The battle between the political left and the political right is ongoing, and both sides see their fair share of corruption. So, former congressman and former mayor of Cleveland Dennis Kucinich weighed in on the political playing field in his new book “The Division of Light and Power.” The story begins with a young 23-year-old Kucinich Christmas shopping at the mall when suddenly a power outage took over the downtown Cleveland area. With a youthful curiosity, Kucinich quickly took matters into his own hands and investigated. To his surprise, the power outage was caused by the city’s inability to get backup from the private Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company. Appalled by the state of corporate and political relationships, he got elected to the Cleveland City Council, thus beginning his journey into the political sphere.
Corporate and political corruption
“The Division of Light and Power” is a story of how corporate espionage and sabotage lead to organized crime conspiracy for assassination. According to Kucinich, it is no secret that the government wastes money. But the story he recounts is about an illegal attempt by a corporation to steal the city’s municipal electric system to raise everybody’s rates. In other words, the attention was placed elsewhere, freeing the corporation from paying its debts on nuclear power plants. Evil, right?
Well, this is certainly not the first time corporations have acted on behalf of themselves at the cost of others. While the right generally focuses on government corruption and the left on corporate corruption, in this story, we see how the inefficiencies of both sides leave room for greater evil.
Communication is key.
In Kucinich’s opinion, both sides of the political field need to put their differences aside to rid the country of its corruption. Using a rather powerful metaphor of the eagle, Kucinich emphasized how the United States’s national bird needs two wings to fly. Conflict will always persist, but our approach to resolving it must change. Kucinich is a firm believer in using compassion and love in the fight to defeat corruption. In his words, “We must search for our commonalities; we cannot forget the importance of love for our country and love for our fellow Americans in the context of celebrating this nation.”
