By Arlene Engelhardt
The shock is wearing off…
Perhaps the better question, how did we get here in the first place? This did not happen overnight. People have been aware that things have not been going well here for some time. Many felt they were outsiders. And tell me, is the outsider in now or is the insider out? What is power? What is corruption?
DR. JANINE R. WEDEL has been warning us for years of a deep dysfunction in not only our government, but in our society. She is one of the few experts who predicted that this country would be ripe for a demigod so long as he/she was considered an outsider.
She is a university professor in the School of Public Policy at George Mason University. She writes about issues of governing, corruption, foreign aid, and influence elites through the lens of a social anthropologist. She is a winner of the 2001 Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order (previous holders include Mikhail Gorbachev and Samuel Huntington). Dr. Wedel’s latest book, Unaccountable: How Elite Power Brokers Corrupt Our Finances, Freedom, and Security exposes new forms of corruption (Pegasus, October 15, 2014). She also directs the Mapping Shadow Influence project, which displays in multidimensional detail how today’s top power brokers hold sway, capturing the very building blocks of influence. Wedel is a pioneer in applying anthropological insights to topics dominated by political science and economics. A five-time Fulbright fellow, Wedel has received awards from the National Science Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation among many others.
Just because the shock is over, it does not mean we are not worried and concerned about the directions our country may go. I feel the very basic democracy of our country is at stake. We all need to be strong and examine honestly what are the values and virtues, the moral center that we think
America needs to be. This country is being defined anew right now and we have to be stronger than we have been. To do that, we need the deepest inner aspect of our soul to be the guide. We need our poets and our song writers to help us on this path.
Luckily such a poet/song writer, FERRON, will be here in concert Wednesday, November 30 at 7 PM at the Catherine A Hickman Theater of Gulfport, 5501 27th Avenue South, Gulfport. FERRON will be a guest on the show this Thursday.
Tune into From a Woman’s POV Thursday at 10 am to hear more!
