AMERICA'S RAW STORY

18th POST

By Gary Brumback

GOVERNING SMALLER AMERICAS

As a long-in-the-tooth, organizational psychologist, I have noticed that my field generally knows little about the organization of government or the art of governing, concentrating as it does on the other part of the corpocracy, corporate America. In this short essay I define governing, list its various forms throughout the ages and in America, and then close by proposing a model for governing in America that is definitely different from the way she has always been governed.

What Does Governing a Nation Mean?

Governing a nation means whatever “relevant” people define it to be and however it is practiced. Relevant people, I suppose, would include political scientists, an oxymoron, because both politics and governing are forms of art, not science. To me the most relevant definition of governing is not a single one but the many as seen in how it is practiced in its myriad forms, but that is begging the question. So here is my simple definition; governing is the act of managing publically funded organizations that may or may not help the common good of the public being governed.

It is about as dry a definition as one can get but it does cover the waterfront. What animate it are the diverse forms of governing actually practiced down through the ages. I will list only the earliest and the more prominent ones. Two common denominators of most if not all forms are their creation by the power elite and their warfare, two features that are very detrimental to the common good.

Governing Down Through the Ages

Kinship. Families may have been the earliest form by which people governed themselves collectively. Extended families converged into tribes with tribal lords and councils.

Absolute and Constitutional Monarchies. In the former a monarch’s rule is ironclad. In the latter the monarch’s power is constrained by law and a political body.

Empires. The people of a land are conquered by a superpower and thereafter ruled by an Emperor. There have been nearly 200 empires throughout history. Egypt’s empire lasted the longest, 3,000 years. No new ones have arisen for quite some time.

Early City/Nation States. Ancient Greeks, who were fixated on how to govern and by whom, were governed by city/state governments and taxed by them. Perhaps the earliest precursor to America’s tallest hierarchically structured government was China at least two millennia ago when Ch’in, the “First Exhalted Emperor” established a hierarchical bureaucracy to control the newly unified China.

Pre-America Land. Many thousands of years before the land later called “America” was stolen by rapacious, fanatical, and savage European settlers, that land was inhabited by successive waves of what became known generically as “Indians.” Over time they developed more sophisticated forms of governing themselves. Perhaps the most often cited is the Iroquois League of Nations, a confederacy model copied from the mid-15^th century. Chiefs were chosen by the senior women of their tribe. Tribal decisions were made by consensus, not by voting.

Corpocracies. An outgrowth of the industrial revolution was the corporation. Benito Mussolini, the founder of Italian Fascism, reportedly said at the height of his dictatorship that “fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” Hitler honed corporatism into the Third Reich, then the pinnacle of fascism. My name for “corporatism” is “corpocracy,” and in America it is the unequal merger of state and subservient government. Ipso facto, America is a fascist state and has been from its beginning.

That concludes the list, but before moving on to the proposed model I want to ask readers this question, “Do you notice what is missing from the list?”

Democracy is what is missing because it is pure myth, a hoax perpetrated and sustained by the power elite. America’s “democracy” is said to have been inspired by the putative “crucible of democracy,” Greece. Bunkum! Not even during the so-called “halcyon era of democracy” when Pericles ruled Greece did she have a democracy. Only about one-tenth of Athens’ populace was officially designated citizens. Slaves, women, and men who had not served in the military were all non-citizens. Military service was an absolute necessity since Pericles presided over the remaining years of the war with Persia and the first few years of the 30 year war between Athens and Sparta. What ancient Greece inspired, it seems, is the habit of getting things through war.

America’s power elite and its lackeys proclaim democracy while practicing corpocracy. They know it is not a democracy. Only three groups of Americans, the deceived, the deluded and the deniers believe it to be so. Americans who know and detest the corpocracy for what it is and does are outnumbered but also subjugated as are those three groups. That being so, is not any proposed alternative for governing useless and having only a short shelf life? My answer has to be “probably yes,” but we live in desperate times and desperately need to start building a livable future if there are to be any future generations much longer other than for microorganisms.

Governing Smaller Americas: The Model’s Four Principles

The model is guided by four mutually compatible principles:

1. The Principle of Individual Self Governance

The Individual + Circumstances = Individual Health, Happiness and Prosperity

2. The Principle of the Larger Liberty Quotient

More Individual Self Determination/Less Corpocracy Determination

3. The Principle of Size

Smaller is More Governable than Bigger

4. The Principle of Good Governance

The Nation + Good Governance = National Health, Happiness and Prosperity

1. The Principle of Individual Self Governance. There can be no people without persons. The person is the indivisible unit in a nation of people. Diminishment of individual self governance diminishes national self governance, or to put it in the vernacular, “all for one, and one for all.”

2. The Principle of the Larger Liberty Quotient. What distinguishes this principle from the first one is that the corpocracy enters into the second one. The smaller the quotient the larger is corpocracy determination and as the ratio gets smaller and smaller the determination turns into subjugation. The ideal ratio would be one where the denominator is just small enough to be right and missing the corporate component. 

3. Smaller is better than larger. Should doomsday come, only microorganisms will survive. Larger organizations are less manageable than small ones. The largest organization in the world, the U.S. Federal government knows it’s unmanageable but won’t admit it. Smaller numbers are also more useful than larger ones. America has absolutely too many governments: city, county, regional, state, and national. America is over governed and under served.

Had the colonists not slaughtered the Natives there could have been a much different nation. Had President Lincoln not sacrificed 175,000 countrymen for the sake of unifying the nation for defense and expansion, there would have been two smaller Americas, and much less opportunity for endless warring by the mightiest war force ever known and the power elite’s appetite for global exploitation.

4. The Principle of Good Governance. This principle is a derivative of the first three. Good governance optimizes self governance, yields larger liberty quotients throughout the governed, and is optimally small in size and number organizationally.

Governing Smaller America’s According to the Principles

Not one of the four principles has seen the light of day in practice in America’s history. If they were to be followed, what would good government look like throughout the land stolen from the Natives?

1. Smaller and Fewer Governments. Four regional governments called the Four Americas. One central council to protect the entire land’s common valuables: Native Americans; air; and peace among the four Americas and with global neighbors. Municipal governments.

2. The Governments’ Ultimate Goals. They are to be found in the first, second, and forth principles: individual and general public health, happiness, and prosperity; elimination of the corporate role in governing; and the shrinking corporate presence in the four Americas’ economies.

3. Change and Maintenance Agents. All people in the four regions following the lead of those who are selected by consensus to be the principals.

4. Deference to the First “Americans.” There are scores of Indian tribes located throughout the land that should be called Stolen America. The central council would mandate that tribal members be among those selected to be principals. 

In Closing

There is no point in my trying to add the details that “are in the Devil” of how the model might actually be implemented. I served my purpose already by just sharing the model’s outline. If it ignites the imagination and actions of any readers that is enough gratification for me. Moreover, many times before I have labored over the details of ideas that came to naught. 

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