It's a beautiful, cool
desert morning, and the garden is thriving.
Many families in Doña
Ana County live in poverty. Half our nation's citizens own
less than what the 400 wealthiest do, largely because of inherited
wealth.
Obscene.
Half our country
struggles, with an average net worth of $11,000. That average means
many have nothing. Dividing up what those 400 have would give
everyone more than $750,000. Not saying we should do that; but this
widening gap isn't Nature, or God's Law. It's tax and other policies
that politicians approve to help the rich and powerful. There's
plenty of room to tax extreme wealth for the benefit of the general
public – and still leave rich folks very well off. (We did that
in the past, and most countries do it now.)
In the old South, the
wealthiest whites kept folks in line by pitting poor whites against
Negroes. In recent decades, those with obscene wealth – and
indifference to the rest of us and our Earth – have kept the rest
of us from looking at the economic reality by setting us bickering
over skin colors, religions, and sexual mores, and, more generally,
fearing others, particularly immigrants and asylum-seekers.
The gentleman in the
White House should be impeached. The Mueller Report lists numerous
crimes, and by muzzling witnesses he is stonewalling Congress, daring
the House to take him to courts he's packed with rabid partisans.
Each day brings a new
study showing that the alleged “alarmists” have underestimated
the imminence of climate-change's destruction of the world as we know
it. Even if the scariest scenarios are exaggerated, we're already
facing serious problems. The Big Money folks profit from ignoring
the problem. Why else would our government deny what most other
countries have agreed is our greatest challenge?
My wife comes in to tell
me the torch cacti are putting on their beautiful but fleeting show.
Voters mostly don't like
Mr. Trump and don't agree with Republican policies. A slim majority
favors impeachment. Will 2020 bring change?
The Democrats may
self-destruct. Personal ambitions have resulted in too many
candidates (some of whom should run for or retain senate seats)
turning the nomination process into a Saturday Night Live skit. The
huge financial power of corporations and rich folks seems likely to
influence which of these two-dozen candidates gets nominated. Wall
Street is already picking its favorites.
The Democratic quandary
is simple. On the one hand, Mr. Trump is destroying our nation and
environment. Four more years would leave our judges more extreme
(and often unqualified), the wealth gap wider, our air and water more
polluted – and make sure we'd miss a critical window of opportunity
to minimize the climate disaster.
Trump didn't create
income inequality, pollution, or government corruption. His
self-absorbed clowning distracts us from graver dangers.
We need a much more
systemic change than Joe Biden, great guy that he is, would attempt.
How do we choose among candidates with varied rhetoric about real
change (which they're unlikely to accomplish) and candidates we feel
(or experts say) are our safest bets to end the destructive Trump
experiment?
Fortunately it's time to
go play pickleball and run around for hours, banging a ball and
forgetting Washington exists. But first I work awhile in the garden.
Even in our hot, dry desert, the compost worms are more likely than
the political ones to do something helpful.
-30-
[The column above appeared this morning, Sunday, 23 June 2019, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper's website and KRWG's website. A spoken version will air on KRWG Wednesday and Saturday and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM, Que Tal Community Radio) Thursday, and is also available on KRWG's website.]
[When you pause and really think about it, the bare facts -- the extreme nature of the income/wealth inequality and how much the gap has widened in recent decades -- really are startling. Appalling. Like something out of the France of Louis XIV. And, yes, it's fascinating how effectively those who benefit from it -- the extremely wealthy and their lackeys in government and the press -- distract us. It's like the Peter Lorre character in Casablanca picking a refugee's pocket while warning him against thievery. Lowered taxes (a much less graduated income tax, lower capital gains taxes, irrelevant inheritance taxes, and financial tricks I might not even understand) plus indirect costs (international bickering that benefits the wealthy among us, and the multinational corporations, but does little for you or me; deep subsidization of oil an gas industries; and the indirect costs of letting corporations pollute water or muck up our health then let government pay to deal with the consequences). Without real inconvenience, the wealthiest could relieve much of the financial stress average people face; but those wealthy folks have the influence.]
[What's also scary is listening to middle- or lower-middle class folks complain of their financial situation and blame welfare. Welfare is a small part of the expenses we're unfairly burdened with.]
[Does anyone really doubt that Trump has committed impeachable "high crimes and misdemeanors", including obstruction of justice, witness-tampering, and subornation of perjury? I challenge any local Trump partisan to read the Mueller Report and then discuss it with me on my radio show. I'll confess I've thought that whether or not to impeach might be a touch decision for me if I were a Congressman; but there's no question that the evidence warrants it.]
[But while Trump is an acute wound, bleeding profusely, we have potential long-term internal damage to treat, and must not let that wound distract us from the deeper problems!]
[Having said all that . . . if I could decide who gets the Democratic nomination, what would be the right course? That Biden won't make the radical changes we need is pretty obvious. Nor, likely, will other Wall Street favorites, appealing as I may find them personally. Biden checks some pragmatic electoral boxes we need to consider: white working-class citizens of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania; and a deeper appeal to black voters than many other white candidates could boast -- and a safe, warm personality, and the fact that his faults are well-known because of decades of public exposure. But the moment I think, gee, that would make him the safest candidate, the one surest to defeat Trump, another part of my mind objects that much of the vote for Trump in 2016 was a protest vote against the system, which makes one wonder if we really want to nominate the candidate most identified with that system. Too, the lesson of recent elections, notably in Europe, has been summed up as "the voters want you to stand for something." How long will mealy-mouthed platitudes suffice? If this passion for substance behind Warren's recent popularity surge? The only thing I feel sure about is that there are too damned many candidates, and that I could, if required, name right now a dozen who have no chance and ought to get back to more productive work.]
[Too, I wanted to touch on the schizophrenic nature of contemporary life: I'm very fortunate, the stuff happening on a personal, professional, and community level is mostly pretty good (or way better than I deserve), and I'm healthy for my vast age, but . . . Trump is president and McConnell is sitting on bills like a fat bully while confirming non-judicial judge nominees faster than a greedy kid pops m&m's.]
torch cactus blossoms
open when the sun finds them,
close when abandoned.
No comments:
Post a Comment