is good for us, that we should eat our vegetables, drink our kool-aid, and that we wouldn’t like it any other way. The truth of the matter is, most people don’t really know what they want. Most people don’t know much about federalism one way or the other.

Best as I can figure it, federalism came into existence with what seemed like good intentions. Back in 1776, they had no idea what corrupt government and gridlock looked like. They had quaint notions of democracy. They had no idea that when all was said and done, that the paint would start peeling off, and the façade of a republic led by the people and for the people would crumble like the illusion it was.

What is federalism? Well, it’s a bit like a constitutional monarchy, except you give people a nice song and dance number of an election and a new figurehead every four years so they don’t get angry and chop the king’s head off. Behind the scenes, the same bloated plutocrats are still benefiting from a sort of “trickle up” economics, there are still large companies with a bribe in one hand and a leash in the other looking for pet politicians, and you have a lot of the same cult of personality inherent with a monarchy.

On the campaign trail, both parties lunge at each other’s throats, but they’re just puppets on different hands of the same manipulator. Whoever is willing to sink the lowest, take the most bribes, and sell the most of their soul to the highest bidder is the winner of this grim competition.

Any claims of true and earnest competition among the government fall apart under close scrutiny, especially when one considers the lack of third party candidates in office. And while states might fight amongst themselves for business or resources like packs of dogs over a scrap of meat, it doesn’t usually benefit the average person.

In fact, federalism doesn’t benefit or empower the common man much at all. Sure, a man can vote, and influence the course of an election. Then, that same man can go out and buy a lottery ticket and win a million dollars. But statistically speaking, it’s unlikely that either of those actions are going to pay off in any meaningful way.

Let’s say that you already had the million dollars though, and you weren’t just any person, but you were a corporate person. Why, that money could pay for any number of lobbyists, campaign donations, and fancy new legislature drafted up to serve your needs. Who would have thought that the Government would finally listen to the people? It only took millions of dollars, and a definition of personhood stretched so thin that even corporations qualified.

It seems a person can truly be what they want to be in this country. A child can grow up, and as long as that child is born to wealthy parents, he can truly be what-ever he wants in life. By Jove, a trust-fund multiple millionaire can even become president, if his father knows the right people and greases the right wheels. That’s mobility. From idle rich to ruling class, America really is the land of opportunity for the extremely wealthy. They can move from corporation to government position, and help out their buddies back at their old job. They can consolidate government and corporate interest until one is barely distinguishable from the other.

And they very well have. All the major credit card providers tend to be headquartered in states like Delaware, or South Dakota. The reason for this is that their legislature makes those states friendly territory for loan-sharks and usurers. And who paid for that legislature? Why, the credit card companies. For a nation allegedly under God, there are plenty of money changers.

But is this irreversible? Is there perhaps hope? A house of cards can’t stand forever. Some people think that the supreme court has the ability to stop this crawl towards corporation feudalism. I find it naïve to think that a politician is going to get us out of the same mess politicians put us in. The job of the supreme court in determining the constitutionality of various laws grows increasingly irrelevant as it becomes more and more apparent that the constitution is nothing but pretty words on a piece of paper these days.

Perhaps the people might notice how hollow their liberty has become. But these days, one can hardly count on civil discontent to get anything done in any sort of real political sense. Folks turn on whatever electronic entertainment they have available to them and blot out the problems of the real world. At best, they’ll maybe protest a few times, and the people in power will slightly alter their drive to work, in order to avoid them. The federal government yields to neither man nor god, ruled only by the almighty dollar.

But what happens when they can’t pass the buck any further? What happens when they can’t make ends meet? Some might think that the system of federalism that envelops the U.S. will pull the country down with it when it fails. That it’s too large to fail, that too many people are dependent upon it. And that very well might be true. But if it is, it’s intentional. As a country born from revolution, the people in power were very much aware that it might happen again, and so they tailored the legislature to prevent it.

So they created the federal government, to rule over us. They hooked people on it, so they could have a centralized head to cut off when the common man got unruly. As a confederation of various states, each was somewhat independent. But under federal rule, they could cut off the head, and the body would die.