Last week, on tax day, Florida postal worker Doug Hughes managed to land his small, slow-moving gyrocopter on the lawn of the US Capitol, in one of the most protected airspaces in the world.
Many publications are focusing on the fact that he was able to evade our entire national defense system, but that should be no surprise to anyone. Complete security has always been, and will always be, a myth. Julius Caesar, the all-powerful leader of the Roman empire, couldn’t stop his friend Brutus from murdering him, and the US spending $600 billion a year on defense didn’t stop a handful of terrorists with box cutters on 9/11.
I hope this doesn’t overshadow the real message – why a mailman decided to risk his life to deliver a message to the US government. He is not a terrorist. Indeed, he went out of his way to alert the authorities in advance, sharing his plans with his local newspaper and keeping police informed.
The message delivered by Hughes is that our government has been corrupted by money – “legalized, institutionalized bribery” – and it is time to take our government back, “Because we the people own Congress”.
Hughes is also not a radical, he represents “moderates united by faith in principles of democracy”. He is not advocating extremist views, unless you consider the founding fathers of this country to be extremists.
Will we listen?
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Ralph Nader’s podcast last week featured salon political columnist, Bill Curry, who discusses, among other things, our modern hyper-inflated election process and how it packages and corrupts our candidates and degrades our democracy. Worth a listen.
http://ralphnaderradiohour.com/
I felt so sorry for Mr. Hughes — he put so much effort and judgement into this act just to get heard, and hardly anyone paid any attention to what he had to say.
Rachel Maddow played a clip of the carefully-honed, sound-bite-sized statement he made when he was being arrested, but that was the only coverage I encountered that reported on the truth he risked so much to air.