In a real sense all life is inter-related.
All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality,
tied in a single garment of destiny.
Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
I can never be what I ought to be
until you are what you ought to be,
and you can never be what you ought to be
until I am what I ought to be....
This is the inter-related structure of reality.
- The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Letter From Birmingham Jail" (1963)
Let's be clear from the start: Donald Trump is a blight on the American Presidency and on the country as a whole. But he's also a gift ... perhaps one that we don't want or think that we don't need, but a gift nonetheless. Here's why:
Donald Trump has committed to and is achieving an historic level of equality in our county: deeply and unashamedly faithful to the Plutocracy of which he is a part, he and his minions are f@#cking over everyone else, including the regular white folks who voted for him. In sum, you either have - in which case his policies don't affect you much if at all except to help you - or you don't - in which case there'll be hell to pay, apparently on an equal opportunity basis....
The winning, it seems, is limited to those who've already won in life ... and they don't appear to be getting tired of winning any time soon....
Plutocrats don't live near streams that can again be polluted with toxic chemicals (including because they own the polluting entities and are again legally insulated from the impact of them now). Plutocrats don't have kids in public schools, so they don't care about whether your children are shamed at lunch for being unable to afford it or whether they're in classrooms with too many students led by underpaid (but usually dedicated) teachers or whether they're not being sufficiently educated for the 21st century (in which a high school diploma offers few if any societal benefits) or whether you're trying hard to use your voucher to get your kid into one of the charter schools or private (often religious) academies that may soon be allowed to take public school funds. Plutocrats' kids don't have student loans that can again be collected in predatory ways. Plutocrats don't need public health insurance. (Because they can afford private concierge medical care. Try it sometime if you can afford it: empty lounge rooms with no extended waiting, doctors with premium pedigrees who have ample time so serve patients, etc., kinda like a medical DisneyWorld with nothin' but Fast Passes.) Plutocrats ... well, you get the picture....
By contrast, lower and middle American racists - and, stop the sanctimonious b.s. 'cause too many of 'em supported Mr. Trump specifically because he was so unafraid to be racist, sexist, misogynistic, xenophobic, ignorant, arrogant, etc. - need all of these protections and now will be without them. Hmmm. And yet few of them seem either smart enough to realize their mistake or humble enough to admit it ... yet.
Let's face it, middle America, you voted for a Plutocrat who gamed the System to get rich and stay that way who you somehow came to believe would tear down that very system to let in you and your kind. Except that he'd never done anything of the sort ever in his entire adult life to indicate that your hope had a basis in reality. What he promised you was that America would be great again, which you took to mean that other white folks like you would be in charge again. Except that they're not like you and don't care about you as their actions from day one of this travesty/abomination of an Administration demonstrate. Yes, you may be white ... but you're middle class or poor and the only white that counts in 45's America is Rich White (with a side of Powerful White).
If you don't believe me, think about this: how many of you were in two iconic recent photographs, the one of the lily-white Capitol Hill staff and interns or the one of the (morally reprehensible and premature) Rose Garden celebration for the passage of the AHCA? None? But maybe your kids could be in them someday? Perhaps ... except that everything that this Administration has done and will do will pull that proverbial mobility ladder up as they rise.
Don't you get it yet? What's it going to take to make you realize that you got completely conned by a man who pandered to your basest instincts in exchange for the opportunity to make sure that you and all the other little people who want things from the government won't get them because the government's gonna be broke from paying for the tax cuts that lighten his and his fellow Plutocrats' financial burden?!?
Don't you yet get the AHCA? It's a tax cut for rich people cloaked in the language of healthcare reform for you ... meaning that the rich folks will get the money that otherwise would have paid for your healthcare. Do you doubt this? Check out the estimates of the size of the tax cut disproportionately for the wealthy (approx. $1 Trillion according to Fox News or 'only' $675 Billion according to NPR - pick your source) and the cuts to Medicaid (approx. $880 Billion according to the Atlantic Magazine or those commie bastards in the Congressional Budget Office - again, pick your source). Notice the similarity? The rich will get richer and stay healthy enough to create more jobs for the lumpenproletariat who already have the least access to life-sustaining healthcare and apparently better start praying that they don't get too sick soon because they'll be without it (again). And all of you regular folks who're already sick, well, it's been nice knowing you because your (pre-)existing condition makes you ineligible for coverage in Trumpworld.
(Can't help but hear the words of the Marcan and Matthean Jesus when I think of this: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" [Mark 15:34, Matthew 27:46] Because our society has elected leaders who've favored themselves and their kind and truly and totally forsaken We the People!?!
And I'm so disgusted and dismayed over it now as I write that I must move on....)
As I suggested in a previous post - "Who Are We? And What Have We Become?" (January 28th, 2017) - I actually agree with Mr. Trump on one point: we do, in fact, need to make America great again ... but we diverge as to how. Whereas 45 and his minions seek to divide, demean and disaffirm life, by contrast, I believe that we must unite, uphold, celebrate and affirm our common humanity. Among other things, this means that we must...
- Make America kind again, a country that seeks to help all of its citizens to live a better life (if not really pursue the American Dream) rather than demonizing those who find themselves out of power at any given time or, for too many of our fellows, seemingly permanently
- Make America thoughtful again, so that our leaders - returning to being reality-based rather than partisan-deranged - are actually mindful of the long-term interests of the many constituencies they serve and are accordingly carefully responsive.
- Make America communal again, a place where we realize that our success is tied to our neighbors' and where we act on the truths that MLK taught us, including that we are all woven together in a single garment of destiny and that if we don't learn to live together as brothers and sisters we'll certainly perish as fools.
- Make America conversant again, a society in which we don't always agree but within which we can and do participate in a multi-faceted conversation as we listen to others and their perspectives, educate each other and seek to fashion solutions to our problems that benefit the many rather than the few.
- Make America open and embracing again, a country in which we realize that we're all immigrants, which means that we're all different yet have something to contribute, our diversity being our greatest strength, and in which every man, woman and child is our brother or sister rather than The Other.
And there are so many more ways that we can join together to make a better country and, indeed, world. Or we can choose the path of division and death proffered by this Administration. The contrast is clear: its policies disproportionately favor the rich over the middle class or poor (and, in many if not most cases, actually disenfranchise the latter) and its embrace of a "healthcare" actually means that there will be less of it and many more people will die (needlessly).
How stark does this difference have to become for us to make a different choice?
Let me offer a suggestion that may help increase your acuity: Try being Black or of Color for a while. Yep, try being Black Like Me as John Howard Griffin did more than a half-century ago. Then you'll see the difference in stark relief ... and then, too, you'll realize that your brand of white - the middle class and/or poor one - doesn't offer you much in Trumpworld: yes, you're still white, so you'll still be at the top ... but it's the top of the bottom and the real top is getting higher and higher which means further and further away for you and your progeny, so much so as not really to be attainable anymore.
Face it, you're now stuck down here with the rest of us, fighting for the crumbs from our Plutocrat masters' table. Yes, equality has come anew to America: the masses are virtually equally disadvantaged and the rich are insulated and unperturbed. America as a Banana Republic: not the America I consider great. What about you?
So if you want a different and better America, band with those who are like you except for the color of their skin or their gender or their sexual orientation or their religion or their country of origin or their whatever and fight to make America a country committed to its ideals again. Demand that those who represent you reflect our founding ethos in their behavior (and not just empty rhetoric). Indeed, Make America Great Again ... by making it truly America for all for the first time....
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
- The Preamble to the Constitution of these United States
