I wrote the following essay back on March 2, 2008 for publication at this time (i.e. the week of Election 2008):
A WAKE-UP CALL TO THE AMERICAN ELECTORATE
The American Electorate must grow-up, take responsibility and educate themselves this time around. This means we have to pay attention to multiple news sources, preferably some international, with in-depth coverage and analysis. We simply cannot resort to being lazy viewers, spoon fed issues with the cliched, knee-jerk reactions that they are designed to elicit, that comes from the shallow and deficient news coverage controlled by the four corporate owned major networks and partisan outlets be it right-wing talk radio or liberal Internet based purveyors while we wait for the next episode of mind cancer that is Survivor, Deal or No Deal and American Idol.
Regardless of your politics, I think it is safe to say that as a nation we have been asleep at the switch the past 8-12 years as the Republican controlled Congress abdicated the critically important role of oversight to their corporate patrons with disastrous results to the working and now endangered, middle class. Just look at the statistics compiled by non-partisan outlets like the GAO and there is the greatest disparity in wealth since 1928, right before the collapse of the economy and the great depression.
Here are some simple truths that the electorate must get its head around:
1. SUPPLY SIDE ECONOMICS DOESN’T WORK. I repeat, supply side economics doesn’t work. It’s not working now, it didn’t work during the Reagan years and although tax cuts are tempting to the greedy, selfish and stupid, the sober facts are that we have always had to raise taxes for national defense during wartime. Furthermore, two terms of GWB administration has left the country less safe, less prosperous (unless you are the wealthiest 1 ½ percent) so that whoever inherits the position of president next will face a slate of difficult, complex and intractable problems with a lack of resources to address them, like no president has faced since FDR in 1932. Gee , I wonder who the Republicans are going to blame? It’s like your dog crapping in the house and then blaming you for the smell and discomfort of having to clean it up.
2. REPUBLICANS ARE THE PARTY OF TAX CUT AND SPEND. I know, I know…you are used to the post-depression and Great Society criticism of Democratic controlled governments as “tax and spend Liberals” but it simply is no longer accurate and neither party can honestly confront the problems that face us domestically if their understanding of economics and government’s role in it is reduced to an outdated and inaccurate slogan. The modern reality is that the two biggest spenders in our Nation’s history are the Reagan and GWB administrations. At the same time, both administrations’ obscured reality with nominal tax cuts for the vast majority (well over 80% of the population) while the obscenely rich reaped huge tax cuts that were somehow magically supposed to “trickle down” to the peasants. Well the only thing that trickled down during these Republican administrations to most American was an acrid smelling and yellow liquid.
3. BALANCE BUDGETS MATTER. Remember the 1960’s and 1970’s when the Republicans railed against deficit spending and the Democrats contended they weren’t important, or more accurately, not as important as programs such as social security, Medicare, education and other social programs for those unable to completely meet all their financial need. Well it turns out they were both right in some respects and now we have a new government order where the Democrats tout fiscal responsibility coupled with programs for ordinary people while the Republican slash taxes on billionaires while throwing some pennies and smoke and mirrors at the rest of us. The lessons of the Clinton Administration are important: working with a Republican Congress we balanced budgets, paid as we went and had the greatest period of unbridled prosperity with gains to ALL economic classes, including lower and middle classes since anytime in our country’s history. When Clinton left office we had a $500 Billion Dollar surplus with a ten-year forecast of surpluses looking forward. While no one could completely predict the national security requirements of the new century, any sober and rational person can see that the policies and strategies of the Republican controlled Congress thru its failure to meet its constitutional duty of oversight, (a duty which Democratic controlled Congresses exercised even at the height of its 30 year reign), resulted in the mis-steps and disasters that are the legacy of the current administration.
4. SOFT POWER AND THE BATTLE OF IDEAS ARE AS, IF NOT MORE, IMPORTANT AS MILITARY MIGHT.
Remember WWII? We stood for something and the world looked up to us. Even though the Germans and the Japs were doing horrific things, we didn’t adopt their practices. Same with the cold war, which was not “won” by any person or country, (although credit most deservedly goes to Pope John Paul II and not some Alzheimer patient and his astrology practicing Mommy) but was rather a struggle over ideas and was helped by the fact that people in other lands looked up to us for our principles and the better aspects of our culture (i.e. not David Hasselhoff and “Bay Watch”). Louis Armstrong and jazz music is more powerful than communist inspired dirges to the Great leader. Voice of America used to have credibility and won information battles over the ridiculous propaganda of state controlled media.
The time of bitter, non-productive partisan bickering are over. The ideologues who played to our base instincts of fear, greed and prejudice while waving the flag in one hand and hitting us over the head with their self-serving interpretation of the Bible in the other, have left us with problems that could literally destroy what one, honorable Republican, Abraham Lincoln once called “the greatest experiment on earth”, the United States of America.
After all, the mess we are in today isn’t Bush’s fault, isn’t the Republican’s fault, isn’t the Democrats fault or even, heaven forbid, the Liberals fault (remember Hitler had the Jews), because in a democracy:
It’s our fault. Every single one of us of voting age. Left, right and the majority of us in between.
WE DIDN’T DO OUR HOMEWORK, DIDN’T PAY ATTENTION, GET INVOLVED OR RAISED OUR EDUCATED VOICE AND WE OWE A COLLECTIVE APOLOGY TO THOSE FAMILIES AND INDIVIDUALS WHO HAVE DISPROPORTIONALLY SUFFERED THE CONSEQUENCES OF OUR FOLLY, BE IT THE FAMILY WHO LOST A LOVED ONE IN WAR, THE WORKER WHO LOST HIS JOB, THE RETIREE WHO LOST HIS SAVINGS, A HOMEOWNER WHO LOST HIS HOME OR A CHILD WHO LOST HIS FAITH IN HIS COUNTRY.
There are no simple answers to complex problems. The era of “Patriot Acts” and “Fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them here” must come to an end. For when we let our politicians get away with creating cheap slogans out of simplistic dichotomies that imply false choices, we have only ourselves to blame.
