Mr. Nowlin, I am squarely in agreement. As the old saying goes, “All politics is local” (meaning citizen’s political views revolve around local concerns). America is in the same predicament as Haiti. In both countries, the wealthy seized control of their nations, by silencing the grassroots.

Here in America, local newspapers, radio, and cable tv stations were systematically put out of business and national and international media companies seized control of the news.

Together, these giant media companies systematically re-directed the attention of Americans to national politics – and away from local politics. As a result, the vast majority of Americans today, are looking to the president for solutions to local issues. Harder still the vast majority of Americans no longer know what is going on in their own communities, or what their local elected officials are doing. Unfortunately, once citizens stopped serving as guardians of their own neighborhoods and communities, they were wide open to exploitation and corruption.

Since local issues have up close and personal ramifications, tempers are flaring, and people are losing patience. Today, people are expecting presidents to solve local problems that only their city council members can solve. For example, the president cannot control land-use in every city, town, neighborhood, and county in America. The reason is simple, the land in every square mile of this country is so different, that even trying to control it at the national level would be disastrous.

All that said, Americans and Haitians, again, confront the same problem. Simply put, the grassroots have been gutted, leaving us without the resources we need, to pull ourselves back up on our feet. I see this everyday in the rural communities where I’ve lived. For example, some huge federal bill gets passed, with tons of money in it, for the very things our community needs and wants, but we don’t get a penny of it. The reason is that we don’t have anyone in our local government that has the time and resources necessary to apply for those funds or oversee the projects. We don’t have those kinds of people or resources because we can’t afford them. Heck, our local officials, the people we elect to represent us locally, all work for free.

Sounds like you and I agree, but neither one of us, has a roadmap out of this mess. That said, I’ve been watching Biden, and he has been doing more than I expected, or even hoped for, to challenge corporate power. And that is important to me, because “corporations” along with white Christian missionaries are the tools and the weapons of colonization. And that is the reason, that who is president matters to me.