Letting the Sun Shine
Kim and I sit on the sofa most nights while the afternoon turns to evening, listening to the day’s news and wondering about the state of the world. The current debate playing out on the national stage seems to be focused on whether government is an instrument of good or bad. Are we in 1930 and in need of the helping hand of FDR, or are we in 1980 when Reagan declared that government itself was the problem and we needed to solve our own problems. It is all very fundamental and runs to the underlying beliefs of what it means to be an American. Are we about building community or are we about building walls to keep everything we don’t like or isn’t like us out. I do not think those extremes are an exaggeration. We are living in an era of extremes.
We are faced with the biggest health crisis we have encountered in over a century and a collective problem about the way our abused environment treats us with inviting opportunity or deadly impact. The key is to consider our world around us. The overwhelming reality that simply does not go away is that we now live in a world of 7.8 billion souls. We were at 2 billion in 1930 and 4.5 billion in 1980. It is generally felt that the capacity of the world is 8 billion. Those facts have tremendous implications for policy that are unavoidable. We are at a point in world history when we cannot just close our eyes and wish away the realities of a world at full capacity. We have to be enlightened enough to find a path that works for 8 billion, not an approach that improves the conditions for an isolated 80 million, the infamous 1%.
I have some very red friends that always ask with great challenge in their tone if I really want to be a socialist. I would turn that around to them and how you can NOT be a socialist in a world of 8 billion. I have long said that if conservatives could think beyond their lifetime, not to a millennium forward, but just through the lives of their grandchildren (~ 70 years), they should be able to understand that the world will not be a good place for those grandkids if it is filled with social unrest created by the growing economic divide that is currently trending in our uneven world.
I like what President Biden said in his first formal address to the nation yesterday. He said, “The government isn’t some foreign force in a distant capital. It’s us. All of us. We the people.” That is the sentiment that must pervade our thinking. We must all become collectivists in the reality that freedom isn’t worth a good God damn if it leads to a perverse outcome of needing extreme protectionism to keep the rest of the world out. You simply cannot keep the world out. You couldn’t in days gone by and you certainly can’t in a highly connected world we live in today. Everyone knows everything. There are no secrets or at least not for long. If you have food and no one else has food, your life is untenable because everyone needs food and knows you have it. I think I have finally found a value in all those apocalyptic movies I have watched over the years. They all project the same theme. Together we thrive and alone, we die a bad death.
You don’t need to be a genius to see that the American people want a government that helps them thrive. The American Rescue Plan (the $1.9 trillion one) has passed with not one Republican vote. It has at least 75% of the electorate in favor of it, which makes it overwhelmingly popular by any standard. Republicans cannot get around the fact that they are out of step with the country on this and a growing list of issues. Therefore, they are doing exactly what powerful minorities always do, they are trying to distract everyone with nonsense while they work feverishly to undermine the inevitable populism that is on the rise.
You cannot turn on the news today without hearing about another Republican effort in almost every state (now up to 43 states) that are trying to restrict voting. Few actions could possibly be more Un-American than disenfranchisement. This is no longer about stopping fraudulent voting, this is a boldfaced attempt to limit voting to those who think, look and act like them. Every once in while some stupid Republican says what they are all thinking and somehow thinks that what he or she says is OK. Trump did this when he said that if we allowed mail-in voting, Republicans would never win another election. Now, Arizona state representative John Kavanaugh has made the grave error of speaking his mind and the collective mind of Republicans. He said, “everybody shouldn’t be voting…. quantity is important, but we have to look at the quality of votes, as well.” Wow! Could there be anything more revealingly elitist than thinking that some people count and others do not?
What is more interesting and revealing is the way the investigations of the January 6th Capital insurrection are yielding over 300 indictments so far with more to come. These people are not the elite that Rep. Kavanaugh feels represent a “quality” voter. They are the instrument of the right like the goons on a hockey team. They can’t play real hockey so they are assigned to wreck havoc on the other team for the greater glory of the win. What these instruments do not yet comprehend, is that they will be quickly abandoned and treated as collateral damage by the leaders they say they want to follow. It is perverse and always hard to understand why such people are so very wrong-minded about their fate under these elitist pogroms (as in the surreptitious elimination of these very goons). Part of me wants to ignore them and suggest that they get what they deserve. The better part of me says that they need to be reached and educated that their path is better served through collectivism.
Meanwhile the Republican world is in greater and greater turmoil. The few forces of reason, as represented by Mitch McConnell (Darth Vader-like though he may be), seem to be losing to the far darker and more perverse forces of Trump. This is a sure sign that the end is nearing for this brand of pseudo-conservativism. The nation has already voted and overwhelming rejected this grossly extreme symbol of self-centeredness. Trump has turned on anyone and everyone that does not serve his purpose of the moment or has somehow not come out on top. He only wants to side with winners and since no one always wins, he is soon to be without collaborators.
Trump’s latest acolyte is Rick Scott, who is seemingly aware of the power and positive force represented by the $1.9 trillion stimulus package and so is championing for people and states to reject the funding it offers them. He is not offering a replacement for the funding, but is recommending principled austerity. he clearly does not understand how the world works. This is one of the most blatant examples of idiotic Republican thinking has become. When was the last time you saw a hungry man turn down food on principle? Never would be the right answer to that question, but centimillionaire Rick Scott has forgotten all that.
We are almost there. The sun is peeking out from behind the clouds of authoritarian elitism we have allowed to prevail for forty years. The funniest thing, as we are seeing with the ongoing stock market boom, is that those who oppose this collectivism stand to gain as much or more than the average folks. Economic history proves over and over again that letting the sun shine on everyone creates a degree of consumer strength that propels the economy forward. I say, let the sun shine in for all.