The next 100 days

It was from FDR’s Congressional Bills passed within the first 100 days of his administration as a response to the Great Depression that the American government and media latched on to the image of the first 100 days. Thus, was the spin of the New Deal born, and the man in the oval office become a legend. Romanticized in the era of JFK’s Camelot, fact segued into fiction, humans turned mythical, and an imaginary chronological time became a hyped assessment deadline. Obama was astute enough to know that he has to turn myth into an instrument of good order and possible future.

No harm done. Hence, political spin became more sophisticated and the assault of partisanship became more vicious. This period has come to designate the clear delineation on where the line is drawn. Today, that line divides the prophets of doom against the preachers of hope, the pastors of illusion against the priesthood of all workers and laborers.

Historian Arthur Schlesinger described the mood at FDR’s inauguration: “It was now a matter of seeing whether a representative democracy could conquer economic collapse. It was a matter of staving off violence—even, some thought—revolution.”

Today, in Obama’s watch, it has become a matter of seeing whether direct democracy could conquer the castrating incisions of fear, the malaise of centralized dependence on highly paid expertise—federal, regional and local, and the wide and various practices of “the buck stops elsewhere.” Ours is a matter of overcoming apathy and indecision; in fact, ours is a promotion of a subversive but quiet revolution, in consciousness first, governance second, and economy third. The oft-quoted Orwellian dictum applies: “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

To continue on the imagery of 100 days (the Semitic tradition was guided by the number 40, the length of a generation, and therefore, a unit of transition from one dispensation to another, e.g. forty years wandering in the desert for the Israelites, and forty days and forty nights for Jesus’ meditation, contemplation and prayer in the wilderness) is not to engage in historical chronology but to pursue an articulation of meaning and significance, of portraying visions and strategizing missions towards either the killing fields of doom, or the flowering of spring in a thousand gardens in the land. The new garden in the White House is not just for photo ops, it represents a call for one and all to begin the greening of America at the local level. Known practices of water and soil conservation in our homes and out foothills would be a good start.

So we ask the question, not what Obama is up to in the next 100 days, but what direct democracy is stirring to redirect the cultural, political and economic journey of the United States of America. It is high time that this young nation of practical immigrants be true to its character rather than continue to kowtow to the dictates of Whigs and Tories long after the American revolution from royalty and privileged have allegedly been completed.

At the end of the Bush era, the numbers are startling. One percent of the population in America owns 50 percent of its wealth. More than 30 years ago, I found myself in the company of ethicist declaring that the moral contradiction of our time is an economic one, that 85 percent of the world’s resources serves the interest and comfort of 15 percent of the population. This was a jab at distributive justice.

“No one is ever rich enough to quit from wanting more,” said one of our industrial barons. The Buffets and the Gates seem to have internalized that wisdom. Happily, instead of anxiously going for more, they seem to have turned the power of their assets, at least for now, with due consideration to alleviating what ails the common weal.

In my youth, one of the rich Delgados in the Philippines, an aspiring lawyer commented: “just how many sports cars can anyone drive or silk suits can any person wear in a lifetime.” Unfortunately, he did not live long enough to find out. He was tragically involved in a car accident and had to wear his last silk suit in a hearse. But the lesson was impressed upon me early on, so much so that whatever passion I might have exhibited on the way to my sunset years, to the great dismay of my progeny, had not been in the pursuit, let alone, the accumulation of wealth

Let us be clear, though. I am not against holding on to the value added to the any enterprise anyone engages in. I had been with too many NGOs and even religious institutions to have given enough speeches about insuring that services tendered be commercially viable for them to continue. We have too many grant pursuers particularly in former members of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands—in education, public works, and even those engaged in special services to special needs—whose sole intent is to get seeding funds but callously let many of its offshoots wither by the wayside.

Jim Hightower of Texas, the eloquent, literate and loquacious populist has been waging war against our plutocrats for many years. Today, he says, populism is a rebellion against corporate power, the governance of the wealthy. David Korten’s best seller, When Corporations Rule the World, recently revised and reissued, has fueled authentic democratic movements. One need not go too deeply on today’s news to realize that lobbyist of corporations are well-poised and well-funded to despoil anything the Obama White House throws at corporate structures ardently protecting their turf in such fields as health and medicine, armaments and aerospace, and financial and trade services.

We do not have to go far to see this. The successful watering down of the original provisions of the Marianas Marine Monument that the Friends are now trying to rectify, is being defended by those who opposed the declaration of the monument in the first place. The bottom line, which is not even hidden let alone denied, is clearly the access to mineral and fisheries resources. Pinpoint those with vested interest in mining and commercial fishing and we would not be too far from those who will nurse their purses first before deigning to look at those eagerly waiting for the trickle down benefits under the klieg-light feast of the well-off, the well-to-do, and the well-connected.

Distributive justice. From the perspective of governance, it is taxing the privileged to ensure that the lower rungs of the economic pyramid are not treated simply as accounting units, but as human beings of whom the Danes refer to when they say: No one is rich enough to not be in need of a neighbor. Creating viable and vibrant communities is the antidote to periodic collapses of top-down economic systems. More on this in the next 100 days!