Two hundred and forty-six years ago, give or take, we declared our independence from Great Britain. To be accurate, we started the Revolution in April 1775; Jefferson began drafting the Declaration in June 1776; the Continental Congress voted to endorse it on July 2; they didn't sign it until August; and it wasn't delivered to the King and Parliament until that November. I mention these details only to remind us all that our democracy has always been imprecise and imperfect. Mostly, it has been a series of ideas, symbols, and collective actions committed by people with good intentions. However, it is not efficient. It is not all-knowing. It is frequently wrong. And its success has been dependent on whether or not We the People were paying attention, and we haven't always.

 

We have not been optimistic about our ability to fix the problems that face our nation. They are mounting—obvious failures to anyone who understands democracy. History is against us, and every day we neglect to address them, they become more and more insurmountable. Maybe we have just seen too much of the world, or maybe we have lost faith that anyone will stop talking long enough to listen. But, we can't help but feel an overriding sense that we must at least try.

 

We are reminded of a passage from de Tocqueville. He said almost two centuries ago, 'The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.' You see, friends, We the People, have awesome and quite unimaginable power. You just don't realize it. But it is the potential for us to connect those dots for you that has given us hope.

 

We Baby-Boomer-Buttheads have screwed up terribly. And we started with such promise. We were the ones who first said, 'Don't trust anyone over thirty.' Serious words of wisdom, are as true today as they were fifty years ago.

 

Think of what we accomplished back then. The '60s, man! We moved the world toward Civil Rights and Women's Rights. We marched and fought. We stopped a war. No one had ever done that. We put those corrupt bastards on notice and sent Nixon packing. We upset 'the good old-boy network' and instituted real change, man. Real change."

 

But we overshot. We got arrogant. We got comfortable, leading us to this new twilight zone of stupidity. The world kept changing, maybe faster because of what we had done, and we couldn't see it. Now, we have destroyed many levels, and we may have blown it on everything. At least the generation that preceded us understood they were wrong and content to ride our arrogance right off the cliff, rather than undermine the idea that could save us.

 

It is deeply meaningful for us to hear members of our generation, the youth, dismiss us with sanctimony, to dismiss us as less than we ought to be. They criticize us as lazy, self-righteous fools of nothing. The truth is, we are nothing but failures. We understand nothing; we accept responsibility for nothing.

 

Robin Williams' words from Good Will Hunting echo loud: 'It's not your fault. It's not your fault.' These are the problems we face today. They are not your fault. They are the fault of my generation. The failures we face as a nation today are the faults of my generation."

 

For all of the promises and accomplishments of our generation, we failed to learn what we should have learned. We failed to teach what we should have taught, and as a result, we are not sure we will make it. We are not sure our nation will make it. We are not paying attention. We follow without thinking. We're willing to destroy ourselves, almost gleefully, for a myriad of reasons, most commonly out of our selfishness, and we're willing to ignore or even fight against the truth if it comes into conflict with our perfect vision of what the world ought to be. It is an absolute fact that our democracy is failing. We are sliding toward civil war or worse, and we have no one to blame but ourselves.

 

The ironic thing about all of this is that it is your generation—your ideas, your passion, and your dreams—that is going to have to save us. You're going to have to start your revolution, no less remarkable than the '60s or even that of 1776, to fulfill the promise of our Founding Fathers. But, to give you something on which to build, we need to get deep about what's going on, what's wrong with our political process—what's wrong with us. We’re not going to play favorites. We’re not on any partisan or ideological mission. We’re not going to sugarcoat it, and we’re not going to bullshit you either. We’re going to tell you the truth—the whole truth. It will sound odd to you. You hear it so infrequently, or maybe you have never heard it.

 

But we guarantee you will know it when you do. Nothing we have to say is anything you don't already know. When you do get it, you will understand, maybe for the first time, just how dark and foreboding your future is. Please think of how those boys felt the night before they went into battle at Gettysburg, as they lay on the ground listening to taps play in the distance. You may not be facing musket and ball as they did, but you are facing a challenge no less daunting to your future.

 

Friends, we would not put you or me through any of this if we did not believe there was something you could do to save us. The objective will be remarkably familiar, and common sense if you like, but the strategy to get there will be something you have never seen or heard before. In practical terms, it will seem quite reasonable, exceptionally fair, and completely plausible. It will also put you in a place where you can make it happen—if you choose. We live in a technological age where millions of people can be moved to change in a time frame that would have seemed like magic to our Founding Fathers. We can fix this. We can fix this nation. We the People, led by you, can fix it all.

 

We believe there was a divine force at work when the Founding Fathers wrote our Constitution. We know it sounds almost quaint, but think about where those guys came from. For centuries, people had been controlled by monarchs and dictators, slavery was a worldwide fact for millennia, and millions of lives had been snuffed out in the name of God. Life itself wasn't very valuable. But the Founding Fathers did something extraordinary that began to change all that and resulted in a consistent march toward the betterment of the world.

 

The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were written to put power closest to the people, to be preeminent. They wanted the House of Representatives to be the closest to the people but kept in check by the Senate and a President. And, within the boundaries they set, the Supreme Court through Marbury v. Madison added another layer of control—all to make it work for We the People. It was masterful, and deeply embedded in their intent for it all to work together for the greater good. They wanted an open and honest collaboration between citizen representatives to find laws that made sense, where mistakes were expected in a process to learn and grow, and not as a tool to attack one's enemies. They wanted legislators to find workable and sensible compromises, and they did not want it to be competitive. They mistrusted political parties and factions for their inherent dishonesty. They liked the idea of trial and error, learning and improving... How did it go so wrong?

 

Veritas... truth... the mother of all virtue—our society has lost sight of the importance of truth. Lying has become a way of life, so accepted that we have lost trust in everything. It used to be one of the most valued parts of our existence, a cornerstone to everything—reputation, integrity, honor – all rested on truth. Today, kids start lying in grade school, and they quickly find that a lie is more rewarding than telling the truth. We do not hold them accountable. There are few if any ramifications. Any high school and college, kids have become so good at disguising a lie, that it’s impossible to tell who is lying and who is not. There is no guilt. There are no signs of internal struggle. It is an integral part of who they have become, and it is destroying everything.

 

Volumes have been written on who to blame, but it doesn't matter. It has infected everything. Now, our entire society is founded on lies and liars, and worst of all is our leadership—our elected representatives. We have no one to look up to. There once was a time when open and honest debate meant working from a foundation of the whole truth and not an intentionally skewed list of talking points. Talking points are inherently dishonest because they intentionally distort the truth. When winning is the only thing that matters, nothing matters. We've lost our way. Today in the United States of America, both political parties, in blazing impudence to our heritage, are using a distorted reality with sinister intent—to steal power and declare their own rules. And, We the People have been reduced to learning the truth from the number of Pinocchios—a childish game judged by yet another group of liars.

 

The media, the open and free press, championed in the First Amendment to the Constitution, was specifically designed to protect us from the lies of tyranny and those covetous of raw power. It was intended to be the bastion of honesty in a dangerous and cruel world. It was intended to be the 'Fourth Estate,' an institution of external oversight for everything the government wanted to do—an exalted fortress of integrity.

 

There was a high school journalism teacher who was a retired editor from the Des Moines Register—crusty, demanding, unrelenting—exactly what you would want an editor to be. He wanted to pass on the noble demands of his calling. He taught us the famous words that were painted on the wall of Joseph Pulitzer's newsroom: Accuracy, Accuracy, Accuracy, and he demanded perfection in every facet of his teaching. He would grade our stories, particularly political news stories, on whether or not he could tell if we had a bias. This was at the height of the Vietnam War and emotions were strong even in high school newsrooms. His flat-out grading policy was an automatic 'F' if he could tell that the reporter had a bias. With him, integrity was absolute. He always said, 'The point of news is to allow your readers to make up their minds through a clear representation of the facts. If you decide you need to help them make their decisions, you're cheating the process and failing to fulfill your sacred duty as a journalist. He was not joking, not even a little bit.

 

The truth today is that it's all 'fake news.' For lack of a better word, 'news' is derived purely from considerations about money and personal opinion, and all content is driven primarily by those two factors. News organizations give their audiences what they want, and they keep pitching it for ratings and an inevitable echo effect. It is a symbiotic relationship, not an informative one. Audiences vie for the biased coverage that suits them most, and the networks give it back to them in a blur of self-gratification. If news organizations try to hold to journalistic integrity, they lose an audience. It is as simple as that.

 

When everyone played by the rules and journalists cared deeply about their personal and organizational integrity, things worked. Today, news outlets are no more than blatant public relations wings of their respective political affiliations and platforms—certainly not at all what was intended. When accused of personal fame-seeking or sensationalism, they protest and shout indignation at the outrageous attack on the free press, but in reality, they are every bit as bad as they appear.

 

We are living in 'Strawberry Fields,' and nothing is real. Think for a moment about why you believe what you believe. We don't care if you are a libertarian, conservative, liberal, progressive, socialist, or alt-whatever. How can you possibly trust anything you know?

 

What news source, to give you both sides of the story, is unbiased enough to believe, not who is telling the story in context? It is all about who you trust. There are still honest journalists out there, but how would you know the difference? Even if you think you are fair and balanced in your sourcing, we all gravitate to our worldview. For half of us, that's conservative news outlets, and for the other half, it's liberal news outlets—two completely different and intentionally crafted views of the same facts, and neither tells the whole story. The whole truth today is rarely if ever, heard, and if you did hear it, would you even recognize it? The truth is that your view of the world is intentionally manufactured by entities with an agenda.

 

Without truth and the rest of our American ideals, we are no better than any other nation. Many of us still hang on to the idea that our country is special. That is no longer true. Today, the factions that our Founding Fathers warned us about have devolved into a win-at-all-costs army of political zealots. Corruption and manipulation dominate the political process, and for the perpetrators, the ends justify the means. For God's sake, don't these people understand that Machiavelli is fundamentally incompatible with democracy? No faction has moral superiority over the other. No faction can see into the future. We need each other—liberal and conservative—and if you think we don't, you are a fool who understands nothing of history or democracy.

 

Liberals are ruled by emotion and dreams of a better world. This nation was founded by a group—by definition, liberals to a man—dreamers who dreamed of a better way to live and govern. They wrote and enacted a constitution that would enshrine a set of ideals that would provide a foundation to protect the people from themselves. Without liberals, slavery would not have ended; capitalism would have taken complete control in the 19th century; labor unions would not have been allowed to organize; Social Security, Civil Rights, Women's Rights, Medicare, Medicaid, and unemployment insurance—none would have come to fruition. Liberals have always been the fertile ground for social and governmental progress.

 

But, without conservatives holding onto what was practical, this nation would have ceased to exist a long time ago, and none of those things I just listed would have become a reality.

 

Some things we'd like to do are immensely challenging. Some things we'd like to do take time to develop. And some things we'd like to do threaten our very survival and cannot be done no matter how long we wait. History is impossible to overcome. We cannot rewrite, relive, or redo what has passed, but we can learn, grow, and improve. That is the gift given to us by our Founding Fathers.

 

Someday the writers of our history will call the last hundred years or so, the Age of Ideologies. We've tried them all—Communism, Socialism, Fascism, Capitalism, Progressivism, Conservatism, Liberalism, Libertarianism—and the list goes on. The truth is that all ideologies have nuggets of virtue and logic, and all are completely nuts in their extreme. After a hundred years or so of warring between them, you would think we would have been smart enough to figure that out. All ideologies, without exception, are nothing more than rhetorical platitudes designed to gain power, to convince people that they exclusively know better.

 

Take socialism, for example. It's an easy sell to the masses. There is a strong moral logic that flows from it, and who doesn't want free stuff? But the reality is that practiced on a large scale, socialism has always brought with it totalitarian rule; and death on a monumental scale; and it has never truly worked to the benefit of the people it was supposed to help. And, the whole truth—socialism has nothing to do with equality. Wherever crafty politicians have implemented it in name, real capital, as I call it, lurks and operates in the shadows, always in a form without rules or balance—much more corrupt than what it replaced. Socialism, as with all ideologies, when taken to an extreme, is nothing but a false god that sustains a dream that cannot be realized and then is kept alive by a vicious underground of power and corruption.

 

We understand that each of us has a certain degree of complicity in all of this. After all, we are 'We the People,' and like it or not, we share in our collective failure. As much as we know and have known we've been heading in the wrong direction for years, we have done little or nothing about it. We all know it. We go our way. We get our jobs. We buy our stuff and laugh and play, but things are not stable, and we see it everywhere. The most extreme of us are preparing for the apocalypse. We all kind of think they're crazy, but we're not so sure. Our favorite movies feature superheroes because they can face impossible challenges and still bring us back from the brink of disaster. Our favorite television show is the apocalypse, where zombies, who symbolize our narcissism, mindlessly walk down the road focused only on eating the flesh of those of us who are still alive and want a future. And our favorite books, they're all about justifying the wrong choices we make. Why doesn't someone write a book—'True Happiness Only Comes in Service to Others'? Oh, that's right, they did, but no one reads it much anymore.

 

We all know we're in real trouble and the signs are everywhere. We live in a world of façade and isolation. Rather than a prayer or kiss with a loved one at night, our first and last contact of each day is our phone. Our attitudes are no longer reflective of human reality but of carefully crafted and incessant marketing campaigns. We provide the demand for the most staggering drug use in human history and the most egregious human trafficking in 200 years. At an unprecedented rate, the soldiers who protect us come home from war and find suicide a better alternative than trying to make sense of our American reality. Fifty years ago, people who wanted to kill themselves would quietly slip off to the barn or maybe the garage and quietly end their lives. Today, they blast into our places of work, entertainment, worship, or our children's schools and do everything they can to kill as many as possible before they kill themselves. It has nothing to do with laws or gun control. Nor is it about insanity or fame. It's about a society that is so sick of itself, so completely out of love with one another that God is sending us a blazing message across the heavens.

 

And still, we refuse to see. As mentioned before, there is little that we have said that is beyond your understanding. It is an all too familiar exercise in futility—easy to forget. We chalk it up to a harsh, changing world over which we have little power. We are just victims of our time.

 

To this point, the things we have mentioned are largely personal failings—things that We the People could theoretically fix if we possessed enough moral and ethical courage. But the truth is the system is so rigged and so powerful none of us are in a position to stand and be counted. If we did, we most certainly would be in the gunsight of a vicious and well-funded mob. Our political process, our system of government, is broken. We’re sure you've heard that phrase many times over the past few years. Indeed, in polling, ninety percent of Americans agree. Think of that in itself for a moment. In a time when we can't get 55 percent of us to agree on anything, the overwhelming majority of us know that our political system is broken. And, we think the 10 percent that didn't agree didn't understand the question.

 

But systemic problems can be fixed by systemic solutions. Ask any operations engineer. For me, the greatest paradox of our time is that we all know our 'system' of government is broken, and yet not a single proposal from any faction has earnestly been made to fix the system.

 

We've all been taught in our system of government that elections are our opportunity to change things—to right our course. But, today, it is the election process itself that is at the heart of our problem. Our electoral process has been compromised and corrupted to the point that no election can effect substantive change. The truth is, that elections today reinforce control, not create an opportunity for change. The system will not tolerate substantive change, and we have seen that reality play out daily for many years now. Through the Obama Administration, the Trump Administration, and now into the Biden Administration, both sides have tried valiantly to lead, but with almost nothing lasting to show for their efforts. And it would not have mattered in the least if anyone else had been elected. The problem and the present reality would persist. The system is broken, and until we fix the system, we cannot change the trajectory of our descent.

 

The problems we are facing today have been a long time coming. Almost from the beginning, the rich and powerful have used and manipulated our government to their benefit. Now, do not misunderstand us. This is not an indictment of the rich. They embody the American dream and have for centuries. Nor is this an indictment of financial success or capitalism. This is purely a focused accusation against those who would use our government for their benefit at the expense of the people.

 

Our Founding Fathers had to wheel and deal to get the support necessary to ratify our Constitution, and, for all its good, we ended up with a document without adequate real-world controls—specifically, controls on those who would abuse the system for their benefit. The Founding Fathers were essentially good men, but it did not take long for lesser men to take advantage of what had been left out. As a result, American history is a long narrative of corrupt politicians, land speculators, war profiteers, public works contractors, military contractors, and many, many others who have used the government for their benefit. The truth is that our system of government was always ripe for corruption, and powerful elites have been stealing from us since the beginning.

 

It's natural to ask then, why has our system survived so long if it is so corrupt? Because, for most of our history, We the People have lived up to the responsibilities as citizens that our Founding Fathers intended, and we have been far more important to our nation's success than our government. The incredible wealth and opportunity that our nation spawned bred patriotism and loyalty unsurpassed in the history of the world, and we have shared a collective belief in the ultimate power of the people. All of these things allowed us to prosper despite the serious flaws in our government. We were always responsible for what was happening, and we have always known about it. But we have always been, except for a few remarkable moments in our history, just too comfortable and pleased with ourselves to do much about it.

 

Today, as we have discussed, we're in real trouble. We're at the end of our rope, and our systemic problems are threatening to destroy us all. As it was in ancient Rome, most Americans can't comprehend our way of life coming to an end, and can't imagine violence or lawlessness on a massive scale. But it is coming. And the chaos that will form in its wake has the potential to be no less debasing to the world than the Dark Ages were to the collapse of Rome.

 

We've all heard a lot about the 'Establishment' in the last few years. It is very real. Although, it means dramatically different things to different people. For me, it is simply those who would use our government for their benefit—putting their interests above the greater good of the people. Certainly, that would include anyone who would employ a lobbyist; anyone who would hire someone who formerly worked in government to help them gain and maintain government contracts or favors; anyone who would operate a Political Action Committee or Super PAC; anyone who would contribute a large amount of money to the electoral process—in particular those who would contribute millions or tens of millions of dollars; and of course, the armies of political operatives, both in and out of government, who are willing to do anything for money or power. It's probably also prudent to include foreign governments, transnational corporations, and non-citizens.

 

And here's the grating part… Because of our incredibly lax laws on political corruption, well-intended attempts to control campaign spending, and a list of court cases that went overwhelmingly in favor of actual government corruption, everything, the overwhelming majority of government corruption, is completely legal today. And why wouldn't it be? It's the Establishment and their willing servants in Congress who wrote the laws.

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But, again, we've been aware of all of this for a long time... For years now, every new campaign has called for change, and yet everyone who finds success must first fall in line with the Establishment cartels.

 

Consider what it takes to get elected to office. Say you're an honorable person, who wants to work for good government. The cost of running for Congress has gone from a few thousand dollars when I was a kid, to tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars today. To start, you may contact a handful of Political Action Committees that support positions with which you strongly agree. No harm, no foul, but that's not enough money to make it work. To get more, you have to go deeper into the Establishment: hire operatives with the right connections; use the money you raise to build more relationships with other PACs and Super PACs; and very soon you are nothing more than the talent—a figurehead in a web of people, entities, and lies who want something in return for what they've given you. You may even convince yourself that you are your person and make your own decisions, but that is nothing more than something you tell yourself so you can sleep at night. Your positions come ready-made from Establishment entities that call the shots—entities that have wildly more power and influence than you do.

 

The really scary part of this is how this reality impacts the foundational nuts and bolts of our republic—the part we think we control. All of these Establishment entities, no matter their respective interests, are managed by zealous operatives who care nothing for the greater good. They are singularly and passionately focused on their mission, and that emotional connection is exacerbated by the fact that their personal income, status, and power derive directly from the interest they serve. No matter if we strongly support and believe in their efforts, we have to ask ourselves, how reasonable do you think these people are willing to be to find workable solutions to our problems? Do they even want to solve problems, or do they want to keep going to work in their posh K Street offices and living in their beautiful DC estates? We all know what the answer is. It's about maintaining their livelihoods, their lifestyles, their power, and their positions. The Establishment always puts itself first, and that is the uncompromised gear that broke the system. It is all about money and power, and every one of us knows that it is the absolute truth.

 

Think about how they go about their mission. Every day it seems, they scream 'the sky is falling, the sky is falling' for no other purpose than to raise money. There may be a shred of truth in their cries of indignation, or there may not. It is completely irrelevant to their goal. They are mining sound bites and reactions to raise money. Reality, practicality, functionality, or genuine democratic solutions are of no interest to them. Their extremist statements have no aspiration to find common ground. Every one of their hyperbolic exhortations is just another gimmick, and solving problems for the greater good is not even a consideration. Why do you think these young congressional striplings skip through the halls of Congress throwing hand grenades without any regard for the damage they do to their party? It is because the money they raise as a result of their wild-eyed accusations is dramatically more important to them than the hierarchy of their party or the responsibilities of office. They don't care. Their goal is to raise money, to become famous, and the nation be damned.

 

Despite what has gone wrong along the way, it is important to note that all the good people in Congress tried to write the right thing. With noble intentions, they tried to curb campaign corruption in the early 1970s. McCain-Feingold made a valiant bipartisan effort at the beginning of this century to get things under control, but statutory law has repeatedly proven inadequate to the task. McConnell v. FEC, McCutcheon v. FEC, and Citizens United v. FEC collectively reinforced a legal footing so profoundly immoral that almost any financial manipulation of the system these days is legal. In fairness to stare decisis, the Court's rulings were well reasoned, but their effect has scraped away every bit of hope we had in reigning in the Establishment's abuse of power. The late Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in his dissent of the Citizens United decision, 'A democracy cannot function effectively when its constituent members believe laws are being bought and sold.' And that is exactly what is happening.

 

These rulings have created a legal infrastructure that gives the wide-ranging interests that comprise the Establishment de facto control over our government—a position that our Constitution had reserved for our elected representatives. This new system has allowed these groups to develop immense power based solely on their ability to raise money, and in the last decade or so, has gradually changed our democracy into the oligarchy it is today. Yes, that is what I said, oligarchy. The truth is the American Establishment is a functioning oligarchy in every sense of the definition.

 

Just for a moment, let's test our reality. Most of us have neighbors, family, and friends with whom we differ politically. We would be willing to wager all that we own, that if we sat down with these people we care about, we could design completely fair and workable solutions to any of our problems. There are three reasons why this would work. First, the great majority of the American people are not radically left or right. It's only about ten percent or so on both ends of the political spectrum, who incidentally control the oligarchy, and who are the extremists. Most of us, whether Democrat or Republican, are reasonable and fair-minded. Second, fundraising dollars would not be our first and last consideration. And third, we truly care about the people with whom we disagree. That friends, is how our system was intended to work and how it does work in small towns and counties throughout this country. Again, most Democrats and Republicans are fair, reasonable, and good people—not at all the frightening caricatures painted by the minions of the Establishment. The electoral process is even capable of destroying our system of government and our functioning democracy, and it will do so with self-serving conquest, where there is no truth, no honor, no integrity—only the ends-justify-the-means mentality. It is dirty. Both sides play the game. Destroying someone’s life or even ending it is not a far-fetched element in this saga.

 

At one time, Washington, DC was a warm and congenial sort of place. There was a sense of awe in seeing it for the first time: monuments to our history and our great leaders; temporary homes of those who were elected by the people to serve; respected institutions of higher learning dotted its backdrop, and at its center, a patriotic cemetery to honor our fallen heroes. It was beautiful... but today, all of those things have been overgrown by a cancer of gaudy opulence, pretension, and power.

 

We have done our best today to speak in clear terms and to tell the truth. We have been direct and avoided hyperbole as much as possible. We have used the word oligarchy in its textbook definition and described how it functions—without any sense of virtue—always putting the interests of the few above the many—leadership without humility—operating as a polyanthus of corruption. These United States are currently ruled by an unscrupulous oligarchy that will stop at nothing to control our lives and destroy anyone or anything that gets in its way. This is not at all what it was supposed to be. Today, We the People are a joke. We the People serve only the interests of the Establishment who serve themselves at the feeding trough of our government and our future.

 

As horrible a picture as we have painted for you, we believe there is a way back—a prescription for full recovery—better than ever. You see, you, right here, have the power to fix it.