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DEMOCRACY: Don't know what it means

| March 30, 2010 1:05 PM

Last week our president signed his much disputed health care reform package. Half of our Congress didn’t vote for it. A massive amount of Americans didn’t want it, but it passed anyway. So I was wondering… can somebody, anybody, define democracy for me? I’m not sure what it is anymore.

Last month Gov. Gregroire decided that the state of Washington needed more money and signed a bill overturning I-960, an initiative which states that taxes cannot be raised in the state of Washington save for a vote of its citizens. So there was a vote, then there was a law, but that didn’t work for the government so they ignored it. That doesn’t sound like democracy to me. What happened in Washington, D.C., doesn’t sound like democracy to me either.

So as a now middle-aged woman who really has paid little attention to politics over the years and hasn’t even voted consistently (oh but I voted for savior Obama, yes I did) I am really starting to be afraid to live in this country. I am really starting to be very afraid of what I am witnessing around me. I am starting to be very afraid about the fact that everyone that I try to address this with either looks at me like I am some crazy conspiracy theorist, or agrees but gives me a “what ya gonna do?” shrug.

I Googled political action groups in both the Spokane and Coeur d’Alene areas and either there are none or the existing ones aren’t really doing anything, unless I just didn’t look far enough. What I did find was a video called The Obama Deception which scared me even more. 

So what do you do when your government is failing you? What do you do when the government in the greatest country in the world is turning into something evil? Where do you go? Is there a choice other than to watch it happen? We have elected officials, people WE elect to do what WE tell them to do, that are doing whatever they please. We have elected officials running and winning campaigns based on promises they have no intention of keeping and no longer even make a feeble attempt at a guise are actually doing what they said they would do. 

I don’t understand this very scary process anymore! So again I ask, before we are being marched into prison camps by soldiers with sub-machine guns… can someone please define democracy for me? Our government seems to have forgotten its definition and replaced it with one very similar to socialism or some other “ism” that isn’t very pretty.

JULIE HARNEY

Post Falls