Lately, I have felt very frustrated. I am an American. I love my country and I want it to be the best that it can be. I have felt like the guy from the movie Network who screamed at the top of his lungs, ” I am mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.” Well, I am not quite that frustrated but let us be serious for a moment.

I am an American! I don’t care about political ideology. I only care about what works and what is best for all Americans. I don’t care if you are a Democrat or a Republican, it does not matter. What I do care about is if you are interested in fixing the problems that we have in this country or not. I am pragmatic. I believe that most Americans are not ideologues and that they only care about what is working and not working.  They, too, want to fix what is broken. We who are Americans are desperate to see the return of bi- partisanship.

If the truth be told there is no absolute truth about most anything. And for any politician who tells you that only he has the answers, watch out. Hold on to your wallet, and your copy of our Constitution.

Our system of government is broken when on issue after issue, our elected representatives in Washington can’t sit down and work it out. The country as a whole has formed a consensus on many issues, and even within each political party,  opinions have coalesced into a consensus on the minimum wage, fixing our broken infrastructure, climate change and income inequality, just for starters. And that is only on domestic issues, on issues of foreign affairs we are darned tired of wars, and the lies that we are told about them.

What we have my fellow Americans is a tyranny of the minority. If most Americans agree on the key issues of the day, what the heck is wrong? Why won’t our representatives do what is necessary to follow the wishes of we the people? If only the few, are holding us back, they become the source of the problem. The result of having the politics of no, is a tyranny of the minority. This tyranny exists when poll after poll shows a consensus of the people on issue after issue.

For one, we have elected too many people who don’t believe in government. They believe that government is the problem. Well, it is not the government that is the problem. It is the people in government who fail to listen to the people.

If you have a problem in your family, you sit down with your spouse and you try to come to a decision that attempts to remedy the problem that you face, whether it is a budgetary problem or a problem at work or with your children.We have an American family, we are all part of the fabric of what is America.

We need to demand of our representatives, solutions, or at least the attempt to fix our problems. If they continue to sit on their collective hands, we should send them home. We should send home those who are there for themselves or who are so ideological that they refuse to be both pragmatic or willing to compromise. For those who are among our citizenry, shame on you if you stand for the premise that doing nothing is a good idea. Our very safety is at stake if we don’t have people willing to compromise.

One of the problems in Europe now is that they too are stuck in the old way of doing things. Instead of having a growth policy, they continue to support austerity. As a result of their unwillingness to change course, we now hear not only echos of the past but we are seeing the extremes of fascism and communism raise their ugly heads.

If we fail to change our ways, we too, will see a threat to our freedoms by those who seek conformity and control in the name of safety and progress.

We lead the world in billionaires unless you count all of the Saudi princes, but little else.

Italy, probably longs for the days of Mussolini when at least the trains ran on time.

If we want to have a country with long term prosperity, we need to have people in Washington willing to talk to each other. It appears that even members of one political party are having one heck of a time sitting down and deciding on what plans they have to accomplish something for the people.

We should have a two party system concerned about having ideas that each political party can argue and compete  over. We should be discussing which aspect of each plan might have a potential to succeed. If we don’t battle over what are the best ideas, and the best solutions,  America’s best days are, indeed, behind us. If we do not shake ourselves from our lethargy, we may very well be relegated to the dustbin of history. We must realize that only though pragmatism and compromise may we find ourselves a way out of the mess that we currently have. Ideology may very well be fun to argue over but it is no way to run a government. We should remember that we are a nation of laws and not of men. We should seek to follow what the founders stated in the preamble to the Constitution, and be the best that we can be. We are all Americans.