Narrowing the Gap
Filling gaps is an important part of healing. As I think about the world, writ large, as they say, I think about all the things that need healing right now. I feel compelled to address one of those gaps that I believe is getting more and more obvious and, as such, needs the fresh light of day in hopes that awareness helps to narrow the gap.
Anyone who spends a moment looking at the demographic trends of the world can see a few inexorable trends. When I left school forty-five years ago the biggest concern voiced by many was how the world would handle the population bomb that was due to be unleashed on the world. In those forty-five years, global population has almost doubled from a little over 4 billion to 7.8 billion. That represents a compound annual growth rate of a mere 1.45%. I’m not sure that constitutes a bomb. There might have been a bomb had China not established its one-child policy, which may have been the most impactful public policy in world history. More importantly, many of the concerns of those days about what a burgeoning population would face for problems have been overcome. The biggest of those is the ability of our limited worldly resources to feed those numbers of people. As the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the UN can better explain than I can, the world’s food security has kept pace and improved as population has grown. Strangely enough, concerns in China are now focused on the low population growth and what impact that is likely to have on economic growth.
As life tends to deliver its conundra, too many people means too much burden on resources, too few people means burden on growth. Charles Dickens wrote in 1843 of Ebenezer Scrooge’s views of “the surplus population”. I think it is fair to suggest that since man has roamed this earth there are always some who feel that there are those people that count and those that do not. Those that do not are presumably what we know as Scrooge’s surplus population. Surplus implies that they are not only excessive, but also of little value. This is a sad, but true feeling that is held by those who focus more on the dismal science of economics than the importance of human kindness.
The people at Pew Research Center are all about demographics. They have been chronicling the changing mix of the U.S. population for years, all the while forecasting the trends based on a blend of birth rates and immigration. Those trends show the white majority that still barely exists today fading gradually but surely to a point by 2050 where the white population of the United States will be a large, but distinct minority barely exceeding 40%. The dominance of the black and Hispanic populations will slide past and not slow in the foreseeable future. These trends have made it likely that the political trend of the country will move decidedly towards the liberal and Democratic. This is no secret and the train has been within sight by all, including the more conservative and Republican segments of the political spectrum for some time now. I doubt anyone is shocked to hear that voter suppression, immigration control and gerrymandering are direct products of this inevitability. Trump made his views crystal clear on the topic of voting by mail and how that would result in no more Republican electoral victories.
But we have a new phenomenon that must be discussed. The Coronavirus has brought new sentiments out into the open that have exposed the ugly underbelly of these underlying views. The virus has had a greater negative impact on minority populations that need more rather than less public assistance. It has a greater negative impact on the elderly population that has pre-existing conditions that make them more vulnerable. But perhaps mostly, the lower echelons of the economic ladder seem to be most prone to suffering the economic hardships that are clearly on the way from the pandemic. And those hardships are further compounded as they lose and can longer source adequate healthcare to keep them safe from the ravages that may include the very Coronavirus in question. There is a sentiment that I am reading that nature culls the herd and that this culling adds to the strength of the species of man. The argument is that this is nature’s way and we should honor it rather than push back against it.
If I thought this was a strong ideological view I might be calm about it. But the forces of conservatives and specifically the Republican right has shown its hand and has undermined any credibility that these views are any more than self-serving political opportunism that may finally have thought they have a way to justifiably counteract the power of demographics. I refuse to succumb to conspiracy theories suggesting that this was an intentional event, but opportunism is quite plausible. Throughout history, might has always tried to claim its right. The religious right has stood against evolution during famous events like the Scopes Monkey Trail of 1925. To see Darwinism held up for their purposes under the banner of natural selection is a farce.
The gap that is most treacherous in this country at this time is the gap that exists between those who would widen the inequities of wealth distribution which has ravaged the vast majority of our population over the last fifty years. Any arguments that the wealth that trickles down is making for a net improvement of lifestyle has failed to examine the realities and the facts. There is only one argument to justify extending and broadening this gap of inequity and that is the argument that is finally out in the open that the strong survive and the weak demise. Might makes right.
I fear that those who believe in the righteousness of this turn a blind eye to any mention of humanity and the very bible that many of them suggest that they base their lives on. The King James Bible in the Gospel of Matthew makes it quite clear that “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” In the gap between might and right I would prefer to see a narrowing of that gap, but without it, I will vote with the demographics of the meek in the long run. Right always triumphs over might.