Cry Wilderness by Frank Capra

Author:Frank Capra
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rare Bird Books
Published: 2018-10-08T18:52:54+00:00

Chapter Seven

Homo Americanus is a political animal. Ever since the classic revolutionary phrases of Tom Paine, John Adams, and Tom Jefferson transfused Liberty and Freedom into our bloodstream, we have been “We, the People!” Three little words: “We, the People”—but they turned history inside out.

Many slogans and battle cries have sparked causes, wars, and revolutions: “Deutschland Uber Alles!,” “Workers of the World Unite!,” “Remember the Maine!,” “Geronimo!,” “On Wisconsin!”

However, these “Calls to Arms!” are, to put it crudely, cries of “sic ’em” to incite man against man, gang against gang, people against people!

But “We, the People” is a clarion call for people against ideas; against tyranny, injustice, greed, corruption. Not a few, not some, but all the people—of all colors, class, or clime—exhorting each other to unite against the evils of the times. That is the grand concept capsuled into three little words—words of extraordinary power and meaning; words that spell HOPE!

But for us who live in the home of the brave, the three words not only spell hope, but politics—that grand old game between the “ins” and the “outs.” What spearing fish is to Eskimos, politics is to Americans—a way of life. Our national pastime, enjoyed with gusto by every male and female between ten and a hundred, is not baseball or wine festivals; it is elections.

We introduce the game early in grade schools, teaching children how to nominate and elect school and classroom leaders. In high school, the virus spreads from the scholastic confines to infect the extracurricular activities of sports, clubs, and social shindigs. In colleges and universities, the fever rises into all-out election campaigns, with bands, rallies, speeches, posters (some funny, some cruel). This is the boot camp for the “pro” league.

Those of us who leave college for the work-a-day world carry the election bug with us. We join the “amateur league” and elect officers for service clubs, women’s clubs, kennel clubs; for unions, industry, professions; sports, churches, jails and prisons; even the Cosa Nostra elects sub-rosa leaders with super-rosa credentials. No one can escape being elected to something. We have become a nation of all Chiefs and no Indians. But that’s We, the People—amateurs or not, we love it.

But it’s the battle of the “pros” that sends us into a frenzy every other November, when presidents (every four years); congressmen; state, county, and city officials—and the village dog catchers—all come back to We, the People for election or reelection; and to have their heads deflated by the rude reminder that they work for us; that our secret little “X’s” will mean thumbs-up or thumbs-down for half of them.

And so we sit smugly glued to our TV sets, as (in between sexy gals brainwashing us into thinking we’d all be more potent in bed if we drink this, smoke that, or gargle both) all the candidates come into our living rooms, wearing makeup, oozing charm and integrity as they “point with pride” at themselves and “view with alarm” at their worthy opponents, who are always nameless. And we love it.

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