Then
June 4, 2010
Roll Back Time
I keep picturing the America some people seem to want. Roll everything back to the 1950’s and you have it, almost. What I hear the Conservative right saying is:
They want America to be a Caucasian country, minorities can stay if they act Caucasian.
They want only English spoken in America.
They want all “illegal” immigrants sent home.
They want America to be a Christian democracy.
They want totally “laissez faire” capitalism with no interference, read regulation, from government.
They want to end all social programs run by the government which would include Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security Disability, Unemployment Insurance, and Welfare.
They want us to close the doors of America so that we do not accept any goods from outside.
We would manufacture everything we need.
We could send things out but not bring things in.
We would be the richest nation in the world forever.
No foreign entity could hold property in America.
Almost anyone who wanted to keep their native traditions could go back to their native country.
All gun regulations would be tossed out.
Abortion would be illegal.
Smoking and drinking would be fine.
Churches would take care of the needs of the poor and the sick.
This list may not exhaust all conservative possibilities, and I am not saying whether I agree with these “wish list” items because I don’t have to. These options are so unrealistic. They will not happen; they are not real possibilities. They are just attempts to recapture a simpler way of life that seems ideal only from a very narrow point of view. Unless there is a planet-changing event that drastically lowers the world population things stand to get even more complex. Maybe we will colonize space. That would be a real game changer.
Now
January 8, 2022
In 2010 I thought that conservatives could not possibly achieve their checklist of backward intentions. I did not think most Americans would wish to make America an all-white nation. I did not imagine a Neo-Nazi demonstration in any American place like the one in Charlottesville, VA. Torches and signs that read “Jews will not replace us” and “you will not replace us” and “blood and soil,” Confederate flags making it clear that when they said “you” they meant black folks. Gut-wrenching to see the unspeakable happening in America. Gut-wrenching to see something that reminded us of Gestapo removing people from their homes in the night, of railroad cars packed full of people destined for Concentration Camps, the terror people without control over their own lives must have felt. It was shocking and it certainly was not the only racist thing that happened since 2010.
We cannot speak about immigration. We can’t reform our immigration procedures. The topic has been made toxic. Americans have been told that Democrats want to flood the nation with dangerous gang members and use all our tax dollars to give housing, food and cars to foreigners who can enter our country illegally at will. COVID has forced us to close our doors so this fight is not red hot right now, but it will heat up again, probably right around the 2022 election. What should we do about refugees and immigrants? We can’t have that conversation because Republicans want only immigrants from Western Europe – the EU and they will excoriate Democrats in the press if they even try to discuss immigration. Separating children from parents without any way to reunite them was an example of the Republican policies regarding immigration from our Southern neighbors.
I did not think that the anti-abortion forces would win and be able to overturn a Supreme Court decision that gave women power over their own bodies. Experts tell us that now that we have a Supreme Courts stuffed with conservative judges vetted by The Federalist Society, we may see that happen as soon as June of 2022.
I did not imagine that we would ever allow citizens to confront us with open carry guns while shopping for groceries or clothes and that just the presence of that gun, carried nonchalantly like a woman’s shoulder bag would make me/us feel a chill, make us suspect that we were being threatened in a way that was both subtle and intentional. We are not even allowed to talk about guns. Republicans, not necessarily conservatives, have enough power to shut down any attempt to talk about limits on guns or on those who can own them. Interpret the Second Amendment a certain way, accuse Democrats of wanting to nullify the Second Amendment and “take away our guns” and gun loving citizens rise up to help make any policy discussions impossible. So, we live in a state of almost constant mourning due to mass shooters and what seems to be a campaign to kill Black folks one person at a time.
To shut down the social safety net, Republicans have wooed states to elect Republicans to governorships and legislative seats. Right now, the count that is usually cited is 19 states that are “red” states, but the number is actually larger. The Republican Party has promised these states that they will fight for the state’s rights given to states in the Constitution by our Founders. They have promised to make the Federal government small. To accomplish these two objectives, they will dump social programs like Social Security and health care and many more, which they believe the Federal government has no business offering and leave programs like these up to the states (who cannot afford them).
Our founders had to decide between a small or a powerful central government. Although Southern slave owners did not favor a powerful central government, probably because they saw that it might forever change their way of life (England had already made owning slaves illegal), they lost the argument in an awful Civil War. Ever since they lost, Republicans (at the time they were Democrats-very confusing) have been shouting “state’s rights” whenever it seems appropriate. They don’t like to lose.
The way Republicans let Trump handle early distribution of COVID supplies for testing, and of the safety PPE’s health care workers needed by leaving the supply chains up to the individual states made for a messy process. States were literally guarding their supplies and health care workers were forced to improvise less effective protective gear. This chaotic approach to the pandemic gave us a glimpse of what a state’s rights approach to American governance might look like.
Republicans under Trump robbed the US treasury of funds by cutting taxes in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and now beat Democrats over their heads for overspending and raising debt and deficit, when it was really those absurd tax cuts and a pandemic that accomplished that.
It appears that Republicans have made substantive inroads into those early talking points of the conservatives which they adopted and made more extreme. For the past ten years Mitch McConnell, in or out of power, has pursued a policy of obstructing Democratic legislation and McConnell requires absolute loyalty from all Republican Senators, an even more effective ask since Trump showed how this is done. Are Republicans correct about the economy? Has sending money to the wealthiest Americans and to the corporations (many of which have fled the country) been the boon to our economy that Republicans promised? Would the Democrats policy of boosting those at the bottom of the economy work better and be fairer? How important is economic balance to a nation’s economy in a capitalist system? Why can’t we mix approaches and do some of each?