How and why this has come to pass is detailed in America Adrift. I urge you to read it and then do your part. Our democracy is dying and only “we the people” can save it.

That alternative is wholly within our control, and not dependent upon legislation. If Americans start demanding accuracy and full disclosure from media and facts, solutions and details from candidates, money’s influence will be greatly diminished. Our failure to do this is what gives money its power to influence the outcome of elections. Change the paradigm and we facilitate the ability to make informed decisions in our democracy undeterred by PR and spin.

The current practice of most major media to regurgitate unfounded allegations, whether from candidates themselves or dueling surrogates, without any fact-checking or evaluation, misleads, misinforms and encourages candidates and their supporters to continue to obfuscate. If the media exposes such practices, instead of providing a platform to reinforce them, the practice of distortion will be minimized. Holding media accountable for the timid practice of equivalency, where both sides are aired as if equally correct (whether through opposing presenters or uncritically presenting both sides), will force presentation of the truth rather than a sham “balanced” offering. Finally, we ought to disregard PAC presentations altogether by recognizing them for what they are; one-sided and often erroneous propaganda.

Money cannot corrupt our democracy unless we allow it. We have to cease being willing recipients of generalities, attacks and falsehoods. If we demand more from candidates and media alike, the influence of money will be minimal in terms of democratic choice. This is entirely within the grasp of most Americans if we have the will to do so. We don’t vote on Constitutional Amendments but we do vote with our choices and influence on the media and candidates.

To learn more about what we can do to come together to restore the promise of our democracy, I encourage you to read America Adrift.

We blog, we Occupy, we protest and all to little avail.  Our various efforts are diluting each other with a myriad of ideas, actions and groups. In contrast, wealthy special interests are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to buy hearts and minds and thereby elections. Dollars, not voters or ideas, are now what matters because dollars buy voters. That is the reality.

The Supreme Court has equated money with speech in the Citizens United case. They were right about one thing- money talks. And it speaks louder than anything else. It is drowning out the voices of flesh and blood citizens.

If the present situation is not reversed, no matter what you care about, it will suffer. We cannot afford to continue to be neutralized by a host of divisive issues. We have to join together, as a top priority, to get the poisonous influence of money out of our democracy. The best way to do that is to unite and support the concept of publicly-funded elections. Then move to outlaw money and other forms of bribery, like job offers, from lobbying.

Progressive, conservative, independent or apolitical, I urge you to read America Adrift. Understand the subtle forces that manipulate us and that have led us to our present situation. Learn what you can do to counteract these forces- then act! And spread the word to involve others. We have no time to lose. #WakeUpAmerica

It’s not that there aren’t great ideas. It’s not that there isn’t enthusiasm and will. Rather, it is our lack of focus on what are the most critical elements that need to change that becomes our undoing. We Occupy, we blog, we write books and we endlessly point out all of our societal ills, but without consensus that would lead to change.

We have been divided and conquered by those who stand to benefit from our disunity. We are assaulted daily by various interest groups and pundits who profit from their polemics. Our profit-conflicted media, who should be sorting through the noise, instead add to the dissaray.

The democratic notion that change should come from the bottom up, if leadership fails, is not entirely true. All movements that have achieved significant change have produced leaders who focused the effort. Instead, we are so many frustrated and leaderless groups competing for attention. Regrettably, the most leaderless are often progressives who seem to get caught up in offended reaction to conservatives and endless debate amongst themselves.

We need to turn away from belief and ideology and focus on our future- focus on the critical needs and prioritize them. Then tackle the most important needs in order- with focus and all of our energy, not as progressives or conservatives, but as Americans.

A good place to start is with public financing of elections. That would open up the field and remove the need to sacrifice principle for money. The next step would be to ban all money and job offers from lobbying. A focus on accomplishing these two things would be the most powerfull  thing we can do to restore truly representative democracy in our country.

The facts aren’t winning because many Americans respond to their gut over gravitas and to ideology over ideas. While liberals point to charts and graphs, conservatives address insecurities and appeal to beliefs. While progressives are confident in their nuanced analyses, many Americans resent what they see as elitist snobs telling them what to do. Conservative messaging is simpler and repetitive. Progressives weaken their messaging with endless debate and fluctuating emphasis.

Although it may be hard for many to accept, the fact is that progressives are tone-deaf to a large segment of America. Liberals bask in the false comfort of hosannas from the choir as they condemn the wrong-headedness of the congregation next door. And therein lies the problem. The congregations, right and left, are not talking to one another; they are talking at one another. Labels and invective fly while the country remains bitterly divided and adrift in a sea of problems.

If progressives want to build sufficient consensus for real change, then they need to come down from their ivory towers of critique and complexity and start listening to the rest of America. All of the feel good occupations, the innovative ideas and the self-righteousness of the cause crash against the brass knuckles of the opposition. Progressives need to be open to simpler, powerful messaging that resonates more with the heart than the mind. They need to recognize that there are legitimate issues of concern for those on the right that cannot simply be dismissed out of hand as ignorance or overcome with punditry and charts and graphs. In short, progressives need to begin building bridges to those with whom they differ, instead of alienating them. They need to focus on people’s needs rather than their beliefs. And they need to realize that what they are doing now isn’t working.

In order to advance their agenda wealthy individuals and large corporations realized that they had to engage a wider army in their cause. To do so they redirected the GOP from being aspirational, appealing to our hopes, to pandering to our  fears and insecurities. It began with appeals to Evangelicals in the Nixon years and continued with the “Moral Majority” and with platforms that championed prayer in the schools and opposition to the right to an abortion. This began to attract a cadre of devout, sincere and well-meaning adherents to the GOP.

The effort to broaden their constituency by business interests did not end with the appeal to social and moral issues. GOP rhetoric, as opposed to substance, became wrapped in red, white and blue. These appeals to concepts of freedom, liberty and patriotism portrayed “the government” as the enemy by playing upon people’s fears of big government and government overreaching. All of this opposition was quite ironic in a democracy where the government is supposedly of and by the people.

Where social issues and fear of big government were not paramount, the subtle manipulators of the GOP appealed to “The American Dream;” the belief that anyone can be rich some day. As the Democrats stood idly by and abandoned their traditional base, Republicans began to convince many that their path to the good life was through advancing the interests of the already wealthy. To do that they put forth the idea that wealth would “trickle down” and that the focus of economic advancement should be on the supply side (producers) rather than on the demand side (consumption).

The GOP is now experiencing the unfortunate extension of these efforts to distort the ideals of the Party. It has become obstructionist, devoid of positive ideas, repeating failed economic pap and anathema to many women and many ethnic groups. The sorry spectacle of the Party’s present group of presidential candidates is an affront to the proud tradition of the GOP.

The sad state of the GOP is a loss for our country. They have ceased to be a broadly acceptable alternative for independents and are no longer a meaningful respository of new ideas in political debate with Democrats. If this is to change, traditional Republicans need to reclaim their party. They have to stop sitting on their hands while the GOP is subsumed by its most fringe elements. If they fail to do so the relevance of the Party will only wither even further.

All of this focus on the objects of our wrath has become fertile ground for politicians, pundits and authors. The result in many cases has been to preach to the converted, telling us what we want to hear. That can lead to furtherance of the discord rather than to building sufficient support for actual, positive change. While feeding the righteous indignation of one camp or another, books with emotionally charged titles, disdain and condemnation don’t assist us in the effort to find consensus. Instead, we remain immobilized by conflicting beliefs and objectives and our inability to agree on specifics. Without broad agreement as to even the causes of our difficulties, efforts to achieve meaningful change will lack sufficient support for realization.

Things are never black and white. The demand for less regulation carries the seed of bloated and often out of date rules and laws. The call for more government control recognizes the failures that led to the financial collapse and other excesses. There is a mid-ground here and in all of the other areas of disagreement.  But incendiary rhetoric and belittling will not lead us there.

Until we begin to resolve the deep divisions in our country, through efforts to seek common ground, achieving acceptable solutions will be unlikely. The focus of America Adrift is on precisely this topic. While it isn’t currently fashionable to view the issue this way, nor viscerally as satisfying (or profitable) as the blame game, it’s critical that we begin to heal the divisions among us. Without broad, unified support for the changes needed, any change will likely be either imperfect or not occur at all. America Adrift is an effort to lead us to a different, more productive path.

There is an adage to the effect that people will go to far greater lengths to avoid what they fear than to attain what they desire. Fear and negativity abound in America today, furthered by compromised and inadequate leadership, inept media and PR spin from special interests. These are some of the cultural issues, detailed in America Adrift, that hold us hostage. Scattered protests and a focus on wealth notwithstanding, until we begin to address these cultural chains that bind us our problems will only worsen while we remain a country of….. “can’t.”

This emphasis however, from punditry to media coverage, can be a distraction that misdirects our focus onto the symptoms rather than the underlying causes of our current difficulties. We need to take a long, hard, collective look in the mirror. It is we, after all, who elected the politicians, bought in or acquiesced to “trickle down” and other economic nonsense and either supported or, despite our anger, stood apathetic while our government spent and cut revenues resulting in horrific debt levels, failed to curb financial excesses and bailed out those who defrauded and bungled.

As hard and unfashionable as it may be to accept, the ultimate problem is us. We have one of the lowest voter participation rates of the major democracies. Our receptivity to fear-based and negative arguments, our penchant for simplistic labeling and inability to talk with one another, as opposed to at one another, contribute to our discord and division. We argue about ideology rather than attempt to find win-win common ground related to our needs. Our schizophrenic priorities for things like education, where we say they are critical and then make them the first to be cut and held hostage politically, contribute to our situation. And too many have been complicit in allowing the underpinning of capitalism, greed, to remain inadequately in check on too many fronts; too many of us have believed that the path to a good life was inextricably tied to increasing the wealth of the already wealthy.

There is much more detail in America Adrift, the book. Yet while some individually may not accept the mea culpa, nor should they in all aspects, the fact remains that until the cultural issues discussed in the book change for a majority of Americans, the prospect of altering our politics and restoring our democracy will remain frustratingly beyond our grasp.

This isn’t a Republican or Democrat issue. Abuse of the cloture rules (requiring 60 votes on legislation to avoid fillibuster in the Senate), in order to nullify the implementation of enacted legislation (here the Dodd-Frank finance reforms), can be undertaken by either party when in the minority. Democrat Senate minorities could just as easily pay back their Republican colleagues by blocking implementation of any Republican-passed legislation.

There is no Constitutional authorization for cloture, and it does not exist at all in the House, where majority rule carries the day. What is good for the House ought to be good for the Senate. Instead, we are witnessing a tyranny of the minority that was never contemplated by the Constitution. And we are witnessing an abrogation of Senators’ obligation to uphold the Constitution and enforce the duly adopted laws of this country. Once again the rule of law is being made a mockery, and the country’s progress is being held hostage to ideology.