I was reading through com­ments on a news article about ACTA (yet more behind-closed-doors gov­ern­ment hijinks) and I stum­bled upon this little sta­tistic: 86% of Amer­i­cans believe that our gov­ern­ment has failed. I’m para­phrasing. I don’t even know if it’s true. But think about it: in a polit­ical era when a 55% to 45% vic­tory in an elec­tion is con­sid­ered a land­slide vic­tory, get­ting Amer­i­cans as a group to agree so over­whelm­ingly to any­thing could be con­sid­ered grounds for a rev­o­lu­tion. It makes me wonder, if true or even close (I’d take 75%) what we could do if we took that majority sen­ti­ment and ran with it.

Just think: 86%. In the metaphor in my head, that kind of sen­ti­ment is sociopo­lit­ical kin­dling, hop­ping with ther­mo­dy­namic poten­tial. What kind of cat­a­lyst would it take to light? What could we burn? Okay, I’ll con­cede that it’s not that simple. I know why I think gov­ern­ment is failing or has failed, but that rabid foaming Teabagger on FOX News – I mean, Glenn Beck – prob­ably feels the same way for a dif­ferent reason. And those two points of view are likely not the only ones out there. I can’t think of any one group in this country who would be com­pletely happy with that state of our gov­ern­ment except large cor­po­ra­tions. They get pretty much what­ever they want.

I was thinking about this today after seeing a pic­ture of that moron John Boehner that came with a head­line like “Boehner seeks to quash health­care bill”. An entire polit­ical school of thought has been built on the dogma that gov­ern­ment is the problem and not the solu­tion. And the Repub­lican party is somehow able to build polit­ical cap­ital on this? How? “Please make me part of gov­ern­ment so I can make sure that gov­ern­ment doesn’t work!” Then they borrow the Lib­er­tar­ians’ eco­nomic prin­ci­ples and basi­cally abdi­cate any respon­si­bility to the Amer­ican people. “Yes, elect me to office so I can do nothing while I’m there except make sure gov­ern­ment does nothing!” Or, “Tax cuts can cure any­thing! Even the flu!” And, of course, com­pa­nies love it because all the respon­si­bility for guarding our economy falls to them. Now, cor­rect me if I’m wrong, but that seems a little like asking the inmates to guard the prison.

I realize that stu­dents don’t learn much his­tory any­more. I didn’t. How­ever, everyone is prob­ably familiar with the Amer­ican Rev­o­lu­tion and how this country came to be. The Amer­ican colonies revolted against mother Eng­land and set up their own gov­ern­ment. Or some­thing like that. The rest is details, really. Born from that rev­o­lu­tion is the “silent” rev­o­lu­tion that plays out every 4 or 8 years. Its some­thing that never fails to awe the news media: “the peaceful transfer of power from one Amer­ican leader to the next”. Wow – as if we’re the only ones in the his­tory of the Earth to accom­plish this.

And it hap­pens with only 55% of the country sup­porting it. Often a little less. But 86%? What kind of silent rev­o­lu­tion could that bring? What, besides a bunch of rich old white guys telling us it’s the Amer­ican Way stands between everyone else and a new system of gov­ern­ment? Or per­haps a few new inde­pen­dent nations? I know Glenn Beck would prob­ably be hap­pier if I weren’t living in his country and I sure would love to see him deported or just put in a padded room where he could get the med­ica­tion he so clearly needs. And while we’re on the sub­ject, Texas has just got to go. Sorry Austin. I’m willing to make some sacrifices.

The point is, our gov­ern­ment has and con­tinues to fail. Some people know it because that’s what Teabag­gers and Repub­li­cans have sold them. Some people know it because we’ve seen what hap­pens: ACTA, NAFTA, PATRIOT, but no MEDICARE for all. The kin­dling has been col­lected and the air this polit­ical season has been very very hot and very very dry (lots of con­gressmen talking). It wouldn’t take much to light it all up. I’m not sure I want to be around when it hap­pens since I’m not friends with either extreme of the polit­ical rainbow. I also know enough to know that I don’t know how to solve the prob­lems. But I do know they need to be fixed, and the time for fixing gov­ern­ment from within may be coming to an end (when cam­paign finance reform died, it became pretty much impossible).

It would seem another 85.999997% of the country agrees. Good thing rev­o­lu­tion is the Amer­ican way. I just hope it can be silent one.