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    What's Wrong With America?
    What's Wrong With America?
    What's Wrong With America?
    Ebook121 pages1 hour

    What's Wrong With America?

    By Randal Schaffer

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    21st century America finds itself divided between two fairly extreme ideals - democrats and republicans. The two sides find it difficult to agree on much of anything, but one thing that they do agree on is that America is headed down a bad road, although they have difficulty determining a common agreement on what that bad road looks like.

    In his first political book, Randal Schaffer takes a look at some of the places in America where the nation can improve and strive toward the promise of the founders of becoming "one nation".

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRandal Schaffer
    Release dateAug 16, 2019
    ISBN9780463617984
    Author

    Randal Schaffer

    Randal Schaffer was born in Rural Arkansas, has lived in Alaska, Washington State, Missouri, Connecticut and is, for the moment, back in rural Arkansas where he lives with his partner, Cherise, four dogs and two cats. From the first film that he remembers watching as a child, The Pit and the Pendulum with Vincent Price, he has had a lifelong love of the horror genre, and is the author of the Mini Horror Fiction Writing Guide, where he outlines the most important points of writing horror fiction.

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      Book preview

      What's Wrong With America? - Randal Schaffer

      What’s Wrong With America?

      DISCLAIMER

      I have done my level best to be factually accurate in this book when I state facts. I have not included references or footnotes simply because it is largely an opinion piece.

      Any factual errors in this book should be construed as accidental only, and never malicious.

      So I guess that what this comes down to is that what you are read is either my opinion, or facts interpreted through my opinion, which has been developed through a decent knowledge of American history, and living in America for my entire life, through, perhaps, the most tumultuous decades of that history. If you’re not interested in that, then please… back slowly away from the book and read something else. Don’t read it and then get mad at me for something that I’ve said.

      If I have made factual errors, my e-mail address is included in my About the Author section. Please feel free to let me know.

      1st draft begun 12/6/2016

      2nd draft begun 8/12/2019

      INTRODUCTION

      Somehow, America has become a two party political system. What this means is not that there are two parties (according to Wikipedia, there are more than 20), but that we have given all of our political power over to two. And, it would seem, our ability to think independently.

      These two parties don’t agree on much, at least on the surface, but one thing that they do seem to agree on is that America has gone wrong somewhere. We are, according to both parties, headed down a dangerous road. The problem is that each party has its own ideas as to what that wrong road is and how to fix it.

      Well, I have my own ideas about this and I’m here to share them with you. Here are some hints:

      The two major political parties are a big part of the problem. To be clear, this book is neither an accusation of the democrats or the republicans, but rather both. In the interests of full disclosure, I am a progressive (but don’t belong to either party), so I do tend to vote democrat more than republican, but that’s simply because I find democratic policies MODERATELY less odious and corrupt than republican.

      It doesn’t have anything to do with guns, abortion, marriage equality or the environment, except as those things are impacted by the Constitution.

      It has a lot to do with how we treat workers at home and around the world.

      It involves bread and circuses.

      Like any repair, it’s going to involve some expense and hard work.

      It begins and ends with We, the people of the United States of America…

      So, my fellow Americans, are you ready to roll up your sleeves, face some hard truths and do the work to fix America? Good, let’s do it.

      Randal Schaffer

      December 6, 2016

      PREFACE: THE TUNE-UP

      In 2006, I was running a political/social blog. The problem, I discovered, is that since I am an independent, moderate progressive and wasn’t ranting and raving about how one party or the other was wrecking America, no one wanted to read it. I was just offering the same thing that I offer here… common sense advice on how to get our system working the way that it’s supposed to again.

      My dad was a master auto mechanic. If it had four wheels and a motor, my dad could fix it. After years of listening to him talk to people about their cars, it occurred to me that what America needs more than anything else was the most basic of all auto maintenance… a tune-up. So I wrote the following piece. I’m including it here because I think that the ideas are not only still relevant, but perhaps more relevant than ever.

      THE TUNE-UP

      July 29, 2006

      Hey, how ya doing? Boy, it’s a good thing that you brought your democracy in for a tune-up. Been a while, huh? Well, let’s take a look under the hood here and see how she looks…

      Well, I tell ya, pal… the first thing that comes to my attention is your electoral system. How often do you flush this thing out? HOW often? Hm. No, not within living memory isn’t a very good answer. Look, your electoral system needs to be partly flushed every two years and fully flushed AT LEAST every eight years. Yes, that’s right, I said fully. All the junk clogging the system up is damaging it and needs to be gotten rid of. Look here – 97% of this stuff never gets cleaned out when you do your little minor flushes. You’ve really got to clean this thing out at least every eight years. You know that your electoral system is failing, right? No? You didn’t see the warning lights in 2000 and 2004? Look here – you installed this Diebold equipment here in your electoral system. No, trust me – the manufacturers of your democracy would NOT consider this equipment to be up to specs. That’s one of the main reasons that you got the warning lights in 2004. You what? You thought that it was a problem with your exit polls? Think about it, pal. Have your exit polls ever failed? No? Have you EVER heard of ANYONE’S exit polls failing? No? Me either – trust me, it’s the non-spec equipment. That equipment is wreaking hell with your… whaddaya call it… your electoral college. And trust me – that thing’s so freaking old that it’s failing by itself anyway. Look, pal… you want your democracy to work the way it should? Then you need to stay on top of this electoral system, okay? When you start noticing problems, don’t make excuses for the problems – fix them.

      And what about your criminal justice system over here? I tell ya, pal… I don’t think that can be repaired. I think that it has to be scrapped and started fresh. I mean, it looks like someone’s been playing political dodgeball with this thing… for a loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong time. Yeah, I know that you’ve put in awful lot of money into it. I can see the new paint from here. The problem isn’t what’s going on on the outside, though… it’s the ugliness that’s going on inside. Yeah, there’s all kinds of nasty crap going on in there. And your desire not to know about it is a large part of the problem. Hey, don’t get pissed at me, okay pal? I’m not the one that’s let this justice system get into this kind of shape. You have to crack that sucker open, take a cold hard look at what’s going on inside and fix it. Yeah, it stinks… yeah, it’s difficult. But you know what? It’s your democracy, pal… and without a working justice system it’s just about useless. Your call.

      Which bring us to an even more important system. One that’s not damaged too badly yet, but has started showing cracks and wear… your Constitutional justice system. Yeah, I know that your Constitution’s old, but trust me, pal… the manufacturers knew what they were doing when they built that baby… they don’t make ‘em like this anymore. And if you let this one get destroyed… well, to put it plainly… it can’t be replaced. Ever. And without it, your Democracy is totally shot. A complete write-off. I mean, you could probably have a fascist dictatorship that won’t cost you much in the short run, but man alive will it wear you out in maintenance. Jeez, you think that THIS is hard work… But let’s look at your Constitutional justice system here. What I’m seeing here are SERIOUS cracks in the infrastructure itself, with some breakage in your amendments. I mean, look – your freedom of speech has been severely compromised, as has your freedom of religion. No, if you only have one religion working in there, it puts too much strain on the system. That amendment wasn’t rated for the strain of one religion. And look here – your amendments concerning the treatment of prisoners? Hell, pal, don’t you ever even pay attention to these things? It looks like you never even look at them.

      All right, look, pal… i can see that you’re upset. I’m not sure what I can do to ease that upset, all I can do is help you fix this democracy up. Yes, that’s right – HELP you. No one can do it for you, you have to do it yourself. The charge? Oh, no charge pal. It’s just a joy to me to see a democracy in good working order.

      Your mechanic,

      Randal Schaffer

      CHAPTER 1 – WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE BASICS?

      "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." The preamble to the Constitution

      What’s wrong with the basics? Absolutely nothing. The basics of America are laid out in our Constitution and the amendments, especially the first ten, the so-called bill of rights.

      Part of the problem is that, with each of these rights comes a responsibility. And no one seems to want to take on the responsibilities that the rights impose. Yes, we have a right to free speech, but we also have a responsibility

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