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    Occupy Theaters: A New Political Process To Reorient Government To Serve The People
    Occupy Theaters: A New Political Process To Reorient Government To Serve The People
    Occupy Theaters: A New Political Process To Reorient Government To Serve The People
    Ebook61 pages43 minutes

    Occupy Theaters: A New Political Process To Reorient Government To Serve The People

    By David L. Smith

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    About this ebook

    Most Americans know their democracy has been hijacked by Big Money; that politicians are working for their rich contributors and leaving We The People in the lurch. The Tea Party knows it, and so too does the Occupy movement and both want to get out of the hole. The problem is the Tea Party wants to dig deeper, and the Occupy movement doesn’t where to find a ladder.

    In “Occupy Theaters,” Dartmouth- and Stanford-trained economist David L. Smith provides the ladder, proposing a new political process to break the Big Money’s stranglehold on American Democracy, thereby reorienting government to serve the People.

    In this new democratic process, the current dominant political medium, television, would be replaced by Internet social media, through which large numbers of people would be persuaded to gather from time to time in a nationwide network of Internet-linked multiplex movie theaters. Multiplex theaters would become the dominant political venue, replacing the couch in front of the television in which passive, solitary voters are force-fed Big Money’s propaganda. A portion of ticket sales to these Assemblies and of food concession sales would replace Big Money as the dominant source of funding. Thus liberated from the corrupting influence of Big Money, candidates nominated and elected through the new process would serve the interests of their constituencies.

    Occupy Theaters represents the next logical step in political organization: local, city, county, state and, ultimately, national town meetings taking place in Internet-linked theaters at times when they would otherwise remain unused. High-tech meets high-touch -- all well within today’s technical capabilities, lacking only the vision and the popular will to make it happen. “Occupy Theaters” provides the vision; readers must supply the popular will.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateJun 26, 2014
    ISBN9780988872820
    Occupy Theaters: A New Political Process To Reorient Government To Serve The People
    Author

    David L. Smith

    David L. Smith (1929-2022) was professor emeritus at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. Prior to his academic career, he labored a number of years in the Indianapolis television market as a producer/director, production manager, and program manager. He created, wrote, and hosted a weekly thematic movie series entitled When Movies Were Movies, which had a very successful run of ten years. He also served as executive producer for several nationally syndicated television programs. And, his writings about the movie industry were widely published.

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      Book preview

      Occupy Theaters - David L. Smith

      process?

      Chapter 1: The Problem.

      There are two kinds of people in America today: those who know the country is in trouble and urgently needs fixing, and those resting peacefully beneath their headstones.

      The Problem

      You will find America’s problems described and analyzed in considerable detail in my first book, The Predicament: How did it happen? How bad is it? The case for radical change now! (2nd ed. 2013 www.the-predicament.com) from which this slender volume is excerpted and further developed in 2014. The Predicament, written for and dedicated to the Millennial Generation, contains a warning of dangers the country and, indeed, the world face. It is also a call to action, presented in the following pages.

      Both The Predicament and the book you are now reading urge Millennials to take charge of their destiny by:

      Restoring sanity to the political discourse even before their time to assume political office and by

      Spearheading the organization of a new political process, bypassing the corrupting electoral influence of Big Money and TV. This new process is designed to elect representatives at all levels of government committed to reorienting government to serve The People rather than moneyed interests, as at present.

      From their vantage, the Millennial generation has an inkling of the mess the country is in – sub-standard public-school education, increasingly expensive college tuition, crushing student loans, dismal job opportunities, low pay, high taxes, unpaid apprenticeships, crushing youth unemployment, reluctant returns to the family nest, uncertain prospects for retirement security and health care. Millennials wonder why they can’t shuck their student loans through bankruptcy when corporations can resort to bankruptcy to shed their debts and pension obligations to retirees, even as top management collects huge salaries, benefits and perks. Millennials look in astonishment at the current $16+ trillion national debt they will be asked to shoulder – most of it owed to rich old white people and foreigners – and ask themselves, What did we do to deserve this?

      Bottom line: Rich folks within the senior generations are living large and sending the Millennials the bill.

      But it’s much worse than just that, as I fully reveal in The Predicament. For the present, however, let me summarize the situation by quoting the Jeff Daniels character, Will McAvoy, in the opening scene from The Newsroom, the new HBO series by The West Wing creator, Aaron Sorkin, which aired on June 24, 2012. McAvoy responds to the question from a young college student, What makes the United States the greatest country in the world?

      Well, our Constitution is a masterpiece, James Madison was a genius, the Declaration of Independence is, for me, the single greatest piece of American writing. . . [When pressed for a human response" he continues:] It’s not the greatest country in the world. . . there’s some things you should know. . . there is absolutely no evidence to support the statement that we’re the greatest country in the world. We’re 7th in literacy, 27th in math, 22nd in science, 49th in life expectancy, 17th in infant mortality, third in median household income, number 4 in labor force, and number 4 in exports. We lead the world in only three categories, number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real, and number one in defense spending, where we spend more than the next twenty six countries combined, twenty five of whom are allies. Now none of this is the fault of a twenty-year-old college student, but you, nonetheless, are a member of the worst, period, generation, period, ever, period. So when you ask what makes this the greatest country in the

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