Equal Footing

When we talk politics it can be tempting to dress the stage as if there are always two coequal and opposing positions to be debated.  Many times this simply isn’t the case, as there can be more than two options and among those various positions, each can have a different level of validity.  We don’t make any pretense that the Flat Earth Society has equal footing on matters of geography as a person who recognizes the spherical properties of the earth, for example.  But even after getting past these more basic foundational points of setting up the debate, we still fall prey to the assumption that among the groups, which are allowed to have equal footing in the public sphere, each is speaking in the same terms.  And those terms are important because you can’t have the debate at all until you are able to agree that, say in the context of this particular discussion, the terms liberal and conservative mean something fairly specific.  But too often in American political discourse we allow a false dichotomy to emerge when talking about the conservative and liberal positions, which makes conversation difficult and progress damn near impossible.

Specifically what I’m talking about is the assumption that the major division between conservatives and liberals is that conservatives want X and liberals want the opposite of X.  Take for instance the debate over the size of government.  Conservatives are adamant that what they want is small government, setting aside all the instances of expanded government under conservatives.  Well, to follow this framework it would therefore be easy to assume that liberals want bigger government, but this isn’t the case.  Ok it might be the case for some living, breathing liberal straw man out there who actually thinks it’s a good goal to just strive for larger government as an end in itself, but that is not the position of the vast majority of liberals.  Liberals, progressives, the Left, etc want effective government.  Sometimes that means larger government to provide certain services that the market doesn’t provide as well, e.g. healthcare, defense, education.  Sometimes it means smaller government, e.g. getting government out of our bedrooms, defending privacy.  Sometimes it can even mean just that the government is present in the form of regulations to keep markets moving in a less destructive way, e.g. requiring car manufacturers to install seatbelts.  But never is the undaunted growth of government the goal of the Left, whereas simply shrinking government is lauded as good governance on the Right.

The conservative extremism that has taken hold of the modern Republican Party demands that we take sides on one of two extremes, but the rest of us don’t play by that narrative.  However, the real world result is that by comparison, the moderate and well thought out position is tacitly put on par with the extremist position.  When we talk about taxes in the US, the GOP is clear that they want lower taxes, that’s the goal, and so it must be the case that liberals want higher taxes, right?  No, the Right shows how they don’t even understand their own propaganda with the way they totally ignore that the Laffer Curve is a hyperbola and not a line. The justification for lowering taxes is that it will raise revenue by stimulating the economy, but if you get rid of the IRS, get rid of taxes, make the tax rate too low you do indeed decrease revenue.  You can only lower taxes so much before you not only decrease revenue but actively hurt the economy by getting rid of the parts of government that stimulate growth, promote investment, improve infrastructure, defend the consumer and worker, etc.  In no situation, though, will you hear someone on the Left claim that the goal is to raise taxes, and not just because it would be politically unpopular.  The Left understands that there are times to cut taxes, there are times to raise taxes, and generally it’s better to think about what you do for more than 0 seconds.

The Right has been quite effective at pushing through this mentality, which is why it has almost become impossible to talk about economics outside of a very narrow spectrum, but it’s not just economics.  On nearly every debate the Right has set itself in opposition to an extreme that doesn’t exist and then label the moderate opposition as if it were the extreme.  Take for instance the debate over abortion rights.  The Far Right states plainly that no woman should be able to access an abortion under any circumstance: rape, incest, safety of the mother, etc.  The opposite extreme to this position would have to be that every pregnancy should be terminated, or at least the government should have some say in dictating when a mother must undergo an abortion procedure, as is the case under China’s one child policy.  Even the least extreme of those opposites is simply not thought of in passing by the Left, which argues that a woman has the right to access an abortion if she feels it’s necessary.  We could be talking about how best to prevent abortions, which incidentally is to keep them safe and legal, but instead we are forced to believe that the opposite of the “pro-life” position is “pro-choice.”  Pro-choice is the appropriate middle ground in this discussion, not the opposite extreme of the Far Right.

Depending on how philosophical you want to get, this same analysis holds water as a critique of the Right.  When talking about race relations, I’ve heard many conservatives talk about the debate between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois.  On the one hand you have Washington who argued that Blacks need to simply work harder and be better than their white counterparts so that they earn the respect of society and having done that, civil rights and equality would eventually come.  On the other hand you have DuBois saying that Blacks need to be active in the struggle of advancing the rights of black people politically and drive the change of society that way.  Washington was responsible for the Tuskegee Institute and advocated that Black people learn vocational skills, whereas DuBois was responsible for the NAACP and advocated that Black people strive for higher education.  And in every conversation I’ve ever had with a conservative making this point they then conclude that the Right sides with Washington and the Left sides with DuBois, because the Right thinks that it would have been better if Black people had earned their rights and the Left just wanted to try and force society to accept Blacks as they are.  This too is a faulty assessment of the Left’s position.

It’s true that the Right is more comfortable with the idea that minorities still have to earn their rights, but the Left doesn’t just accept DuBois, we argue for both at the same time.  Political movements are about getting the ball rolling by all means possible, and people get accepted in societies by being recognized by society.  This is why Washington is right that Black people need to work harder just to be seen as equal to Whites in a society that assumes less of them, but also why DuBois is right that there needs to be a movement to force political change that protects people.  The same has been true with the struggle for LGBT rights.  The visibility of extremely talented gay people can move the conversation forward, but it’s toothless without a movement that simultaneously fights for all LGBT people, even those that aren’t exceptionally talented or famous.  It can never be an “either, or” situation or else anyone, no matter how peaceful and moderate, will be labeled as an extremist for trying to change the status quo.  This is why Dr King needed a figure like Malcolm X to advance his piece of the Civil Rights struggle.  There were already people in establishment positions who thought that Dr King was an extremist, but they were forced to recognize what an actual extremist position was from Black Power movements, such as Malcolm X’s.  It’s only the Right that dogmatically asserts that we need to choose sides in this way and pits the extremes against each other, but so many of us tacitly accept it regardless.

Perhaps the most clear example of this false dichotomy came from the mouth of our previous president, “Either you are with us, or you’re with the terrorists.”  This was the fatuous claim of the early War on Terror, where disagreement with the president was tantamount to treason.  Interesting to note that the Right has finally accepted that this was a wrongheaded argument, if only so that they could perpetually attack the first Black president.  The Democratic Party, and the American political Left such as it is, is the only party that’s sounding rational these days, but we are supposed to believe that the extremist positions in the GOP are equivalent.  Well let me be the first to say, “no more.”  Until the Right learns to live in the real world, where things are a little more complicated than schoolyard morality, then they don’t deserve to be treated as if they are actually contributing anything productive to the conversation.  They need to earn their equal footing on the debate stage.

Faux Skepticism

The internet, in my opinion, is still too young for us to have grasped the importance and influence of its own peculiar culture.  The anonymity in many sites for example has been revelatory of just how horrible people can be to each other when they feel safe from any real world repercussions.  But aside from that, it has forced us to do a bit of rapid growing up in ways that are perhaps not always healthy.  You quickly learn, hopefully, that everything you see on the internet is to be taken with a pinch of salt and not to be fully believed without sufficient corroborating proof.  Incidentally that general rule does apply to this blog as well.  For instance, it behooves the person on the web to figure out that there has never been a Nigerian prince who will give you access to his vast wealth if only you divulge some crucial banking information… so far as I know.  But the skepticism and cynicism that is necessary to enjoy the many things on the internet can go a little overboard.

There has been something of a meme floating in the internet culture that seems to demand a particular attitude from users.  Irrespective of their actual experiences, or lack thereof, people are basically expected to act as if the need for skeptical inquiry into political ideologies or social stances demands us all to think that everything is equally untrustworthy.  By this I’m referring to people who pretend that they are making intelligent decisions based on rational skepticism of the world, but are in fact only mimicking what they saw a smart person do once without understanding why it was done.  This includes the vast number of people who claim to be so disillusioned with politics, despite never having engaged in the political process in the first place.

There is a myth of sorts in American politics that before the Nixon administration, the average voter just trusted whatever it was politicians said and did, but that trust was shattered in the aftermath of the Watergate Scandal.  The people were finally faced with the realization that their government might act in shady ways and might actually try to conceal the truth, and like Eve biting into the apple, were made aware of the real world.  I say this is a myth because there’s always been skepticism and outright hatred of our politicians.  Mark Twain and Will Rogers got a lot of mileage out of lampooning Congress.  But the kernel of truth to this is that in our contemporary world there is a sense that every politician is evil by definition and that they are equally untrustworthy, which is perhaps a new extreme of a position that has existed since our nation’s inception.

This is a common belief out there that informs the low voter turnout, though to be honest in many cases these could be post hoc justifications for simply not wanting to put in the effort to go and vote.  The assumption is that because all politicians are corrupt, then they are equally corrupt, and if they are equally corrupt then there is ultimately no difference in voting for any candidate or party.  This position is backed up by the reality that many times both American political parties have pursued similar economic agendas, and that the funding source for many campaigns is virtually identical.  It’s a position held by people of some note and even with a decent academic background, but I’m here to state unequivocally that it’s wrong.  There is an ever increasing difference between our parties in America and to ignore the differences is, well, ignorant.

There is only one party in this country that still denies climate science as a part of the platform.  There is only one party pushing the narrative that religious equality means giving privileges to bigots on the justification that it’s an expression of their religion to do so.  There is only one party that pushes the belief that creationism is not only on par with evolution as an explanation for the diversity of life on earth, but actually superior as evolutionary science is not conclusive.  There is currently only one party that routinely targets minority communities with punitive laws, unrelenting witch hunts, and attempted poll taxes.  There is only one party that seeks every opportunity to rewrite history to whitewash away any mistakes we have made and give credence to a narrative that only white, Christian men have done anything positive in American history.  There is only one party that pretends that racism, sexism, and anti-religious bigotry don’t even exist unless it’s racism against whites, sexism against men, and anti-Christian bigotry.  There is only one party that continues to use every opportunity to attack a woman’s right to choose, to prevent a woman from access to birth control, and deny real sex education to anyone who might need it.

There is only one party that continues to push an economic narrative that says trickle down economics works in spite of decades of evidence to the contrary.  There is only one party that believes deregulation is an effective strategy to energize our economy, in spite of the damage that is continually done when industries are allowed to act as their own regulators.  There is only one party that sees workers forming unions in the private sector as an attack on liberty.  There is only one party that thinks cutting funding for education makes fiscal sense.  There is only one party that sees GDP growth as the sole economic metric that matters, regardless of whether that growth is entirely directed at the already wealthy.  There is only one party that sees immigration as a threat to the economy and not our greatest asset.  There is only one party that actively campaigns on taking away healthcare from millions of Americans instead of working to get everyone else coverage.  There is only one political party in the United States that is so routinely wrong on absolutely every single issue that it has to have its own parody of a new network, Fox, to at least give the appearance of legitimacy to its supporters.

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the last decade or so, the party I’m talking about is the modern Republican Party.  Seeing as I’ve already made this post rather redundant in the way I listed off the sins of the GOP, suffice it to say that the Democrats have decidedly stood as the party that doesn’t promote that level of bad policy.  If these don’t seem like extreme enough differences to you, or if you think that these are merely the principles they run on but never implement, then I have to ask if you’ve even used the internet for the purposes of actually looking into reality before.  In Kansas, Governor Brownback’s administration has destroyed the education system, while enjoying immense debt and loss of further public assets, all for the sake of ideological purity.  In Texas, we’ve seen the repeated attempts to “revise” the curricula of the country, while holding the record as the state with the highest rate of repeat teen pregnancy in the country.  In Louisiana, we’ve seen Governor Jindal’s government lower education standards while pushing to have creationism shoved into publicly funded schools.  In Wisconsin, Governor Walker’s Koch-funded crusade to kill the unions that built the middle class has created the worst job growth of Mid-West states.  While at the same time Democratic states have worked to increase the minimum wage, to reduce public debt, to increase school standards, to defend the rights’ of women and workers alike, and to make an economy where working hard actually lifts you out of poverty.

So when I hear people pretending to be so skeptical and cynical of both parties I have to restrain myself from beating them upside the head with something blunt.  Yes, it’s important to point out the corporatist leanings of both parties and call out the shadow money that has too much influence on all parties involved, but let’s not go so overboard as to make the mistake of equating the sins of the two major parties.  As much as I would like to see some real diversity of choices throughout the political spectrum, there already exists a distinct choice between the Centrist Democratic Party and the Far Right Republican Party.  To ignore this difference and therefore give into apathy is to become complicit with every degradation done to this country.  Don’t think for a second that by not voting you are any less to blame for the current state of our politics.  In fact there’s a good argument that the vast number of people who choose not to vote are directly responsible for our piss poor political spectrum as it stands, because that gives the extremists who do show up a greater voice in who gets elected.  But to listen to the average commentator on the internet, it is almost a mark of superiority to hold yourself apart from dirty old politics.

Faux skepticism, the kind that makes for itself the facade of researched and fleshed out opinion without any of the actual work, is the height of ignorance.  I could be entirely wrong, it could be that there really are scores of thousands of people, who have done so much more work in looking at the political landscape that it’s beyond me, but somehow I’m skeptical.  For the rest of us, at this place and time there is all the world between the parties, which isn’t to say there can’t be a time for compromise or cooperation.  What it does mean, though, is that we are going to be continually faced with the worse of two evils unless people wake up and turn out to the polls when it counts.  So feel free to call out the person who claims, “I don’t trust any of them,” because something tells me this is set on a foundation not of sound reason but utter bullshit.

Blinded by the Hate

With a scant 555 days left until a new president is inaugurated, barring some unforeseen emergency in the meantime, the Far Right is still taking every last opportunity to lay on the hate.   It should really come as no surprise at this point, but one would think that eventually some bits of reality might slip passed their ideological barriers to allow for some enlightenment.  No such luck unfortunately, we are left with the same old opposition as ever and it again threatens our ability to do something to advance the causes of peace and prosperity.  When the final deal with Iran was announced the reaction was as obstinate and immediate as ever, and it is just the most recent of a long list of accusations hurled against the president in spite of all the evidence.  In fact to call the accusations of the right an example of the pot calling the kettle black would rather miss the point, because this really is projection without a comparable problem. It would more accurately be like the pot calling the silverware black.

Looking at the deal it is clear that while we may not have been able to get everything we wanted, we got everything we needed to get to ensure that Iran will not be able to make nuclear weapons in the foreseeable future at least, if not for much longer.  Iran will have to comply with international inspections to demonstrate that their reactors are not breeding plutonium and therefore only being used for energy creation, that their centrifuges are slowed and shut down to only produce the much lower grade uranium necessary for power plants, that their stockpile of fissile material is shrunk down from the potentially multiple weapon threshold it is now to a fraction of what would be needed for even a single weapon, etc.  The sanctions that are being lifted do not open the floodgates for arms to be sold to Iran any more than is already the case by Russia, but the Obama administration will not be arming the Islamic Republic of Iran.  That was the work of the Republican hero, Ronald Reagan.

And this is where that whole silverware comment comes into play.  Whereas it would be the pot calling the kettle black for Republicans to continue to hound the Obama Administration for the tragic death of four Americans at the embassy in Benghazi, in spite of the fact that 60 Americans died at embassies during the Bush years alone, it is another thing altogether for the Republicans to start attacking Obama for aiding the Iranian military.  It really is a shame that the general awareness of the Iran-Contra Scandal is as low as it is, but when you have a whole political party devoted to the deification of Ronald Reagan it’s not at all shocking that these less than forgettable foibles get pushed to the wayside.  Apparently “peace through strength” includes arming you enemies so that you can afford to arm terrorists, who are at least nominally your allies.

But by every possible metric, Obama should be the best living president to people on all sides of the aisle.  If you are concerned with basic economic metrics like unemployment, consumer confidence, Wall Street performance, etc then he is easily one of the most successful presidents.  If you look at measures of social inclusion, the Obama administration is notable for the advancement of the LGBT community as well as starting the conversation on the devastating drug war and its side-effects on the criminal justice system.  If you think that deficits are a bad thing, he’s cut them; if you think that gun rights are important, he’s defended them; if you think that our healthcare system is too expensive and helps too few people, he has made it cheaper and more easily accessible to more people than ever before.  And all of this has been done without increasing taxes at all for the vast majority of Americans, really only “increasing” any taxes at all by allowing the Bush era tax cuts to expire.

Yet in the world of Right Wing radio and No Spin Zones, Obama is a tyrant who has single-handedly killed the economy, set up death panels, stolen your guns, driven back the cause of social inclusion, and plunged us into a Greek style debt crisis.  Why, oh why, do so many people on the Far Right hate President Obama so instinctively and so viscerally?  Well, I can’t speak to every individual’s reasons with a sweeping generalization, but we have to start the discussion by simply mentioning that race is a part of it.  This may not be the case for every single one of the critics, but having spoken with more than a few people who profoundly despise our commander in chief I can say with confidence that the level of melanin in his skin plays a role for many of them.  Whether through the use of veiled dog whistles that impugn his character as thuggish, or through more overt terminology and signs that portray him as a witchdoctor for promoting the ACA, for example, the list of racial attacks on the first president of color is long and depressing.  But to simply shirk off these attacks as the blind hatred of racists would assume too little of the American people and if anything too much of the rationale behind the hate.

We do fear what is different, so I can almost understand why racists, homophobes, misogynists, and bigots of all stripes get as wound up as they do.  But that’s ultimately not the real problem here, the problem is that for so long we’ve simply accepted that this country can split into warring factions with separate sources of information and expect that everyone will be able to understand reality as it is.  Through all the filters on the Far Right, it’s impossible to see the world as it is and so it’s all too easy to drive home the narrative that Obama is evil and must be opposed as a matter of principle.  This explains the opposition to positions that the Right once held once they are endorsed by the president much better than a blanket accusation of bigotry, as even bigots can admit that they agree on certain things with the people they hate.  Not for nothing but the Nation of Islam hosted American Nazis at some of their functions back in the day.

The problem here is that Barack Obama, the human being and leader of the United States, doesn’t exist to the vast majority of the Far Right.  In his stead is the effigy Barack Hussein Obama, the vicar of satan on earth and final prophet of America’s damnation.  He can do no good because by definition anything he does is evil.  The goal of the believer is, therefore, to eternally oppose him and be prepared to shift your position with that opposition in accordance with whatever this straw man does in the real world.  In this sense the name Obama and the person who bears the name are just symbols, like the confederate battle flag, that have a special significance that only makes sense within the context of the ideologically pure sect that truly believes without knowing.

Having seen the passage of the Evangelical President George Bush, the followers of this conservative sect saw the existence of a non-Evangelical president as an attack on their religion.  This is echoed in groups like the American Family Association, who believe that anti-Christian bigotry means allowing atheists, secular humanists, homosexuals, liberals, etc to exist.  I don’t mean this as a hyperbolic attack on the sanity of the AFA, but as an allusion to a map of supposed anti-Christian bigotry they posted. http://www.afa.net/bigotrymap See, in a normal bigotry map you would post examples of people being beaten to death for being gay, denied their job for being atheist, having their church bombed for being predominately black, etc.  Since they have no examples like this they have to pretend that groups, who maintain the reality that gay people exist constitute an attack on their religious freedom to believe otherwise.  So deluded are they that they can’t even recognize the real anti-Christian bigotry that occurs in the world, like in the Middle East, because they are so marginally slighted by no longer having their ideal president in charge.

Perhaps the greatest sin here is that these groups shroud their hatred in the trappings of virtue, love, and Christianity.  For so long they’ve been able to go around bearing false witness against their neighbor, who happens to be the president in this case, without ever being forced to recognize their hypocrisy.  Which is not to say that there can’t also be real criticism of the president.  The recent pardoning of just under fifty prisoners might make some news, but in light of the overwhelmingly unjust prison system, President Obama’s incredibly low number of pardons does stick out.  I know many on the Left who are unhappy that he hasn’t followed through with certain campaign promises, and wish that he would go further with many of the policies he did advance.  But these are criticisms grounded in reality and not borne of malice toward an opposer, which for so many on the Right rather sums things up nicely.

Free on Paper

In the abstract, a lot of conservative libertarian rhetoric can sound pretty good.  I mean, who doesn’t want to be able to make their own decisions, free from the intrusion of an overbearing government?  Heck, there are even some ideas on the Right where I would have to agree, e.g. the regulations that effectively serve only to bar new entries to the market and small businesses, while only annoying the large corporations that can handle the legal costs.  At the core of the rhetoric is promise to promote freedom as much as possible, and much like how communism may promise to promote equality as much as possible, the results in the real world are destructive to the lives of people and ultimately degrading both to real liberty and equality.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve been assured of how great the free market is in every single circumstance, without exception, full stop.  The power of free markets is indeed astounding, but let’s not delude ourselves that private industry can or should do absolutely everything.  Let’s start with the things practically everyone agrees with, i.e. national and civil defense.  Privatization of the military has been tried before in a republic, namely the Roman Republic.  After a series of privately owned militaries were used to install various tyrants for short periods of time, a fellow named Caesar effectively killed the republic, such as it was, and used his private military force to become emperor.  Luckily even people who hold up old Roman names like Cato aren’t stupid enough to advocate the privatization of the military.  And while private security forces might be useful here and there, you definitely don’t want a privately held police force to be the ones holding people to the letter of the law, because what happens if the guy who pays the bills just so happens to be the criminal?  But it’s more than just these rather blunt exceptions to the rule.

I have had many experiences where I’ve had to use the resources of hospitals around this country and a few experiences abroad as well.  I can say without a doubt that the best medical care I’ve ever received was in Rennes, France.  Even factoring in the unfortunate reality that I don’t know my height and weight in the appropriate metric off hand, the service was easily accessible, clean, efficient, responsive, and shockingly affordable even though I didn’t get any of the discounts that a person paying into the system would get.  And near as I can tell from statistics on the subject, my experience was the norm and not the exception as France’s healthcare system is routinely ranked among the best in the world if not number one outright.  Now, this is not a healthcare system that a rational person could call “socialized” but it is a universal healthcare system, where the government advocates on behalf of the citizens to get the highest quality at a reasonable price.  Per capita the French system is far cheaper than ours, even though it has better health outcomes and it is precisely because the market forces that force people to make bad choices here are not allowed to get in the way of patients and their doctors.

I, for one, think that a person who is not constantly hounded by medical bills is freer than a person who is.  The proponents of slash everything government always, never seem to grasp that people can have their freedom stripped away by other means than government force.  If ever a libertarian actually feels compelled to say, “yes we do indeed have a duty to ensure that people can access healthcare without being then drowned in debt,” they never seem to get as far as actually ensuring people are able to access healthcare without being drowned in debt.  What I mean is that on the few occasions that a libertarian alternative to universal healthcare is proposed, it is always the goal to spend as little money as possible to help with the bills instead of actually working to make sure that the people who are currently saddled do not have those bills in the first place.  They’ll advocate health savings accounts that get you part of the way, or propose vouchers that invariably are worth less than any insurance plan with decent coverage.  And the excuse is that by keeping the pay outs low they involve the government as little as possible and therefore keep people as free as possible.  Well I’m sorry, the woman who can’t leave her job because she can’t afford to lose the insurance program is no freer if she’s then told that it is now marginally cheaper than before to get private insurance.

As I alluded to before, there are certainly some bad regulations out there that drive up costs to consumers, provide no real protections, and serve only as a deterrence to new competition and diversity in the market.  It would certainly be worthwhile to hit the books and look for ways to make the legal and regulatory system as clear as possible so that everyone can easily comply with the rules without a team of overpriced lawyers.  Having said that, we are made more free when there are decent regulations in place to keep bad actors from spoiling things for the rest of us.  Without adequate regulations on the environment or businesses, the only choice to consumers is a Hobson’s choice, either you accept what the hegemonic corporate power dictates is acceptable or you choose to not live there anymore.  Actually to put it that way makes it sound as if people operate completely rationally and emotionless, because even if your home gets covered in BP oil spills, it’s still your home and being compelled to leave because of market forces may not be enough.  When there are regulations in place to limit smog, to keep public water sources clean, etc then people are truly free to live where they please and not simply where it is marginally habitable.

Ok, I perhaps get a little too extreme with my straw man of conservative libertarianism, it’s not as if there are people who really want to simply do away with the EPA in this country… I mean aside from the modern GOP.  It might have been difficult to imagine how the Republican Party could get more coldly detached from society since Nixon, but at least he set up the EPA.  Though he did try to veto the Clean Water Act, so perhaps it’s a wash.  Nonetheless, there are constant and echoing cries from the people on the Far Right claiming that we should be free again to enjoy the splendors of seeing our rivers burst into flames and our skies made opaque with smog.  Why shouldn’t we be free to simply throw trash into the wilderness?  It’ll decompose eventually and the added strain on the environment will toughen it up. This is real freedom after all.

See, there’s the freedom on paper where everyone is a rational actor and no one ever gets in anyone else’s business and then there’s the freedom of the real world where you have to deal with the consequences of other people existing.  The policies that advocate removing government as a regulator, that take away the social safety net, that deny workers’ rights, etc do not leave the average person freer and it fact take away choices.  It takes a strange kind of person to actually advocate that people, as a general rule, enter the job market literally working for nothing.  Sure, a person who comes from an affluent family might be able to afford an unpaid internship, but not the person who comes from a house that’s already living paycheck to paycheck.  Even if their family could find a way to support the new worker, all this labor suddenly willing to work for nothing would only drive down wages for many more people who have paying jobs.  In what way does effectively requiring people put themselves into indentured servitude make them freer?

Yet these are the policies of the Far Right to get people working without that intrusive force of government demanding they be compensated for that work.  Hey, the Right always said they wanted people back to work, they never said anything about people getting paid to work.  And as for that remainder of people living in a world without the force of government mandating earned sick leave, you can rest assured that you are free to work from dawn until dusk to afford the insurance gap with just enough left over for a bed to sleep in before you go back to work and start all over again.  What a wonderful paradise this is where everybody is working and theoretically doing so of their own volition because it sure beats those pesky progressive policies that assume people are something other than chattel.

Hearts and Minds

“Ideologies are not defeated with guns; they’re defeated by better ideas.”  This is one of the most important, albeit simple, truths to pass from a president’s lips since “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”  Needless to say the Republicans are having nothing to do with it.  I had always wondered what the reaction of people must have been when they first heard someone suggesting that the earth goes around the sun and not the other way around.  How condescending must they have been in responding that they couldn’t feel the earth moving underneath them?  All the while, blissfully unaware of reality and a context greater than their individual perspective.  Luckily we have the Far Right to remind us what proud ignorance looks and sounds like. This has come to be their raison d’être, ever since they started to demonize people who could pronounce raison d’être.

The knee jerk reaction to hearing statements like these from the Right is to say that if it weren’t for our guns the whole world would be speaking German.  Setting aside the reality that this grossly overplays the importance we specifically played in the effort to defeat the Far Right dictatorships of Europe in the 1940s, because any historian worth their salt would conclude that the Soviets bore the brunt of the fight and likely could have won without our direct involvement.  The claim still remains that what ended the war was the force of arms that broke the Nazi war machine.  It’s true that our ships, our bombers, our troops, and indeed our guns did break the back of fascist militaries of all stripes, but that’s not what really won the war.  What won the war was the presentation of facts, arguments, and indeed pictures that demonstrated to the people, who had once supported these Far Right extremists, that they were wrong.

I should at this point clarify what is too often forgotten, that the Nazi Party could never win even a majority of votes, let alone claim to truly represent all of the Germans.  Nevertheless, at one point a plurality of Germans did indeed vote for the promises of the Nazis, but they weren’t the only ones getting killed in WWII.  When we fought the Wehrmacht we were fighting Nazis, yes, but also Germans who didn’t necessarily believe in Nazi rhetoric, but for whatever reason were in the military.  Our bullets were not set to only hit the real Nazis, so many Nazi party members remained after the war.  We saw after WWI what happened when a large and disaffected part of Germany became radicalized by Right Wing rhetoric, and that could easily have happened after the end of WWII.  So why didn’t they rise up again?

After WWI everyone was too busy trying to mend their own wounds to be greatly concerned with the needs of the Germans.  In the ideological vacuum, along with an incredibly devastated economy, is where you see the growth of these groups, particularly when they are detached from the reality of the policies they supported.  In the aftermath of WWII that vacuum was not allowed to reemerge.  The Germans were immediately confronted with the reality of the Holocaust, with the horrific treatment of its sick, with the torn up countryside that came as a result of the megalomaniacal ambitions of their former leader.  But more than anything, they were presented with an allied force that helped to rebuild Germany as a democracy.  The Marshall Plan is, in my opinion, the best military expenditure we have ever made.  It is what showed the power of governments that defend the individual and build great nations of the people, without the empty rhetoric of fascist groups who would otherwise claim to do the same thing.

To give a counterexample to this, let’s look a bit closer to home at an example where the guns won the fight but lost the ideological war.  The American Civil War has been coming up a lot lately, and it’s high time because much of our modern problems are the long lasting fruit of seeds that are at least as old as this 19th century conflict.  I know that I can be a bit dismissive of the point of view that sees the CSA as a point of Southern pride, and I won’t apologize for that, as such.  However, I do understand, in the aftermath of a war that destroyed so much of the land, killed so many of the people, torched the city of Atlanta, and led to policies in the aftermath that made the Reconstruction Era a point of irony, why some people might think a little more fondly on the group that fought to prevent this.  As a country we failed to fully integrate the freed slaves into a majority white country, leading to many of our current issues with race; but we also failed to fully integrate the South into the Union, leading to any number of economic and social issues.

Bloodshed only leads to more bloodshed unless someone is willing to take the even more painful step of forgiveness.  The North at the time was unwilling to cede the point that the South had tried to divide the country and all for the asinine reason of defending the institution of slavery.  So much so that they initially set out to punish the South. Incidentally the failure of that should have been used to inform the Treaty of Versailles a few decades later.  The next step was to just let the South do whatever it wanted, in affect giving the South the so called states’ rights they had called for in the first place.  This breeds an insular culture that sees any kind of outside influence from then on out as an attack on their liberty and not a hand to help the healing.  So now we have many Southern states still demanding sovereignty to set up their own education and healthcare systems that yield the worst results.  And this is why even after being repeatedly shown that segregation keeps creeping into schools, people like Governor Bobby Jindal refuse to see that there is even a problem in the first place.

So now we want to fight another external threat, ISIS.  They are indeed terrible, murderous, despicable people.  Don’t we all feel superior by pointing out that we are better than people who force children to decapitate hostages?  But once we get past the easiest step of finding these people detestable, we have to think about how to actually fix the problem and save the lives of innocent people.  As a practical matter, it is almost certainly within the power of the United States and her allies to kill every living member of ISIS, but like a hydra we would only serve to make the problem that much worse.  We’ve been trying to kill our problems to death for decades now, and the results are exactly as piss poor as a rational human being would expect.  The greatest recruitment tool extremist groups like ISIS have are the heavy-handed tactics of anti-terrorist efforts.  And ISIS is nowhere near the only example of horrific groups, which have prospered as a result of the US supporting militias and warlords to do the dirty work.

We saw the Russians in Afghanistan so we armed the Mujahideen and the Taliban; they then later used our arms to attack us and other innocents.  We saw that the Iranians were getting too powerful so we armed Saddam Hussein; he later became our enemy and we only strengthened Iranian resolve against us.  We also armed the Iranians to fund other terrorist groups in South America; so we gave the people we already ticked off weapons so they could start supplying terrorist groups of their own choosing.  After the toppling of the Saddam regime we created a vacuum for Islamist extremists of all stripes; this has eventually become what we know of as ISIS today.  Now the calls from war hawks are to arm the Kurds and put US boots on the ground to kill ISIS members.

How many times do we need to be shown that simply pumping enough weapons into the situation not only doesn’t fix the problem but actually makes things worse, before we stop listening to the war hawks?  And don’t be tricked for an instant that they care about the soldiers they send off to die or their own country for that matter.  They are either culpably negligent by never learning the facts of the matter or actively malicious in perpetually calling for war as the immediate answer to any problem.  If we treat ISIS as just a military threat, like a national army, then we will win that fight but we will also create ten more fights within the first term of the next president.  We need to start addressing the real and underlying problems and not perpetually play whack-a-mole with terrorist groups.

You begin to accomplish real goals by accepting that as much as we love our country, our families, etc there are other people in the world who are just as passionate about their homelands and loved ones.  The next step is to put out an open hand to fund infrastructure, not militias, and build business partnerships to develop these areas and treat people with respect.  You have to fund the peaceful option to stem the bleeding and not simply throw more blood into the mix, it’s painful but it works.  If we can’t make that painful choice, we then choose to continue to endure and perpetuate still greater pain and suffering.  It’s at this point that I’m reminded of a very beautiful hymn by Jean Sibelius.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cvz9PvczUMI “This is my home, the country where my heart is. Here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine. But other hearts in other lands are beating, with hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.”  We need to make their hopes and dreams work in tandem with our own and not give them every reason to hope for opposition.

Endless Empathy

It took me a little longer than usual to decide what I wanted to say for Independence Day, so apologies for being a little late to the party.  Though, given the reality that we should be celebrating this holiday on July 2nd, perhaps it is more patriotic to be just a little bit off.  Nonetheless, Happy (belated) Independence Day to every red, white, and blue blooded American out there.  Amid all the activity from the court, the drama in the presidential campaigns, and just simple people talking about the issues, I’ve noticed a trend in the way people think about things.  It’s as if there is a sense among most people that we are only ever able to love and empathize with a select number of people or groups of people.  There is an assumption being made that rights and dignity are a zero sum game, where the success of one group must always come at the expense of another.  This simply is not the case.

There is nothing new to this mode of thinking, but I’ve been noticing it more in the last few months at any rate.  It starts with the complaints about the phrase “black lives matter.”  The response is invariably, “all lives matter,” as if by pointing out that black people have been getting the shaft that we must, therefore, ignore the plight of all other people.  A more immediate and petty example would be the responses to the White House lighting up in the colors of the rainbow in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s historic Obergefell v. Hodges decision.  There were many who saw this and thought of any number of causes that the White House could have lit itself up for: including red, white, and blue for Independence Day.  This was echoed by people who, seeing a great number of others applying a rainbow filters on their Facebook profiles, thought that it was worth protesting by applying red, white, and blue filters on their profile pictures, as if the joy in seeing marriage equality suddenly meant these people could no longer love the country that just enacted it.

But in all this, there are people believing that because they aren’t part of the side that won their equal rights that they’ve somehow lost something.  I don’t want to sound callous here, but there is absolutely no reason for anyone to be angry with this decision, there were no losers.  The decision does not require religious people, who believe that homosexuality is a sin, to suddenly start performing same-sex marriages.  The only thing that has changed is that churches that do want to perform these marriages can do so with the full backing of civil law, which will rightfully give no regard to gender in further marriage licenses.  If you are sad that the government is no longer acting in a way that gives privilege to religions that deny marriage equality, then I am sorry but it was a mistake of the government to ever act that way in the first place.  In other words you, hypothetically angry person, didn’t lose anything because you didn’t have anything to lose to begin with.  We are now living in a country of equals, and the remedy of wrongs done to an oppressed group does not mean the oppression of others, simply that the oppression is being stopped.

A similar fight is happening with the controversy surrounding the confederate battle flag.  I can remember hearing people un-ironically refer to the American Civil War as the War of Northern Aggression, despite the South having been the side that seceded and the side that fired the first shot and the side trying to protect slavery.  So it is perhaps unsurprising that those who think of the CSA as a point of pride might not understand the context of people who don’t want to see their tax dollars go to commemorating a painful part of our history.  Private businesses have made their own decision to no longer sell a flag that is quite controversial, in the same way that toys based on the series Breaking Bad were removed from shelves of Toys “R” Us locations.  In all this I have not heard a single person call for laws prohibiting citizens fro purchasing, owning, waving, etc their own flags, but that seems to be what the fans of the flag seem to think is already happening.

But, I bring these things up because I still have all the empathy in the world for these people whom I disagree with and whose positions truly confound me.  To the person who hears the phrase “white privilege” while they see a flag they take pride in taken from public spaces, there can be a bit of a disconnect.  All the more so if that person sees that their privilege still leaves them in less than ideal housing with a piss poor job, if they even have one.  Where is all this white privilege if there are non-whites succeeding at the same time that there are whites who aren’t doing so well?  And rather than going into a whole discussion about white privilege, suffice it to say that I can still care deeply about the working class white family that is struggling at the exact same time that I care deeply about my black brothers and sisters.

Personally, I am not a huge fan of Jeremy Kyle, for the same reasons why I don’t like similar presenters, who use working class people as a point of entertainment for the oh so morally superior among us.  Nonetheless, I was made aware of a moment where he pointed out an important reality regarding gender relations in society. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PR5ryhnYtQ He is quite right to be indignant with the crowd for treating the guest’s story as laughable simply because it broke the assumption that the man should be the one in control.  I consider myself to be a feminist, but I am not blind to the real problems of men, not least of all because I am a man.  I would actually argue that it is because there is a cultural sexism that demands that men and women play dominant and submissive roles respectively that situations like this are allowed to persist, but that’s somewhat aside the point for the purpose of my point today.  The underlying assumption is that by being for women you must, therefore, be at least negligent of the needs of men.  This is a false dichotomy.  Men are indeed still people too, and I don’t take away from that point by pushing for pay equity.

America, as a concept, demands from us a greater love.  Because we are a country so diverse, we are called to love many races, many religions, many political positions, etc.  Even when there is disagreement among us, there is always love.  Or at least there should be in an ideal world.  I get it, when I’m confronted with people who think I’m an idiot, and say as much, I’m less than warm to the idea of getting close to them.  When I see the destruction done by groups that I disagree with, I don’t instinctively want to support them, but I know I’m called to do better.  In our law we ensure that the people we hate most are entitled to their rights just as much as the most popular among us.  We give previously convicted felons a defense in court for new crimes, we defend the parades and demonstrations of the KKK and Neo-Nazis, we protect unpopular minorities wherever they exist because we know it’s the right thing to do.

It’s right because it keeps us safe, because if we can defend the rights of the people we hate, then we have a pretty good chance of being defended if we ever become the target of that hate.  Any one of us can become a minority over night just by moving to a new state or county.  There are places in this country today where if you aren’t a member of the majority religion that it can be tough to get a job, which is why we have groups like the ACLU to ensure that everyone is treated with decency in this country.  But more than the simple pragmatic argument it’s right because it is who we are, and we are fundamentally a decent people.  We are a people who came from every other country in the world to become Americans.

This is why I know it is possible to love each and every person and group in America, because however diverse and different we may be, we share a common commitment to the American Dream.  We all have problems, some are unarguably bigger than others, but that doesn’t make them any less significant to the person enduring them.  We all have our disagreements, some bigger and more fundamental than others.  But America is always the nation that calls out to the world to come to us and calls to us to be that worthy beacon of hope.  The Declaration of Independence, though a document of war, was always intended to be a pathway toward friendship the moment hostilities ended. “Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.”  And seeing as there is no war between Americans, we must strive, as ever, to be friends.

Courts Settle It

There are times when there is simply too much going on, both in the world and in your own life, that it becomes impossible to say all you want to say.  This is the excuse I will be running with for having ignored this year’s eventful Supreme Court session until now.  Yes, happy days are here again for Americans who enjoy access to affordable healthcare, who wish to defend marriage without concern for the sex of either half of the couple, who think it’s a good idea to fight gerrymandering, who believe that racial discrimination is worth combating, and those who hold the opinion that state governments should not be compelled to provide confederate regalia to its citizens.  In the wake of these, and other decisions, the Far Right of American politic is feeling the collective explosion of their heads.  More than ever, there are calls to get rid of the courts, from people like Bobby Jindal, as well as only marginally less crazy calls to scale back the authority of the Supreme Court.  And yes these really are ludicrous positions in a modern democracy, because although the rule of the people is important it must always be second to the rule of law.

There are some complaints on the Left, however feeble, saying that even though we are obviously quite pleased with a ruling like Obergefell v. Hodges, it would have been better for each state to have made the decision on its own to support marriage equality, even if it might have taken a few more years.  I am here to say, in the words of our illustrious Justice Scalia, that’s a load of pure applesauce.  It might be comforting to know that a majority of the country supports marriage equality, which is certainly the case right now, and it might be theoretically pleasing to imagine an America where every person supports marriage equality so it is the law of the land naturally, but this leaves an uncomfortable question.  What would happen if that majority were ever lost?  There are certain things that simply can never be put to a vote, and rights are chief among them.  Because what would happen if the tides ever turned and public opinion dropped below 50% plus one person, is that the end of marriage equality would be as swift as its arrival.

Now let’s be clear, the court is not Left Wing at this time.  These are the same justices who, just last year, ruled that Hobby Lobby had the right not to cover birth control medication in its employee health insurance plans.  This same time last year, it was the conservatives rejoicing at the extremely conservative Supreme Court, which just so happens to be the same liberal court they complain about now.  Previously this court has gutted the Voting Rights Act and, in the Citizens United ruling, set the stage for the heavily moneyed elections we endure today.  Yet, having said all that, I would still rather a decision over the right of a gay couple to be wed and all that it entails be made by a court of law rather than be up to a popular vote.  If nothing else, the symbolism of the Supreme Court ruling on this matter is much more profound than any legislation or referendum, because this sets in stone the precedent of equality under the law as reflected in the Constitution and the Amendments to it.

This is, incidentally, why I find it even more repugnant that the same conservatives who should feel chastened at this moment, instead feel emboldened to call for the end of all civil marriage.  Necessity truly is the mother of invention, and with the ever growing need to pretend that their position is based on anything other than a desire to use the government to suppress the gay community, they’ve managed to find one last strategy up their collectives asses.  As with many Republican strategies, the goal is to degrade the ability of government to defend at risk minorities.  The argument is that government has no business in officiating agreements, which are fundamentally private and religious.  To that I say again, “Applesauce.”  A marriage is so much more than just a private declaration of love that can be made in a church.  A marriage is a public statement of devotion, and it bears many rights and responsibilities that require the force of law behind it in some cases.

There are many places in this country where it remains unsafe to be gay.  In those places hospitals are required to tend to the sick as much as anywhere else, but until this decision from the court, which requires marriages between two men or two women to be recognized nationwide, there was no reason that these hospitals had to allow the spouse of a sick person to be at their bedside, if that spouse happened to be of the same gender.  Marriages do indeed include children quite often, and until this decision a gay father had no legal right to custody of his kids if his husband suddenly passed away.  That is particularly important for gay people who come from families that are less than gay friendly.  A gay soldier, having returned from war to her loving wife had no reason to expect that she would be able to pass on her benefits in the event that something happened on the next tour of duty, until this recent court decision.  So I am not only happy that it has come now, but I am happy it has come through the courts because if anyone tries to block a loving and devoted couple from fulfilling their marriage responsibilities and enjoying the rights of that union, that couple can point to a precedent that undeniably defends their rights, regardless of whatever local opinion might be.

Justice and equity are two sadly undervalued words in our public discourse.  We are too often swayed by people who say they want liberty, but liberty requires justice and equity for it to be anything other than chaos.  Justice establishes that every person has a right to speak and to pray and to do what they like, and equity says that those with the most in the world don’t then get to use that wealth to diminish the liberty of others.  Liberty without either of these concepts allows for the biggest guy on the playing field to dominate and dictate exactly how much freedom they feel like the rest of us need, or else it means that the majority of people get to decide however much liberty the minority gets to have.  This is why the rule of law, above all else, is what we prize in a republican form of democracy.

It’s easy to make jokes about how horrible lawyers are… fun too.  But the value of law in this country predates even the Declaration of Independence.  The Boston Massacre is remembered as one of the final straws that broke the camel’s back to many Americans, but it is actually the greatest demonstration of the rule of law trumping public opinion.  Before he became our second President, John Adams was a lawyer.  When he heard about the death of five civilians and the injury of a further six by British regulars, he found himself in the uncomfortable spot of taking the side of the soldiers.  Public opinion was, understandably, that these soldiers should pay the price for murder, but Adams defended the right of a person’s self defense so successfully that none of them hanged, though they did receive a brand for manslaughter.  I suppose you could call this the “stand your ground” defense of its day, but this is nonetheless emblematic of the best of us.  This is why the majority opinion that matters most when it comes to our rights, is the majority opinion that comes tempered with justice and equity.

I’ll be the first to admit that the court can get it wrong.  The conservative decisions of our current court doesn’t even begin to comprise the list of terrible decisions that have been made by the Supreme Court and lower courts in the past. Dred Scott v. Sanford, Plessy v. Ferguson, Korematsu v. U.S., and Schenk v. U.S. are among the unconscionable decisions of the Supreme Court that have denied the rights of people to be free, to be educated, to be American, and to have a dissenting opinion.  There are also examples of the Supreme Court making the right decision, even though outside forces keep it from being fulfilled.  The most extreme example of this has to be President Jackson’s response to the Worcester v. Georgia decision.  Every system that includes human beings has flaws, this is not a reason to abandon it, but to improve on it.  If nothing else, it sure as hell isn’t a reason to choose instead a system that takes all the worst parts of a flawed system and magnifies them.

Law is imperfect, so we have to keep at it.  The world is similarly imperfect, which is why we try to make it better, to make it more just.  There are always going to be bad decisions and bad justices, but we keep getting better at this whole justice thing, and we’re better for it.  Democracy is only ever as good as the people at a given time, and under duress good people have been known to make some bad decisions.  The rule of law is as good as we make it and independent of the whims of a majority if we’re doing it right.  The French motto is “liberty, equality, fraternity;” and while I may consider myself a francophile, I do not din that sufficient.  Perhaps it is my American bias but I prefer “liberty and justice for all.”

Governing

It’s no great surprise why so many Republicans assert as fact that government cannot work.  It’s because they cannot govern.  No, that would be a little harsh.  In places like Utah, Republicans have indeed been able to govern in a way that tackles homelessness and unemployment, that funds education and healthcare, etc.  In places like North Dakota, the electorate routinely chooses the GOP because they enjoy their policies of limited government.  This is not to say that either of these areas is free of problems, just that all things considered there are times and places where Republicans can do decently in leadership positions.  So the GOP can govern states, they just can’t govern people.

The Republican vision of America only works in a desolate wasteland where families only interact long enough for a wedding to take place before returning to a cabin in the distance where the existence or nonexistence of the rest of the human population are indistinguishable. The moment people actually rub shoulders and bump elbows, that’s when actual government is needed and that’s when Republican policies begin to fail.  It is evident in education policies that value cost cutting measures over quality educations, it is evident in healthcare proposals that seek only to keep already healthy people alive, it is evident in the myopic ignorance of income inequality, it is evident in the lack of funding for our infrastructure, and it is most keenly evident in the inability to change for the better.

To be clear, I am not simply making a line in the sand saying that progressive policies are urban and conservative policies are rural; however it is true that even in the reddest states, the cities where people actually live are much more likely to lean to the Left.  Leaders like Bernie Sanders are both popular and effective in rural parts of New England, while New York City, inexplicably, elects people like Rudy Giuliani from time to time.  And exceptions notwithstanding, it’s been the progressive policies of leaders like FDR that have saved farmers in their times of trial and it’s been the progressive policies that defend the rights of children in rural areas to get a decent education.  The conservative policies of the GOP are dedicated first to the belief that government cannot work and second to the task of making sure that first belief is proven true, at all costs.  This is why they work so hard to make sure that citizens get as little value from their government as possible, leading to poorer, less educated, less healthy communities.

When it comes to immigration, which is, for America at least, the starting point of our nation, the Republican policy is to see the process of applying for citizenship as equivalent to earning your humanity.  Immigrants are treated as something other than human, particularly if they come here illegally, though presidential candidates like Rick Santorum and Scott Walker seem just as likely to attack legal immigrants these days.  Immigrants are treated as if they are pests, eating up all the American jobs and suckling away at the social safety net as parasites.  This, of course, ignores the reality that illegal immigration actually nets jobs, provides the cheap food we all demand, and ends up paying more into the social safety net without, in many cases, being able to take anything out.  The policies that Republican politicians come up with to address the real issues that surround immigration, like the fight against drug cartels, almost always result in racial profiling and discrimination.  This breeds distrust and leads only to making the job that much harder, as communities that might be able to help the cause are too frightened to talk with law enforcement.

When it comes to education the goal is always to shift the cost onto the individual, as much as possible anyway.  The push for voucher programs ensures that poor families will either have to accept ever more underfunded public education or else go into debt just to get their children an adequate primary education.  This, assuming that the charter schools are actually up to the standard of current public schools, which for many charter schools is simply not the case.  But at least the now uneducated masses will have been “taught” cheaply.  One can only hope that in these scenarios, the places where there are already few school choices as it is, rural communities for instance, will be able to keep their public schools in the first place.  If not, then the parents can rest assured that the next push will be for more kids to start home schooling… oh wait, that’s already begun.

When it comes to healthcare, Republicans can all agree on one thing, Obamacare has got to go.  Yes, the ACA, which did such damaging things as eliminate the concept of “pre-existing conditions” from the insurance calculus, is the biggest threat to the republic since slavery.  This is why Republicans are so sure that we need to repeal the ACA and replace it with something to be determined later.  Well, that’s not entirely fair either, because there are proposals on the Right, and they’re the kind of short-sighted nonsense we’ve come to expect from the GOP.  What’s needed are two cheap things: catastrophic insurance and health savings accounts(HSA).  Catastrophic insurance means that you will pay most everything out of pocket, unless you happen to get a chronic illness, because then it will eventually pay out after thousands of dollars of deductibles.  All of this assuming that Republicans would actually follow through in protecting patients with “pre-existing conditions” after they fully repeal the ACA.  And if you do get that chronic illness, you better hope it’s not so serious that you can’t keep working, because at some point you might not be able to pay the premiums for that private insurance after all.  Luckily, you’ll have an HSA so that you can share the cost of your healthcare bills with your friends and families, instead of a much larger pool as would happen with conventional insurance.

When it comes to income inequality, the GOP has long refused to even acknowledge that this might even be a problem.  There has been some recent evolution on this front, because as election season heats up, the pandering hits a rolling boil.  However, the discussion of the root causes of income inequality and the remedies to it are still labeled as class warfare.  Having looked at history, I know what class warfare looks like, and it’s not a progressive income tax.  Class warfare is the peasants of the French countryside looting and torching chateaux, all before redistributing the heads of the aristocracy from their bodies.  The goal of a society is to keep that from happening, to maintain order, and promote prosperity.  These goals are impossible to achieve if every policy initiative calls for easing the tax burden off the wealthiest Americans while increasing the burden on middle and lower income groups.  The “fair” flat tax initiatives of the Far Right are emblematic of this problem, because while they certainly lower the taxes on the wealthiest by eliminating those higher income brackets, they raise the tax rates for everyone else.

When it comes to damned near everything else, it is clear that the goals of the GOP are indeed to spend as little of your money as possible, because you’re sure going to need every last cent.  Every creaking bridge in this country, every run down public property is testament to the fact that you get what you don’t pay for.  Businesses need to be able to ship their product, but they can’t do it if the resources dedicated to road management aren’t there.  People need to trust that their legal system is treating them fairly if they’re to be compliant, but that’s not the case if private industry is allowed to pay off judges for the sake of sending a few new customers to private prisons.  Trying to stop drug use among those on welfare may seem like a just and worthy cause, but if it costs more to execute the program than it saves in welfare payouts then you’ve taken taxpayer money to shame people who are already working hard to get out of a bad spot.  But it’s alright, because the people in all these equations don’t matter, it’s the money that matters and the GOP won’t spend a cent if they don’t have to… unless there’s a war to be fought, a wall to be built on our borders, non-functioning military equipment to build, surveillance agencies to expand, etc.

See, the GOP solutions to problems are focused on the wrong detail first and that’s cost.  Having made this mistake in my own life, I’ll explain.  When you look for a place to live, unless you have no other choice, you should not simply look for the cheapest apartment in the state.  What you need to do is define what you want from a potential dwelling first, having set that framework down, you look at which options fit the bill at the lowest cost.  Trust me when I say, this is a far more satisfying solution.  Sometimes the reason why things cost less is because they are worth less.  And this is the exact lesson the GOP has failed to learn.  Their solutions are cheap, but they don’t actually solve the problem and so they are practically worthless.  And for the people who have to live through these solutions you will pay the full cost of that low, low price.