#57 ADDRESS TO THE NATION

How’s that ‘drain the swamp’ thing going?

(I’ve often thought in recent years that I could write political speeches, but I’ve never tried til now. What would I say if I was on the stump at this moment, a month before the mid-terms, and I only had a few minutes to say it?)

Our situation is desperate. Our utterly corrupt president is an egomaniac whose only interest is in tearing apart our government so that all the power and wealth devolves to him and a few would be trillionaire, oligarch-types. This unholy alliance wants to use up your local resources, saddle your town with a gigantic data center, and sacrifice your job to AI. The Republican party, thanks to its own greed for money and power, supports this and has rotted away entirely from any meaningful service to the American people.

This rightwing extremism started under Ronald Reagan, who constantly bashed “government regulations” and the existence of government at all, placing the blame particularly on impoverished people of color whom he said were stealing your tax dollars through federal programming because they were too lazy to work.

Aren’t your problems caused by a government that insists you abide by its oppressive laws, while it taxes you and gives away your money to (non-white) people who don’t deserve it?

That was the essence of the argument, set up then as now to take advantage of white racial animus, thus making an enemy out of the kind of people liberals might try to support (as if food stamps and other programs for the disadvantaged weren’t also helping many white people from starving or winding up on the streets). He also made out the government to be the enemy of the little guy with its many powers and regulations.

Well, have no poor people ever gamed the system? Obviously some have. Have regulations ever wound up being onerous for the average guy? Sometimes they are.

But this whole argument and all the things that went with it–very oppressive, very conservative Christianity, an enormous military, low taxes, etc.–were all along a smoke screen to the power grab some very rich individuals aimed at making for themselves. Whether or not they happened to oppose abortion on moral grounds was always beside the point. Regardless of the rights of the many, the individuals who held incredible amounts of wealth could make their own morality to their own liking.

Thus, starting in that period, the taxation on the rich and on rich corporations has consistently eroded, sometimes down to nothing. The taxation on the blue collar and middle classes has essentially stayed the same. While the industrial base of the US got shipped overseas for cheaper labor, it’s been the towns in the American heartland who suffered, not the corporations who did it. The sad spectacle of main streets full of empty store fronts came about because the big money people didn’t care, and those in government didn’t protect them or find for them some way to get their economic vitality back.

Ronald Reagan: The originator of the “affordability crisis.”

That’s the “conservative,” Republican position, the supposed “free market” position, and some Democrats helped it happen. As of today, the top 1% of Americans have an amount of wealth that’s equal to the amount of wealth shared by the bottom 90%.

Conservatives don’t like public education, public health care, food or housing support, minimum wages, unions, job benefits, environmental laws, or anything really that protects our world and us from their avarice. All that railing by Republicans against regulations and government has always been based on helping a few people who don’t need help, not on protecting your freedom as an individual or serving your needs when you’re just trying to survive. All along it’s been a song and dance to convince you to vote against your own interests for the sole reason of enriching a few people far above you whose interests they cater to.

If you don’t want to pay taxes, if you don’t want to respect your workers, pay them decently, or create products that don’t harm people or the environment, then you have to remove all those pesky regulations to maximize your bottom line–precisely what Republicans have done and are doing now as fast as they can. If you really want to find waste and abuse in the government, try examining private contractors paid in hundreds of millions or billions of dollars, especially the military ones, rather than single welfare mothers or old, retired people on Medicare. But the current administration has taken away the oversight of everything, so it’s a free-for-all.

In other words, this is how you got screwed. It’s been going on for 50 years, weakening the middle class, making it harder and harder to reach. You may have voted for Donald Trump because he promised to drain the swamp and bring economic prosperity. But Donald Trump always was an alligator in that swamp, and what had been functioning institutions that existed for regular Americans are on the verge of getting swallowed for good by that swampy water.

Whatever Trump and the Republicans promised you, this was always where they were headed and always what they wanted. They never cared about your family farm or little business. Those don’t line their pockets. It’s as simple as that. If you’re worried about the current “affordability” crisis, this started long ago, and didn’t only come about through Trump’s stupid tariffs and senseless war.

So that’s the picture of America as I see it. But it won’t mean much unless I tell you what I would do differently.

I would start with legislation that radically changes how election money can be gathered by politicians. I would legislate out the “Citizen’s United” decision that gave us unfettered PAC money. I would outlaw any donations above, say, $5,000 to a politician and make that the maximum, and it can only be given personally by a US citizen, not by a company or organization. I’d outlaw partisan gerrymandering. I’d make politicians who left office wait five years before they became lobbyists. In short, I would look for every place that money perverts and biases the democratic process and force honesty and transparency.

On that basis, politicians might have to start listening to their constituents.

I’d raise taxes sharply on the very rich and on large corporations, and I’d cut the bloated military budget, reapportioning the money to things we, the citizenry, actually need. What do we need? I think one thing we need is health care, and I’m for giving it to everyone. Do you really think the insurance companies, who only want to fatten their “free market” bottom lines, have your best interests at heart? Do you think they’ll go the extra mile to assure your good health? Or will they cut your services in any way they can or outright refuse you care? What if we spent money on getting good health care like other countries have, instead of fighting uphill against capitalist self-interest?

What if we had a true minimum wage commensurate with the 21st century? You’ll never get the Republicans to support that, but I’ll support it. It’s this kind of choice that makes money circulate in the economy because people with minimum wage jobs will spend the money on goods and services. People at the low end get taken advantage of through long hours and no benefits. What if they had them, even modestly? Wouldn’t that improve the quality of their lives, even if it doesn’t improve Walmart’s or McDonald’s quarterly earnings report?

What if we gave real support to our public schools, rejuvenating and raising their ability to train our kids?  Doesn’t this seem of fundamental importance?  What if we gave them the care they desperately need instead of weakening them with voucher programs and otherwise ignoring them?  What if we truly helped people attending college? Instead of getting a degree that sends them deep into debt, couldn’t they become more educated, more understanding, and more capable of holding higher end jobs, or finding ways to contribute to American society without simultaneously getting a crushing financial burden? Ronald Reagan started cutting student aid many long years ago, and as higher education got more expensive, Republicans have always looked to undermine it. They don’t want an educated population. The rightwing doesn’t want anyone capable of thinking for themselves or questioning their motives. Education is a primary avenue to a more sophisticated and skilled populace. Why can’t we put real money in support of this?

Why do we continue to focus our use of energy on non-renewable, polluting sources, which continues to bring about the disaster of global warming and once again has dragged us into some idiotic war in the Middle East? What if we became energy self-sufficient? What if we threw billions of dollars into this long term benefit, rather than throw away billions on a war nobody wanted, that only weakens us?

And of course, we have to get rid of Trump’s idiotic tariffs. Tariffs, applied with precision and care, can have a meaningful use when you’re trying to protect a domestic industry. This is something Trump’s supposedly doing, but what he’s done in effect is to put massive taxes on many goods from other countries we’ve come to rely on. Since he hasn’t the intelligence to discern a meaningful economic policy from a bad one, everyone suffers.

Donald Trump epitomizes exactly whom we should never put in charge of the country: someone who doesn’t care about or serve the American public, who only acts to enrich himself and aggrandize his ego, who lacks fundamental human dignity, and incessantly lies about it all. If we are to make good on the true potential of the Constitution, our leadership has to concern itself with the welfare, prosperity, and protection of rights of the populace. That means everyone’s rights, regardless of ethnicity, gender, economic class, political preference, immigration status, and so on.

Yes, that’s a wild dream, in some sense, one we as a nation have had a hard time living up to, but it’s precisely this that can set us apart. That would be true American exceptionalism, living in a prosperous country where everyone’s rights are genuinely respected. Our enemy isn’t the many people who try to immigrate to America for a better life. The administration puts them, and even non-white American citizens, in concentration camps or foreign prisons. That’s what the rightwing wants, what makes them feel good inside, rather than revising and straightening out the process of attaining citizenship.

For this pragmatic support to regular people, Republicans would scream that I’m a communist extremist.  But it’s their extremism that’s brought America to the brink of its own destruction.

As Jefferson has told us, America isn’t limited to anyone’s tribe or aristocracy. It’s a place where we don’t need to be dragged down into these old, ignorant conflicts. It’s a place where the government serves the good of all the people it governs, and that’s because we envision it that way and try to live up to it. That’s the country I want to live in. If you want to live in it too, cast your vote with me.

Thomas Jefferson: One white guy who had some good ideas.