E Pluribus Unum seems a long time forgotten today and it was a fragile national motto to begin with. Out of many, one - A concept demanding unity, sacrifice, tolerance, and community. Granted, it also screams of a certain level of conformity that our individualism rages against. One. Not especially religious. Not anchored in a phobia or antipathy to any particular people. Not given to mythologization, but not exactly humble. Certainly neither worshipful toward, nor bowed to a given economic and social class of people. It is not grounded in any specific culture or subculture - not Christian, Islamic, WASP, politically liberal, or conservative. It has become entirely out of step with us because, perhaps, we were never really in step with it. The notion of national unity has been a lie since we coined it because of the exclusive nature of our creation and the violently opposed nature of our peoples’ visions for the nation. However, there are limits to how far we can drift before we break. We need to fall back upon reason, open our eyes, unite, and get smart about our system.

As a people, numbers tend to show that we have become disenchanted with the mechanisms that run our country (Gallup polling from June of ‘24 puts overall government approval rating at 16%). Our representatives are frequently rotten and function as cash and carry governors that sell our nation’s body and soul to the highest bidder. Lies have become less a tool to be used with tact than the very cloth enrobing the identities of both parties. The composition of our body politic is stagnant, offering little professional and mental diversity that might extend a plethora of ideas from which we may develop our republic. Lobbyists have clogged the arteries by which we make clear decisions, cash in hand, doing the will of corporations that have bought “citizenship status” while we blatantly ignore that they are essentially each a nation of their own with its own goals, ideals, cultures, and plans that often are not designed to align with public benefit.

Many of our representatives seem less concerned with realistic solutions and leadership designed to foster a functional secular republic than they are in stoking the fires of exclusivity, hate, privilege, and fear. These demagogues, which is essentially a term for those that utilize our passions irresponsibly in order to attain power and impose destructive changes, have gained a dangerous hold on our body politic - Collectively, they actively assault our public education system, seek to establish a national religion, castigate those they deem abnormal (often using extreme imagery and rhetoric to do so), centralize the national wealth to such an extent that a minute subsection of society are raised to the levels to the levels of gods and kings that we raged against in order to establish the ideal form of our nation, dole out vast amounts of privilege to their sycophants while cynically manipulating their supporters, bury us under mountainous and inexcusable amounts of debt, allow rampant monetization of every asset (no matter how sacred) to destroy the very rights of humankind (turning life into a privilege available to those that can afford it, liberty into a variable dictated by one’s power, property into a non-starter for many, and the pursuit of happiness into a difficult pursuit for many). All of this amounts to nothing positive in matters of statecraft (although it is an effective and cynical variety of politics), but it does a fine job of whipping up the people when it is carried out loudly enough, and the end results are only ever positive for a very small group

Washington warned us of the dangers of a party-based political system. Of course, the political system envisioned by the white, upper-class, land owning males that originally designed the foundation of our republic had vast issues of its own. Even still, looking at the measures taken by those seeking control of our country, I can’t help but think he had a good point there (even if the divide between us was impossible to avert). We need new leadership that puts base culture war stupidities to bed, emphasizes reason, and that focuses upon real solutions to our issues in environmental issues, education, immigration, technology, the military industrial complex, the income gap, inflation, emotional and physical health, job production and pay, fair labor, artificial intelligence (particularly with its impact on human intelligence, jobs, and energy consumption) and crime (and its underlying causes, not just filling prisons). I don’t see a lot of people in positions of control that are actually taking meaningful action to change them for the country (at least not positively).

I hope you all will be watchful for the rhetoric in play by our leaders. Look at voting records using non-partisan pages like govtrack. Monitor politician honesty through sites like Snopes, FactCheck, and Politifact. Follow the movement of money through OpenSecrets. Cut the cord with cable news and social media. Read books. Focus less on politics than on philosophy, history, science, and economics. Look behind flags and crosses and pageantry (there is generally something unflattering hiding behind it all). That you will reach for your better selves and not let yourself be led astray by hateful and misleading words. That you will not just vote for change, but that you will -be- the change you wish to see, and ultimately, that you will seek not just to serve you and yours, but that you will seek to serve the world around you. Maybe even consider running for an office. The system may be broken, but it will not be mended by running it as we have been or giving it back to structures with failing records. We have a chance to mend our republic before it is shattered… Not the Democrats. Not the Republicans. Not the influencers. Not the talking heads on Fox or CNN. Not the church. We the people. The nation. The manifestation of Our Will.

After all, we may be many, but in the end, we’re still one. One planet. One species with one chance to make our presence here count for something.