Are you suppressed?

It’s 1788 and you just read about a new vision for your government.  It starts with “We the People.”  In a world ruled by kings, queens, emperors, popes, sultans, tsars, and dictators, a group of colonies decided they could rule themselves.  That’s heady stuff.  That grand experiment’s survival is in jeopardy; too much power in the hands of too few. 

Fareed Zakaria recently wrote about the decline of democracy around the world.[i]    He observed that most Americans don’t believe it can happen here.  We are not Poland or Hungary after all where democracy wanes.  Yet, we do see signs of it deteriorating here at home. 

History demonstrates that power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.[ii]  Cliché aside, corruption festers when those in power are emboldened to take away the rights of the minority.  How does this happen?

Let’s look at three of many causes: too much money in the system, too many levels of government ruled by one party and too much suppression of voting rights.  One follows the other.  Each deserves in-depth analysis at some point.  

Money has always been the mother’s milk of politics, but the Supreme Court opened the spigot to a full gush in its ruling in Citizens United.  Now, a few unnamed individuals and corporations can create Super-PACs to buy off candidates for Congress, state legislatures and local governments without revealing who they are.  Vast amounts of money target candidates who, when elected, will do the bidding of the donor.  When you consider that the moneyed oligarchs own 90% of the nation’s wealth, you know who controls the government: it’s not the majority, but the few. 

Thirty-five state governors are Republicans.  Their party controls 32 state legislatures with veto-proof majorities in 17 of them.  The people elected these majorities.  It says that the Democratic Party wasn’t in tune with the people of those states.  Super majorities aren’t healthy for the nation, no matter which party is in the lead.  When either party has too much power, we know corruption is on the doorstep. 

Once a group gets control of the system, it wants to keep control.  The party in power can pass laws that make it difficult to register to vote, and difficult to actually cast a ballot.  We saw this, particularly in the South, when laws prohibited African-Americans from voting, when Poll Taxes were imposed to keep the poor and opposition from voting.  Suppression continues today in many states with laws and regulations that discourage people from registering, and voting.  Gerrymandering, the process of designing congressional and state legislative districts to favor one party over another is a favorite voter suppression technique.  It is so commonplace and so egregious that two State Supreme Courts have overturned the laws recently, requiring new voting districts that are balanced.  Why does it matter?

Zakaria reminded us of Emerson’s notion that “Institutions are collections of rules and norms agreed upon by human beings.  If leaders attack, denigrate, and abuse them, they will be weakened, and this, in turn, will weaken the character and quality of democracy.”[iii]  When political leaders attack and abuse our right to vote they weaken democracy at its core.  When we lose the right to vote we blur the vision of our Founding Fathers. 

Any citizen over the age of 18 should be able to register to vote, and to vote with no constraints other than showing that they live in a state and local town or district.  My state, California, for example, has automatic registration.  If you are a citizen, the state automatically adds you to the rolls when you apply for a driver’s license or state issued identification card.  If you are too young to vote, they add your name to the rolls when you turn 18.  When you change an address or other information on your license or ID, it edits the election rolls.  You can decline voter registration if you wish.  This year our county is experimenting with vote-by-mail.  At the next election, in June, every registered voter will receive a ballot in the mail; they can fill out the ballot at home, put it in a sealed envelope and mail it back to the county election office or take it to a drop-off ballot box.  How easy is that?  Three states already do this.[iv]

It’s easy for states to suppress voter participation: no automatic registration, no same-day registration, no pre-registration if under 18, no online registration, no early voting, and no vote by mail, no absentee voting, and restrictive documentation for registration and restrictive identification requirements to actually vote.  Go to www.rockthevote.org to see how your state stacks up.   

The right-to-vote is not an exciting topic for discussion, unless you lose it.  Too many states thwart the right of people to vote.  Imagine election districts drawn to give both parties 50% of the electorate, 50% of ethnic or racial groups, or held closely to city or county boundaries.  Imagine what it would be like if “We the People” all had an equal voice in government.  It would be easy to register to vote and it would be easy to vote in every state.

The amount of money that controls campaigns and the candidates is an abuse of democracy and that democracy will wither.  Legislatures that gerrymander election districts blur the vision of our Founding Fathers and we become just another country, but without character.  We become just another people wondering what happened, another people wondering who let the dream die.  We will wonder how it could happen here.

 

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[i]Fareed Zakaria – Washington Post column – February 23, 2018

[ii]John Dalberg-Acton - Letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, April 5, 1887 - published in Historical Essays and Studies, edited by J. N. Figgis and R. V. Laurence (London: Macmillan, 1907

[iii]Ralph Waldo Emerson – Essays – Self Reliance - 1841

[iv]Oregon, Washington and Colorado

Chuck Woods

February 26, 2018

How Long O Lord?

When is it time to talk and act?  We are told it is too soon.  Members of Congress and State Legislators are complicit in the death of schoolchildren across the land if they do not act.  Now is the time!

Let’s be sure we understand why there is never a good time to talk about gun violence, why nothing has changed...  It is because of the millions upon millions of dollars that the gun lobby – manufacturers and NRA – pour into the campaign coffers of our leaders.  Campaign contributors expect their paid minions to vote the way they want them to vote.  When the Speaker of the House receives hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the NRA, he feels duty bound to say that it is too early to talk about guns.

The Second Amendment does not guarantee every citizen the right to carry assault type weapons.  Those weapons are designed to kill people not wild game.  We all know what kind of guns we need for hunting.  No self-respecting hunter would take an A-15 into the woods in search of a deer.  The 30-30 carbine or 306 rifles works just fine.  A 12-gauge pump-action works just fine for duck and partridges. 

The Second Amendment does not guarantee that mentally unstable people should be able to purchase weapons.

And yet… and yet, last year Congress repealed a law that allowed mentally ill persons to be listed in the background check database.  Senator Grassley, who championed the repeal, was seen on television on February 15, 2018, wondering why mentally ill people were able to own guns.  The hypocrisy is palpable.

The Psalmist wonders aloud and we should too: How long O Lord?  How long before the hypocrisy ends?  How long before people demand that something needs to be done?  Why can’t we have laws similar to other countries?  Laws that work!  Laws that reduce death from guns to the rare few!

Gun Control, by itself.  isn’t the answer.  Hunters should be able to hunt and families should be able to protect themselves if they feel the need.  But, we can rewrite the HIPPA laws to allow medical personnel and families to report the mentally ill.  We can reduce gun clip size.  We can reduce the number of cartridges allowed per hunting gun.  We can reduce the number and types of handguns available for sale.  None of these steps takes away Second Amendment rights.

How long after Sandy Hook is it OK to talk about and act on our national problem?  Our national shame?  Our national nightmare?  This week we witnessed the 18^th school shooting since the beginning of 2018.

How Long O Lord?

You Read What?

Is plagiarism still in style?  Every now and then, something just needs copying.  The web site allgeneralizationsarefalse.com recently published its 2017 Media Bias Chart.  It’s full of generalizations and bias.

The premise is simple: create a chart that rates news organizations on quality of content (from garbage, to fair, to factual) and political persuasion (from ultra liberal to mainstream to ultra conservative).  How hard could that be?

I know people who think Fox News is fair and balanced, and some who look to MSNBC for the truth.  Watching either in the last two weeks could easily drive you to CNN.  Newspapers are dropping like flies as ad dollars move to the web.  Young people don’t read newspapers anymore.  They get their news from Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit.  Really?

The point is that millions upon millions of people get their news from web sites.  Each site has its bias and its demonstrated value for the truth.  I like my news straight up: Who, What, Where, When.  I want opinion on the op-ed page.  I like both well written.  You can find that kind of reporting at (here comes a bias) the New York Times, Politico, npr, PBS, The Hill, Time and BBC among others. 

To be fair, those with reasonable opinions and interpretation of the news also include the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Mother Jones, Buzz Feed, National Review, The Weekly Standard, and the Daily Mail.  (You should be editing by now.)  

The Drudge Report, Federalist, and Huffington Post tend to cluster with the cable news channels at the lower end of the scales.

The really biased and fabricators of information and junk reporting include Red State, Breitbart, Forward Progressives, US Uncut, and Infoward.

I admit to a demented need to know what is going on in the world.  I read several news sites before breakfast because the morning newspaper went to press at ten o’clock the night before and a lot of tweeting can occur during sleep time. 

On the oft chance that not everyone is a news hound and only read or watch two or three news sources each day, it’s helpful to consider their quality and bias.  Go to 2017MediaBiasChart.com to see how news sources can be arrayed.  I’ve already deleted a couple of sites from my bookmark list and added new ones that are supposedly less biased and ranked higher for quality of reporting.  

What do you think?

Potluck Dinner!

Discussing diversity is dicey!  Rep. Steve King of Iowa found that out when he tweeted that America’s diversity isn’t our national strength, but rather that assimilation is our strength.[i]  Social media lanced him with comments not repeated in polite company.  Thankfully, he didn’t call America a “melting-pot.”  The intelligentsia would have stoned him.  They consider assimilation and melting pot racists terms, so why suffer twice the slings and arrows.[ii]  

The meaning of words can mutate over time.  Diversity and melting pot are two of them.  Progressives and conservatives emphasize different meanings, college professors preach their own brand of egalitarianism, and soon an ideal becomes an onus.  Context has a significant role in how we look at diversity.

I came of age in a small town in northeast Vermont, nearly one third of its inhabitants of French Canadian descent.  They spoke French at home, they attended Notre Dame de Victoire Catholic Church, and sent their kids to French speaking schools.  The Irish Catholics attended St. Aloysius.  Descendents from other European countries spoke English, having assimilated generations earlier.  At the end of the day, however, these diverse groups tried hard to be part of a fondue they called America.  The melting pot was devoutly to be wished back then.     

My mother’s side of the family immigrated from French-Canada.  My father’s mother emigrated from the Irish section of Montreal.  In the 18^th and 19^th centuries, where you came from identified  you.  After a generation or two everyone seemed to assimilate; they came to find work, got good jobs when they could, opened shops, learned trades, bought houses and cars, learned enough history to pass the citizenship tests, and then they voted.

Today’s immigration paints a different picture.  Immigrants, legal or not, come from many more parts of the world with many more cultural backgrounds, many more languages, and many beliefs.  Some sneak through the border fences, others over stay their visas, and others, well ….  In spite of our President’s wishes, we are not all blue-eyed blonde-haired Scandinavians.  We never were.

Census Bureau[iii] data shows wide variations of foreign-born population, nationally and by state; Alabama has 03.6% and California 27%, New York 22.6% and Mississippi 2.3%.  Diversity has different meaning state by state.  We have a large Hispanic population that varies by state: California 38.9% and West Virginia 1.5%, or New Mexico 48.5% and Missouri 4.1%...  To “blend in” in West Virginia, where 90+percent of the population are of one group means something different when compared to an area where nearly 40% of the population is recent immigrants? 

As far back as the 80’s I was told that the idea of the “melting pot”[iv] is racist and demeaning to ethnic sensitivities.  I was taken aback.  For generations it was the metaphor that defined what America was and should be; our various cultures coming together to build a new common culture.  People said they came here for opportunity for themselves and their families.  They told us that they had heard stories that if you worked hard you could accomplish whatever you wanted.  They went to school, they learned the Lingua Franca, and they learned to live in a new culture without giving up too much of their own.

Today college faculties and students are told that it is racist to say that America is a melting pot, that it is racist to say that you believe the most qualified person should get the job, or it’s racist when you say that everyone can succeed if they work hard enough.[v] 

An article in Fiscal Policy Studies Institute said that it is a myth that we are a melting pot.[vi]  It suggests that if we ever were a melting pot, we aren’t today.  We may share a form of American identity but we have separate cultural identities that coexist, each vitally alive and unmelted.

Maisha Johnson suggests a different metaphor, the potluck dinner.  We’ve all been to one; someone brings a composed salad they learned to make in France, someone of Indian heritage brings wonderful Naan bread, there is a bowl of Texas chili, some curried chicken, spring rolls, and apple pie.  A smorgasbord of wonderful food lay before us.  How will we react when the host pours it all into the blender and purees it?[vii]  The potluck dinner seems a good description of modern America.   

The US Citizen and Immigration Services data tells us that nearly 700,000 people become citizens each year.  Ten States account for 75% of the new citizens: most of them on the coasts, and in or near big cities.  Most come from China, India, the Philippines, the Dominican Republic, and Mexico.  Think of what we would be missing if we didn’t include the cultural heritage of these new citizens into their newfound country.

Historically, we welcome immigrants when we need them and send them home when we don’t.  In 1915 when WWI ended, men returned to their homes and jobs, and Mexican laborers were deported.  In 1943, The Bracero Program encouraged Mexicans to move to the U.S. to provide labor for American manufacturing until the soldiers returned.  After the Korean War, we deported nearly four million Mexicans during Operation Wetback.  Ten years later the Border Industrialization Program established the Maquiladoras Program to encourage American companies to open factories on the Mexican side of our southern border.  Today, our President wants to punish companies that do that.  It’s easy to detect racism in the current protest about immigration.  Interestingly much of the concern comes from areas with very low immigrant populations.

Many, it seems, are concerned about the “American culture” changing too rapidly, even though it’s hard to define.  Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said that he couldn’t define pornography, “but I know it when I see it.”[viii]  Culture is like that.  You know it when you see it.  Maybe you know it when you see it, but try this experiment.  Ask any ten people to define “American culture.”  You should get twenty different descriptions...  Why?

The answer is hiding in plain sight.  We are a country of diverse races, cultures, ethnicities, and religions from all over the world who strive to be part of the stew called America.  What really unites us is an idea.  It starts with “We the People …” Think of how radical that idea was when first proclaimed in 1787.  Too many in the world today can’t say that about their country.  The ideal is one for which people are willing to cross oceans, or cross dangerous deserts to be a part of it.  It is a place where personal industry can flourish, where who you are is more important than what you are.  Some came for the adventure, others forced to come, indentured, some refugees from oppression, some for wealth, but most for opportunity.  In many cases, E Pluribus Unum[ix] evaded us.  Self-interest, self-preservation, and racism make us unwelcoming at times. 

Can we make a major national mental shift?  Can we begin concentrating on what unites us, not what separates us or makes us different?  Can we start in the first grade of school and carry that message to the graduate school level?  Can we have laws that ensure equal treatment, justice administered with a blind eye?  Can we ask companies to actually hire diverse groups of people, not just say they try?  Can we ask cable news shows and talk-radio to be more even handed in their discussions?  Can we embrace change rather than fight it?  Can we accommodate the new immigrant?

The Census Bureau counted 84 people in my hometown who still speak some French at home, down from nearly 2,000 a hundred years ago.  We can lament the loss of a unique culture, or we can rejoice in the strong sense of unity that exists in a commonality where, over time, the people become one while being many, celebrating their own culture.  Diversity is, I’m convinced, our strength when we share it with others.  I can give up the melting pot metaphor.  I think the potluck dinner is more accurate.  What do you think?

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[i]Jacqueline Thomsan – The Hill – 12/08/2017

[ii]Shakespeare -Hamlet – Act III, Scene I

[iii]https://www.census.gov/quickfacts

[iv]Israel Zangwill – The Melting Pot – Play Staged in 1908

[v]National Review – July 1, 2015 –Examples of Racial Microaggressions

[vi]The End of the Melting Pot – Mark Friedman – April 5, 2006 – Fiscal Policy Studies Institute

[vii]Maisha Z. Johnson – 4 lies you’ve fallen for if you think the US is a melting pot – Everyday Feminism Magazine – 8/29/2016

[viii]Jacobellis v. Ohio 1964 – Justice Potter Stewart - Concurrence

[ix][ix]Motto of the United States – Original

A Stomach in Knots!

My high school social studies teachers taught the value of citizens being aware of current world events.  Mr. Pierce required weekly reading of Newsweek magazine.  It helped you pass the Friday quiz.  Mr. Plummer used the newspapers, mostly, but still had the Friday quiz.  I caught the bug early and “political junkie” continues to this day. 

I carry strong memories of my parents listening to the news each evening before dinner.  We watched the radio as we listened to Gabriel Heatter tell us about the war in Europe and the events in Washington.  The daily newspaper, read front to back, provided more information.  Later, television provided a choice of three news reports each evening.  Five if you count the two channels from Montreal in English or French.  The weekly newsreels at the movies showed the world in motion.

It was a simpler time.  Keeping up was simpler.  Reporting was simpler.  Our presidents were pictured as men of integrity, who had toiled long hours and years to achieve the most powerful position in the world.  They did it with dignity for the most part.  Even Nixon had the dignity to resign.  Ford forsook his legacy to unite the country.  Kennedy asked what we could do, sent out a Peace Corp, and stared down a nuclear holocaust.  Reagan called for demolition of The Wall.  Obama brought a first step to healthcare sanity for the poor.  If we agreed with the policies of our presidents or not, we knew we had leaders with integrity, who knew the awesome privilege of the office and brought dignity to their efforts.  For me, that changed last year.  It really changed last night.  My stomach was in knots.

 New Presidents come into office with the promise of change.  They get to implement their ideas.  I get that, and give Mr. Trump a lot of slack in that area.  I don’t agree with most of his policies, but, he was elected and those I supported, were not.  That is not the issue.

Yesterday, in a meeting with congressional leaders, The President referred to people of other countries, here in our country under special protection programs, in the vilest terms ever uttered at the White House.  The President castigated anyone from the 54 countries of Africa, most of Central America and the Caribbean and wondered why we couldn’t have more white people from Northern Europe.  That was the last straw.  My stomach is in knots.

Our nation fought bigotry throughout its recent history.  People marched to Selma to end bigotry.  People marched on Washington to end segregation.  Now we have a President who encourages bigotry and racism.  There is no denying that assertion.  He is shredding the fabric of the country.  In one afternoon meeting, with one comment, oft repeated, he brings shame to the Office of the President.  He brings shame to the country.  He isolates us from the civilized worlds. 

On the weekend in which we celebrate Martin Luther King’s birthday, vile, contemptible words of hate emanate from the halls of the White House.  It is a disgrace to the office, it is a disgrace to the country, and it is a disgrace to the American people irrespective of their political persuasion.  How much more must we endure?  This can’t become the new norm.  We can’t sit back and tell people to ignore the tweets or the comments.  Our President is a racist, a xenophobe, and a man ignorant of his role as a leader of the country and the world.  He brought disdain to our nation.

He needs to go on nationwide television and apologize to the American people and the people of all the nations he injured and held in contempt.  Otherwise, he needs to resign the office. 

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Awake From Your Slumber!

Christmas is my favorite holiday.  Isaiah is my favorite Old Testament writer.  I was a Lector at church for over 25 years.  Most years, at Midnight Mass, I read from the Old Testament, always Isaiah.

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; upon those who dwell in the land of gloom a light has shown.  For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given."[i] 

What a wonderful way to be awakened in the first hour of a wonder-filled day.  Isaiah, throughout his writings, exhorts us to awake and to rise up.  In the KJV, he tells us to wakeneth.

I haven’t been to Midnight Mass in a few years.  The next generation isn’t interested in a midnight service, the earlier one at 7:00 pm is preferred, if they go at all.  But, I still read Isaiah’s words every Christmas Eve.  

Years ago, I spent the very early hours of Christmas morning working on toys labeled “some assembly required.”  In what seemed only an hour or two later, little people were jumping on the bed, waking us, who didn’t want to be woken so early, to start the morning’s festivities.  Even after all these years in retirement, I still seem to wake early, before most others on Christmas morning.  By the time they show up, in new pajamas and robes, I’ve showered and dressed for the day.  I get odd looks all around.  It doesn’t take long for presents to be passed around and opened.  Is that the end of Christmas or the beginning? 

Christmas is really a religious season, which commemorates the birth of a believed God, not just a one-day event set aside for gift giving.  It comes after four weeks of Advent preparation and continues until Epiphany, twelve days later.  It is a time when the words of the traditional hymn urge to “awake from your slumber, arise from your sleep, for the Lord of our light and our love has turned the night into day.”[ii]  Not enough of us, believers or not, have woken to the real opportunity to spread that light to others.  The promise of Christmas, on a grand scale, hasn’t been met; too much night and not enough day.

In small ways though, in small communities and small gatherings, maybe we do awake to a new dawn.  Families gather to celebrate together, some wake early to serve at food-kitchens for the homeless, others contribute to Toys for Tots , or invite in those who would otherwise be alone.  Maybe the light does shine brighter when people keep the Christmas “feeling” throughout the year and not just on one day.  I like Christmas.  I like Isaiah.  I wish I could awaken my light to shine brighter for others.

  

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[i] Isaiah 9:1,5

[ii]Dan Schutte – City of God - 1981

Where are you from?

I’ve lived in California for almost 45 years, but ask me where I’m from and I’ll tell you I’m from Vermont; I’m not so sure that’s true anymore.  I moved about my home state for a few years, working as a teacher, and then I moved to Missouri because I could make more money as a teacher.  A few years later, I moved into the business world, working as a teacher and training manager.  I worked for three local companies as a teacher before I moved to California to direct the training group of a large corporation.  It turns out; I’m not so much a Vermonter as I am an Anywhere.   

David Goodhart’s new book; The Road to Somewhere   helps crystallize the “why” of recent elections in the U.S, Britain, Poland, and other nations.  He talks about the Somewhere’s and the Anywhere’s.  There are many theories about the last election, ranging from the quality of the candidates to the feeling of many mid-Americans that they have been shut out of the economy and their well-established culture.  They say that they don’t recognize their own country.  This is when you witness the rise of Populism.  It got me thinking about the last election and the ones coming up.

Who are the Somewhere’s?  Generally, they are from smaller Middle-America rural towns and small cities.  They are people willing to work hard.  Their experience, however, is likely in jobs that require repetitive actions, as on assembly lines, or retail clerks and other positions that don’t require higher cognitive skills.  The plants are closed, the stores shuttered and jobs requiring higher technical skills too far from home.  They are rooted in their comfortable environment, near family and friends, the local church and their shared culture, often an example of White privilege.  They like people like themselves and don’t want large and fast immigration into their world.  They are generally conservative in their approach to life and don’t like liberal overreach.  They are, to a certain extent, the victims of technological advances that stripped them of jobs they once knew how to do.  Essentially, they have never left home.  The “educated elites,” technology, or the massive influxes of immigrants, are blamed for much of their angst.  Does it matter?[i]

Yes, it matters.  The Somewhere’s are the foundation of Populist movements.  Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump represent the two ends of the spectrum.  The Somewhere’s don’t like what is happening to their life or to their country.  The nation is in the middle of a sea change and they see themselves as victims; moral standards dissolving, college education unaffordable, lack of low skill jobs, uneven wealth distribution, a tax system that favors the rich, and too much power in too few hands.  To make matters worse, Somewhere’s and Anywhere’s don’t talk to each other, don’t live among each other and don’t want to be near each other.[ii]   “A nation divided against itself cannot stand.”[iii]

Yes, it matters.  The middle-class that grew during the 19^th and 20^th centuries has stopped dead in its tracks.  The change was under the radar to the people on the coasts.  The urban areas with highly educated populations, creators, innovators, and early adaptors of technology created, unintentially, a chasm between the two groups.  The Anywhere’s are dedicated to their profession, their skills, and are willing to go anywhere to practice their craft: financial brokers, bankers, teachers, professional managers, researchers, lawyers and doctors, engineers, programmers and technology experts, traditionally favoring the urban areas of the country.  They come from anywhere and settle in until they move again.  The Somewhere’s have had it with the Anywhere’s. 

Yes, it’s important.  The tribulations of small town America, the middle of the country, the Red States, continue to increase.  The rich are getting richer as middle and lower economic cohorts stagnate.  Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Jeff Bezos have an accumulated wealth equal to about 50 percent of the rest of the country.  Think about that, three people have more wealth than 150 million people do.  The breakdown of wealth in the U.S. makes the country look more like an oligarchy than a democratic-capitalistic society.  The top one percent of the country controls more wealth than the other 99%.[iv]That divide spurs Populist enthusiasm. 

It matters, because the political landscape is really changing.  The divide is massive.  The Somewhere’s don’t like the elites from the coasts and big cities and are acting on their feelings.  According to a recent article in the Washington Post, 30 states, mostly Somewhere’s and Red States, have cut funding to state universities and colleges by nearly 30%.  Too many Somewhere’s don’t believe that elitist, politically correct institutions of higher learning provide the practical skills needed in the job market.  They believe that colleges and universities provide students with “junk degrees” that have no value in the work place.  Tuitions have soared and student debt is out of control.[v]

Yes, it matters.  Eight states account for about 51% of the U.S. population, yet have only 16 of the 100 Senators.  In other words, 50% of the population controls 84% of the Senate and represent Somewhere’s for the most part. 

Yes, it matters because the divide is about to get wider.  A new McKenzie Company study indicates that tens of millions of jobs will be lost in the U.S. in the next 10-12 years due to automation and artificial intelligence.  The 160-page report estimates that 60% of all jobs have a 30% automation possibility.  The lost jobs will be those that don’t require higher cognitive skills or much human interaction.[vi]  The country’s educational establishment hasn’t even begun to deal with the issue of massive unemployment’s need for new training courses.

State and Federal governments haven’t begun to deal with the challenges of large numbers of people under-trained in the new skill sets, office buildings that will stand nearly empty, or factories devoid of workers.  The reality of undereducated populations with no work opportunities increases the drift toward Populist movements, and history tells us that that leads to Nationalism.  It leads to blaming others or our problems.  Do we want Nationalism of 1930’s Germany to be gauge by which we can measure our future?  Let us hope not.

The rise of Populism and Nationalism should be a warning to the leaders of any country.  The U.S., however, is currently lead by people who promote Populism and Nationalism.  They couch it in terms like America First, but it is the same thing.  What can we do about it?

Most important we need to want something better for everyone.  We need to stop lying to the Somewhere’s about old fashion jobs coming back; they won’t.  We need to reconsider our college-only school curriculums that deprive nearly 70% of our children from learning meaningful skills.  We need to redesign our skills training ability so that people can qualify for high-level technical jobs and jobs that involve working with people.  We need to find a way to convince the heads of major corporations to share the wealth of the nation with the people of the nation.  We need to stop lying to the people about a tax revision plan that increases taxes on the poor and middle class but reduces taxes for the more wealthy.  We need to put an end to the oligarchies and restore regulated capitalism to the nation’s economy.  We need to maintain controls on the banking and finance systems of the country to avoid another major recession that wiped out the savings of millions of people.  These steps would constitute a good start at restoring the nation.

If you are a Somewhere, what can you do to unite the country?  If you are an Anywhere, what can you do to unite the country? 

A nation divided against itself cannot stand!

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David Goodhart – The Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics – 2017 – C. Hurst & Co.

[ii]PEW Research Center – October 5, 2017

[iii]Abraham Lincoln – House Divided Speech – Springfield, Illinois -  June 16, 1858

[iv]Grace Donnelly – Fortune – November 9, 2017

[v]Elitist, Crybabies and Junkie Degrees – Washington Post- 11/25/2017

[vi]McKenzie & Company – Jobs Lost, Jobs Gained, Workforce Transitions In A Time of Automation – December 2017