Law and Order and Protesting Anarchists. Socialism and Character. Coastal Elites and Middle America. Control COVID or Open Schools and Businesses. We’re Good, they’re Bad. Both political parties held conventions in August. We pretty much know what the next few weeks will be like, so buckle up.
Candidates always say that the coming election is
the most important in their lifetime. Sometimes they mean it, sometimes they believe
it. This time I think they are correct. I know it is the most important one
since I had to choose between Nixon and Kennedy.
Biden told us that this election was about regaining
the soul of America. Trump said this election was about maintaining the America
we love. My gut says it’s going to get nasty, real nasty before it’s over.
Once upon a time, law-and-order meant law-and-order. Missing
from that exhortation was which laws and whose order. Today it’s a dog-whistle.
Most Americans can tolerate protestors filling the streets to bring attention
to disparate treatment and injustice. What they won’t tolerate is rioting,
looting, and vandalizing. White folks need to understand, however, that
law-and-order has come to mean keep-the-Black-folks-under-control. It also
applies to other minorities. It’s a trigger related to bigotry. The people who
protest in the streets need police protection. Those who destroy other people’s
property need jail time. Besides, the media always spends more time and money
on the rioting and looting than it does on the message of the protest.
The police killings this spring and summer brought, once again, a
wellspring of historical mistreatment and a depth of despair percolating to the surface. This has been going on for years, but now anybody
with a phone can record the mistreatment, put it on social media, and watch it travel the world in a nanosecond. The technology made it impossible to deny brutal
treatment and killings by rogue police officers: Trevon Martin, Stephon Clark, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, to name a few. We see the poor maintenance of the rental property, lack
of textbooks in poor neighborhoods. Inequality is now in full view. People
finally said that enough is enough and took to the streets. Black people
particularly have too long had to endure a society in which the playing field
wasn’t even close to level. They know that police kill Blacks more often than
anyone else; 7.13 per million vs. 3.48 for Latinx, 2.91 per million for white
people, and 1.34 for Asians. They know that their schools aren’t as good as
white schools; they know that they have a harder time getting a good job and
moving up than other people. The data proves it, and it leads people to demand
systemic changes in our laws and in our culture.
Socialism will be a popular chant in this election
cycle. It always is when people demand change, especially massive changes to
society and core beliefs. Truman told us
that any change that benefits all the people rather than a favored few is
always called socialism. To be clear, America would never tolerate descent
into socialism because that means that the government would take over the means
of production and distribution of wealth. Britain tried it several times with massive
failures; we saw how well it worked in USSR, some South American countries, and some Asian countries. It is a losing proposition.
Well then, why do we label so many things socialism,
when they aren’t? For one thing, it is a quick and easy way to get people to
oppose the change because too many people never took Econ-101. Think about
some ideas considered socialism when they were proposed, but are now just part
of our life: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the TVA, the national parks
and forests, and national public health agencies to name a few. The “big lie strategy" will be used extensively during the campaign.
When the COVID-19 hit our shores and the country
shut down, thirty-three million people lost their jobs, 14.7% of the workforce.
Nearly four million of them lost health insurance for their families at the
same time. Suggesting that health insurance should not be tied to employment
isn’t a socialist idea, but a rational step in providing healthcare for all
people and how we pay for it. Too often
healthcare and health insurance are used synonymously. They aren’t. In any case, the notion that
healthcare is a human right isn’t socialism, no matter how many times you hear
it.
We tell people that if they work hard, and get a good
education they can be whatever they want to be, the American Dream. It is both
the clarion call of our nation and its muffled myth. It works best if you have
some privileges: live in an affluent community, have good neighborhood schools, have parents who dote on you, a little bit of luck, and are white. Too many in our society
don’t have those advantages. Too many were denied those advantages and the
dream. Too many live with the reality that over the years the system was rigged
against them, designed to limit who can live the dream and who can’t.
An interesting anomaly about American culture is
that if you do attain the dream, get that good
education, become successful, become what you want to be, you are labeled
elite. Then you learn that the only thing worse than the elite is the educated elite. It
gets worse still, you could be an educated coastal elite. When an expert on
healthcare testified before congress a couple of months ago, a Representative
from Ohio asked why he should listen to experts: “What do they know?” Much of
today’s malaise is put at the feet of the coastal elites. In the process
education is degraded, effort is degraded, and opportunity for all is degraded.
The diaspora from small-town Middle America to the coasts
and inland large cities is ongoing. About forty percent of Americans live in a
county that touches a coast. Their states represent over 300 of the 538
Electoral College members and account for the third-largest economy in the
world. California alone is the fifth-largest economy in the world. Good
low-skill manufacturing jobs that surged the growth of the middle class across
the country for decades now fade in the shadow of technology that can do the
work at a lower cost and with more accuracy. Basic manufacturing jobs now require
the ability to code AI. The pandemic is changing the world of work, perhaps for
a long time.
Companies and their employees are questioning the
need to commute hours each day to get to an office with a computer when they
have a computer at home. This phenomenon also is changing the commercial real
estate market. I wonder what we will do with all those empty high-rises. The
outlook is grim for those who don’t possess modern-day work skills or can’t
move to the expanding job markets. Both parties will address the jobs issue for
inland America, with few options to offer them.
The push is on to open schools and businesses. The
pressure to survive for small businesses particularly must be overwhelming. You
have to feel sorry for someone who spent twenty years or more building up the
mom-and-pop shop and then be forced to close it overnight for months on end.
The millions who were left jobless need to earn money to pay the bills. Kids
need to get back to school. As a nation, we failed at the first shut down a few
months ago and then rushed to re-open the states. The number of cases
increased and we perilously close to needing another shutdown. As schools open
across the country cases continue to rise. College campuses are Petri dishes
for the virus as social distancing and mask-wearing suggestions are ignored.
Many parents are refusing to send their kids to school. Most schools are
offering distance learning, but the effectiveness hasn’t been measured.
Home-schooling is becoming more popular, but that means that the parent or
parents have to work their job all day, teach their kid/s all day, keep house, and shop. The possibility of becoming tired is not out of the question. One
party will say that we need to open schools and workplaces, period. The other
will say we want to do it, but safely, and each will likely change their
position several times before the election to assuage the populous feelings of
the time.
There is a good possibility that the protest marches
will go on for some time and will become fodder for the campaign. The
President’s Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, said on one of the Sunday morning
news shows that the people in “Trump’s America” would not put up with the
anarchy of the Democratic cities. So get ready for anarchy to be the buzz-word
of the month.
I’m convinced, well who isn’t, that Fox News is a
reactionary supporter of Trump, and that MSNBC is a radical supporter of Biden.
They and other media do their darndest to exploit the nearly 50-50 divide among
the population and build support for their favored candidate.
Yes, it is possible that this campaign will get
nasty, very nasty, before early November.
