Americans, Use your 3 Biggest Super Powers Now!

Most people will tell you that they feel like we are in one of the strangest places in our history that they have known. I have to agree. It’s a place where nothing feels quite right but all hell hasn’t broken loose quite yet either. Rather it is erupting in parts here and there. Environmental catastrophes here and there, threats to our democracy, rollbacks on certain freedoms, high inflation, and the rise of bigotry and celebration of ignorance that seems to know no bounds. I could go on and on. It’s rather a slow burn. We still have communities that haven’t recovered from Covid and the new societal norms which are far less social than before as things go more and more online too.

Nevertheless, if we journey back years before the younger Bush took office, we were a country that had made great progress. In the Obama years, we even managed to make more progress on Civil Rights issues, at least, like never before with the first black president and the passing of LGBT marriage. Then, that progressive wave, which had built and built, fell. The rip tide is now pulling back on the progress we had made through extreme radical Republicans who have radicalized what should be a fair and balanced Supreme Court and House. It truly is a Nightmare Before Christmas out there. It’s really hard to make sense of all the stories, drama, wars, and arguments that pit people against each other so let me break it down for you in a nutshell.

It came to me when I saw my cousin’s post about going on strike with the UAW for the big 3 Auto workers recently. She said that we are no longer the United States of America but rather the United Corporations of America. Back in 2022, researchers found big companies like Amazon, Nike, Hersheys, and others have been making big profits since COVID-19 while we the consumers have been paying for it in higher inflation rates. Yes, you heard that right. While they are giving bonuses to their shareholders, they are making you the consumer pay for it. Check out The Guardian Article and The Hill Article

This led me to ask myself: What is this has all been about? Money? Power? It really does come down to both and I can prove it to you. Clear the smoke away and we are being distracted while these corporations get more power. What are our biggest super powers for change as average-joe Americans? Are they under threat right now? And what can we do about it?

I see 3 big Super Powers and they have all been under attack in very direct ways in 2020 but indirect ways even before then.

1st is our Voting Power. There is a reason corporations lobby with billions for votes and control of Congress every year. It gives them the power of legislation that benefits their businesses and essentially screws the rest of us. What happened in the era of Trump, our business tycoon or business baboon hired on for a president? They cast a big shadow of doubt around the legitimacy of our ability to get accurate votes. They tried to eliminate certain people from voting like certain minorities. These extremists themselves, when they didn’t like the vote or believe it, tried to take out the people and the process altogether. Gerrymandering, even before that, has always been used in unjust ways to secure what? Secure voting by creating boundary districts that are populated in favor of one party. This is now being reversed in several states. My state just did thanks to VOTERSNOTPOLITICIANS movement here. You have to ask yourself in any superhero movie, when a villain tries to take out a super heroes power or destroy them all together that means one thing–they are a threat. That power has validity. So when the party followers of Trump illegally tried to removed votes, falsify what happened in the election, and make people who still believe our voting process is rigged against them, how precious that power really is. It is a right still safe guarded in this country by the Constitution and we must value it and USE IT.

But let’s go back further, for ages, there has been a conspiracy to say our entire government system doesn’t work. You hear it all the time “They are all crooks!” or “I’m not voting for anyone because none of them are any good!” Well, you know what, just because a politician isn’t perfect and can’t do everything everyone wants doesn’t make them a crook. You don’t burn the whole thing down as not working or if everyone did that, what happened in traditions past in countries that did that is little dictators came in. This is exactly what the enemies of democracy want us to do. Distrust our process, stop voting. It is our superpower! Of course, they want us to give it up! We must not fall into this trap if we truly believe that we ever had something special in this country. Our right to vote is a special power and people wouldn’t be paying money to influence politicians to vote their way if we with our votes were not a powerful threat to their misguided interests! Think about it!

Okay, so what do we with these corporations that are out of control, lobbying in Congress, creating this high inflation to line their pockets and protect themselves while we all drown and our wages never go up? If corporations have this kind of hold, what hope is there? This is where our second Super Power comes in!

Our second Super Power is Our Money. Along with our voting power, we have our money power. Corporations exist because we spend OUR money on their products and some of us on their stocks. If we created an ethical watchdog movement, we could easily stop spending our money on a corporation that wasn’t operating ethically and shut it down. We could stop them from lobbying or whatever we wanted to do until they cleaned up their act. Corporations operate on our spending money. It’s OUR buying power. We need to find a way to come together, create a nationwide movement that people will join, and use our money in this way. This is coming under attack because the wealthiest are seeking a stranglehold on our government while making the rest of us so poor that we won’t be doing much of anything. We must act now.

Our third Super Power is Freedom of Speech. This too came under attack in 2020 with the whole “fake news” and who was telling the truth. The media was constantly under threat. When we have had so-called news media outlets being puppetted by extremist groups like what happened at Fox News, you get what they are getting, lawsuit after lawsuit. But now the damage is done. People have believed the lies and still do. We have to protect our Freedom of Speech while also protecting the validity of accurate reporting and facts.

In conclusion, it is clear some agent has been out to take us down as a country. Like a villain in super hero movie, it has gone after our 3 biggest core strengths as a country. If we give up on those or lose them, we will be taken over as a country. The biggest protector of those ( a guardian) was our previously unbiased Supreme Court which has now been compromised by a prior president (purposely not capitalized here) who appointed members that would vote in ways along political party lines rather than constitutional lines. So, it is now not a balanced Court. Therefore, WE THE PEOPLE have to be our own Super Heroes. NO ONE is coming to save us.

Take a look a BIG 3 Auto Workers and what they are doing right now. They get out there and march until they get what the demands they are asking. This is what we will need to do. We will have to get out there and Vote. We may need to march for higher pay because corporations aren’t budging on that or removing inflation. They have no plans too. We will need to create a watchdog movement that directs us to which companies to take our money away from. This way we can use our spending power like a sword. Finally, we will need to use our freedom of speech as a shield for personal freedom while demanding for accurate reporting not bought by or controlled by extremist political factions. We may, God forbid, have to get off our asses and do something but we can. We can do this. Are you with me?

By the way, have you checked out my podcast on Spotify or the Swell App? I talk about these kinds of things and a whole lot more there! Go here for some samples: HomoSanity