America in a Box

Beauty in art, beauty in culture; one is wide open and free, the other is perhaps bounded by fairly rigid rules.

America's norms, created by tradition, formalized by law and policy, America is the land of the carefully constrained.  Citizens are expected to color inside the lines.  True?  Ask the occupiers how the police treated them.

... a game in a box.
A short list of places to stand.
Those are the rules.

Change 'in favor of all' is often resisted by power players in favor of their own interests.

Today's America  seems constrained by monied interests purchasing government backing and by government playing along with such special interests.  Our financial industry now touches virtually everyone in the the world, and as yet does so without  accountability.  The six billion or so who bear the burden of being so manhandled didn't give their permission, but Wall Street now controls the world price of corn, the staple for many of them, along with most other commodities.  Monsanto dictates their crops.  The U.S. Congress backs it all.

Here at home, debate is limited to the confines of left or right.  Nothing outside the box.  The public forum tolerates the narrow debate of liberal and conservative issues, but the resulting polarization cripples our progress.  Pro-life folks find themselves faced with a candidate who thinks the poor are lazy welfare-ites.  Pro-choice folks have to vote for a big-government/big-debt fellow.  Voting for the more 'Christian' candidates in Congress means backing big business, especially Wall Street, to the detriment of the nations poor and the developing world.  The media play along.  We're boxed, and without a venue for a real public forum.

Americans and the world are scrambling for an exit strategy.  'Occupy' has dozens of focal points and now spans the developed world.  'Green' is tackling resource issues.  'Revival' is in the wings in a brand new form.  'Globalization' is rewriting policy, trade, and finance. Worldwide protest in 436 cities targets Monsanto and GMOs (just 17 hours ago), and Ag-Gag is tackling farm animal abuse.  ....

The next decades will be a blast.  Only figuratively, we hope.

You've noticed.  Picked a path yet for your part in it all?