Article: Democracy in America

There's this guy, cocaine abuser, alcoholic, arrested for DWI, never worked for a living, never had a job, has no job skills, always lived off of family and friends, for the past 11 years has lived in government provided housing and lived off of government provided funds while hypocritically preaching personal responsibility, is functionally illiterate, speaks in broken sentence fragments, deserted his military post, says he has visions, says he hears voices from a supernatural being telling him what to do, is arrogant, ignorant, blames others for his mistakes and says that he can't recall ever having made a single mistake.

You'd expect to find this guy in jail or a mental institution. In fact, he's living in the White House, pretending to be President of the United States.

How in the world did this come about? It's unbelievable! How did an arrogant, ignorant, swaggering, smirking, strutting, incompetent, delusional, egomaniacal psychopathic fraud get to be President?

George Bush is a product of our political system. We supposedly practice democracy with representatives selected to serve in our government by vote, where majority rules. That results in 535 people in congress and 2 in the executive branch. Majority rules means that one more than half in congress, 268 people, can determing how the rest of us live.

That would be OK if those 268 were representative of us. But, they're not. They come exclusively from the political elite and their interests coincide with the the wealthy, priviliged 5% to 10% like themselves. Is Hillary Clinton representative of you? Is someone like Tom DeLay? George Bush? Of course not. No one who makes at least $165,200 a year, lives on an expense account, has full cost free medical coverage and a fat retirement package is representative of you and me. Only people like you and me can be representative of you and me.

Democracy means rule by the people and since we practice majority rule, that means the people who rule must be like the majority, like you and me.

Where do we find these representative people? While serving on jury duty, I got to talking to some of my fellow jurors and it occured to me that I could pick at random any one of them and they would be more and better qualified to be president than George Bush. The jury pool is, by design, a typical cross section of the population. The very best place to find people who are truly representative of the majority of us. They go to work every day, pay the bills, try to live on their budget, keep the car running, get the kids off to school, and by necessity have to know how to get things done in a practical way.

In my county there are nine qualifications required to be a juror, some having to do with literacy, sanity and non-criminality. There are three qualifications for President: age, residency and citizenship. Jurors are three times as qualified to be President as George Bush. The fact is that most people in prison, mental institutions and sleeping behind dumpsters are as constitutionally qualified to be President as George Bush.

We are required to serve our government as jurors, by force of arms (those bailiffs are armed) and on pain of punishment should we fail to do so. We are deemed qualified to determine guilt or innocence, how long or if a person should spend time in prison, how much money this person must pay that person, and make life or death decisions.

So, if we're qualified to make decisions of such importance and consequence that no president or member of congress can make, who is more qualified to be running our country?

We can eliminate having unqualified politicians running our country, of fraudulent elections, of lobbyists, of political campaigns and the wasted money that goes with them and having to listen to the interminable, self-serving campaign blather by just picking from the jury rolls people to full all elective offices.

If randomly picking jurors fulfills the requirement for the practice of democracy and justice in running the courts, it will serve even better for picking truly representative government for running our country.

You'd get a summons: "You are hereby summoned to appear at the White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Washington, DC to serve your required four year term as President of the United States. Free transportation is provided from your location. Show the bus driver this summons."

In all seriousness, would I accept a president picked from the jury rolls rather than have the slightest chance that we could get another disaster like George Bush? Indubitably. Positively. Without doubt. You betcha.

Genuine representative government, whether you like it or not, just like jury duty.