Turns Out "We The People" CAN Have What We Want
by Nick Barlow, Cranky Geezer and Prosperity Minister of Transportation
Credit Vecteezy
Greetings, Vast American Public. So happy Mike asked me to contribute to this Substackian gabfest. I’m the most unlikely member of Mike’s Super Friends. I’m not a dewy-eyed liberal dreamer, or inveterate joiner of humanitarian crusades. I’m a 73-year-old Libertarian skeptic, Vietnam Vet, and the guy with a “Don’t Tread On Me” flag flying outside “Hell on Wheels,” my car repair business. I’m an anarchist, according to the definition of anarchism by my Spirit Guide and political mentor Karl Hess:
Anarchists spring from a single seed, no matter the flowering of their ideas. The seed is liberty. And that is all it is. It is not a socialist seed. It is not a capitalist seed. It is not a mystical seed. It not a determinist seed. It is simply a statement: we can be free. After that, it’s all choice and chance.
When I first heard about Mike Davenport, I assumed he was another bleeding-heart leftie libtard here to save us all from the horrors of free-market capitalism. Then I found out he was a Vet and a small business owner like me. I listened to his program, which was what I’d been dreaming of for years. He proposed that we, the people of Pulver Forge (now Prosperity) figure out what we wanted for our little town, and then figure out a way to give those things to ourselves.
Simple, no? But the people in this country have come to believe this is impossible, which accounts for the staggering amount of bat-shit crazy alienation, divisiveness, and rage we see every day in our news. I’m talking about the ever-widening disconnect between “We, the People” and “Them, The Crooks and Whores in Congress and the White House.”
Consider this list of what a vast majority of “We the People tell pollsters we want:
Universal healthcare. If you get sick, you shouldn’t have to go bankrupt fighting some bean-counting insurance greed bag to get the care you need to save your life.
Ban assault weapons, and mandatory background checks to keep psychos and repeat offenders from buying instruments of death. (Yeah, I’ve got a hunting rifle. I’d hang it up if I needed 600 rounds to bring down a deer.)
Tuition-free public colleges. Somewhere the next Steve Jobs is wasting his life slinging burgers because he can’t pony up the $160K it takes to go to college. Everybody should get a shot at the good life an education can provide.
Big Pharma should make life-saving drugs affordable, probably by clawing back the 78 million dollar bonuses their CEOs “earn.”
Tax the rich at the same rates everyone else (like me) is taxed. Does it make sense that Warren Buffet pays less than half the taxes his secretary pays?
So…why can’t We the People get what we want? Do I really have to say this? It’s because ever since Citizens United opened the floodgates for gazillionaire fat cats and lobbyists to buy politicians, the politicians have become addicted to that money in ways that put crystal meth addicts to shame. They are there to serve their patrons, not us. (This is not a partisan issue.)
Which (finally!) brings me to what I love about what we’re doing in my hometown of Prosperity, Pennsylvania. Mike Davenport woke this place up to the fact that if we want something and we’re willing to put in the work, we can have it! Who knew? In less than a year, We, the Prosperity People…
…started a medical clinic that serves everyone: pay what you can, no one turned away. Hundreds of our friends have kicked drugs and have begun helping others kick drugs.
…started growing, cultivating, and serving our own healthy food at a mid-day meal, everyone invited. We’re growing so much food, we’re selling some at the Farmers Market, and the profits are paying for our new greenhouses.
…took just about every homeless person off the streets and put them in housing we renovated.
…started an apprenticeship program where the kids in our town get real-world skills like farming, cooking in a variety of cuisines, running a business, writing and producing for blogs, podcasts, and video platforms, etc.
One last quote from my guru Karl Hess, from his book “Community Technology.” Here Hess lays out a vision for communities that take back power for themselves. He writes:
There is no reason in nature, in organization, or in science and technology for human beings to lead secondhand lives, under second-party rules, in second-class communities. Instead, there is every reason if they choose to, that human beings can participate fully in all the decisions that affect their lives, be responsible for their lives, and with other human beings live in precisely the communities suited to their capabilities and cares rather than bound to someone else’s advantage or blueprint.
Amen, brother. One more quote? Sure…
The most revolutionary thing you can do is get to know your neighbors.