Our right-wing brethren had their convention a week ago. We had ours this week. There could not possibly have been two different experiences. This is unsurprising. The politics vary. The constituencies represented vary. Yet not in a long time has the rhetoric exposed such a sharp difference of opinion in, well, in everything you can think of.
What happened? I mean, seriously. What did we do to warrant such comprehensive hatred? I ask myself, how is the trajectory of my life such a contemptible disappointment to Republicans? I applied myself through grad school, then business school. I did sports and church activities. I found a career in a trade that conservatives tend to esteem, or at least once did: financial services. I got married and had children. I own a home. That home even has a picket fence (stain, not white paint, we're not that cliche').
So what did I do wrong? What failed, that Republicans decry such an impending doom for the United States?
Nothing did, that's just it. They hated our most prominent success: The New Deal. They hated Roosevelt's Four Freedoms, especially the last two (freedom from want and from fear).
They hate us for our Four Freedoms. More below the Higgs Boson.
Help Wanted: Serious Candidates Only
It's not exactly having smooth sailing at the moment. The problems in play are serious and call for serious leadership with a grasp of reality, a sense of fair play and a capacity for good judgment. Honest, insightful, decisive men and women of all stripes needed. Now taking applications.
Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are applying for the job of President and Vice President of the United States of America, respectively. That statement tees up a host of jokes. They lied on resumes, their backgrounds are thin, difficulty getting in touch with references, job history impossible to confirm, etc.
However this diary delves into a far more serious difference. You see, Democrats of long ago started a generations-long crime wave as far as Republicans are concerned.
We attempted to ameliorate suffering. To end victimhood, insofar as possible. To liberate the people from fear, a la Roosevelt's Four Freedoms (of speech, of religion, from want, from fear). The New Deal was about addressing the latter two.
And addressing want and fear annoyed Republicans greatly. They've been incensed about the New Deal ever since.
Is it something we did? Oh yes...it's something we did WELL
Just before a I wondered - where did we fail, that we are despised so? Thing is, we did not fail - meaning we the people of the United States in general. We, the people of all stripes, succeeded for many years. We weren't victims, looking for handouts. We weren't looking for do-overs when we screwed up. We weren't, as the ever-dishonorable Sarah Palin said recently forcing a choice between 'free stuff and freedom'.
We were, as a society, widening the scope of opportunity - this starts with citizenship and assertion of civil rights - the right to actually exercise your rights. This seed corn of liberty flourishes when children are education, families are housed, streets are safe and the boons of clean air, safe food, potable water, sanitation and health care are guarantees, secure for all, NOT acts of patronage by a perhaps-generous (perhaps not) few to their favorites - and definitely not things to be withheld because, so sorry, the prize keeps going up and your wages, bless your heart, keep on goin' down.
We kept going, building year after year, decade after decade, on the New Deal. We were well on our way to reducing illiteracy and abuse, discrimination and poverty, all the myriad petty evils of status and control that plague every society. We weren't aspiring to perfection for we are a practical society.
We only wanted to secure a fair share of the blessings of liberty for everyone's posterity. In short, we the people were ending victimization of all kinds. Of labor. Of women. Of racial and religious minorities. Of homosexuals. Of immigrants - especially the undocumented as it is near-slavery and/or perpetual fugitive-hood for them.
We have sought to ameliorate victimhood - I use that word. I know it's a staple in the GOP dictionary but it's time to reclaim it. Also, since we are discussing why the right despises us so completely, let's use this term as a touchstone.
Anyway, the struggle to deliver on Roosevelt's Four Freedoms naturally provoked people who like the masses living deeply entrenched in fear. For them, the line "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." sounds like a great idea. Ending uncertainty, terror, the sense that the job may be lost, the door broken down, the police cruiser lights might flash on, the application for housing denied... that's full of win for millions of people. Not all 310 million-ish of us, no. But millions nonetheless: those with 1%-level wealth and those who serve them and like the smooth ride of their plutocratic coattails.
These are the people who drive our opposition party. These are the ones who always have and, until that party is foreclosed upon, always shall.
Never Come Between the Nazgul and his Prey
Heh. A Lord of the Rings Line. One of my faves. I just had to go there.
It also captures why Republicans dislike anything that helps victims: Because they're victims. That's their role in the food chain. Fewer incidence of victims = fewer victims = less profits = we're hungry and have a sad.
Anyway...What did Republicans have to say about the shift of Democrats into the amelioration of victimhood game?
Oh, plenty.
"How effing dare those liberal Democrats attempt such a thing!" Cried our right-wing brethren. "They're looking to lock in entire blocs of dependent voters! What. The. Hell?"
Democrats looked at one another in shock. "We're doing this for every American, left and right alike," we tried to explain.
The volume just went up tenfold after that. "That's even worse! You're trying to lock OUR voters into dependency to you, too! You're taking away our freedoms!"
At that point, our party just went slack-jawed in amazement. Mistaking astonishment for weakness, misreading that their wild accusation had struck home, the Republicans ran with it...and they've yet to stop decrying villainy in every single thing, great or small, that Democrats do.
Dems want to preserve Medicare? BAD. Dems want to negotiate on changes to Medicare? WORSE. They want to drag out a failed system. Dems sigh and say, fine, let's talk reforms. CALUMNY! Dems want to sell out Granny, and lie and say Republicans do so!
It's so hard to track the shifts, unless you step back and see one thing drives all of the above - and it's not just the Mao strategy of always blocking what your enemy wants, always pushing what he does not. There is a fundamental goal in play: Roll back the 80-year Democratic program of reducing victimhood. To repeal the New Deal.
Dude, it's 2012. They're STILL pissed about the New Deal?
Why is something that is ancient history, something that you have to be 80something to have lived through and 90something to remember, still on the GOPers' minds? Because for them, it resonates like the bitter vengeful shame of Pearl Harbor or 9/11 to conservatives' hearts to this day. It's like Field of Blackbirds for the Serbs. They're not about to get over it.
Once upon a time, a person of means only had to fear other persons of means. So long as everyone was on the same page - and the Pinkerton Detectives and cooperative police departments were about - the last thing the wealthy had to concern themselves with were pesky things like, oh, uprisings by striking workers which, after all, were excuses to call in the Army, because it was the same as treason to strike. Because Communism.
That approach was 'fine' - for the 1%ers of a century ago. It's also why the Four Freedoms are so bothersome.
Freedom of speech, of expression, has embedded in it the freedom of association. That means unions, too. Labor unions. Voter registration drives. Because First Amendment. Everyone should have this, else America doesn't really have freedom. The powerful of the 1930s and before? Didn't really have a problem with the grey on this score, any more than the others. People were KILLED, and in large numbers, for 'expressing' too much.
Freedom of religion is the other side of the First Amendment, an expression of conscience. Consider the issues of the day - living memory of the Civil War and Reconstruction AND Jim Crow. Women's suffrage was new. Margaret Sanger was raising Cain about birth control. Repeal - as clear a rejection of one very powerful religious-minded movement's imposition of its code over others as any. Oh - immigrants, many Catholic, others Eastern Orthodox, others just Irish. Yep, that was still a problem in some areas. The upshot is religious tolerance, including tolerance for not having a confession other than Reason. Freedom from dictation of choices from the pulpit - to stand before one's own conscience and do right by others...or not. (Keep in mind who else was circulating at this time. Ayn Rand.)
Again, Republicans took issue. And many Democrats. Churches were fine and dandy ways to mobilize, shall one say, informal policing of the status quo, all those conventions that weren't necessarily in the laws of the land but were matters of life and death for transgressors, especially in a once-Solid (Democratic) South. That faction has essentially migrated over, its reactionary vitality subsumed into he Republican Party. We here in the modern Democratic Party don't miss it much.
The other two rights don't exist as far as Republicans are concerned. They're new and hateful territory to them. Have been for 80 years. They'll be so for 800 more if the Republic (and Republicans) last so long as that.
Yet we Democrats take all of the Four Freedoms seriously. We don't want to quash Republicans' freedoms of any kind - quite bluntly, we feel we do a better job sticking up for Joe the Plumber's right (even if he actually isn't one) than Joe the Plumber ever will, even for himself! And he has tens of millions of friends who vote the same way, who will never, ever vote Democratic ...all of them benefiting and yeah mightily, as their parents and grandparents did, on the legacy of public service of Democrats and - say it loudly and proudly people - of liberals.
Republicans love them some big government. It's powerful. It's a superpower. They have no sincere intention of dismantling it - They just don't want to pay for it. (That's our job.) And, yes- WE built it. The trajectory of America's rise and that of the modern post-Jim Crow Democratic Party is not coincidental. We sought to activate every citizen's full potential. Republicans sought to keep a quaint kind of industrial neofeudalism going. They keep pecking away, hoping to get that back here.
And they can't take their money and go elsewhere -not and stay on top of the heap. Other country's rich and powerful people control those rich hunting grounds on the other side of the ocean. The American 1%ers are just visiting....and that is why despite all the rhetoric about capital flight, they're not going anywhere. They'd have no place to go save as second-tier vassals if they fled our shores. There are levels of refugee...that's their level. It's still an unpalatable prospect for the well-to-do. They'd truly rather not have to do that. They'd really rather all the riff-raff billionaires elsewhere continued to pine for membership in Club USA. "Well.. perhaps... I'll poll some of the other members..."
SO yep. We built this vast well-armed, prosperous superpower, the institutions that made us hold us at about 25% of the planet's GDP for decades, despite having only 4.5% of the population. Some of that wealth is rent extraction from elsewhere, which then through trade deficits is passed on as rents to major suppliers such as China and India. We built that, together. We all did.
However, don't hold your breath waiting for the Republicans to thank us for chipping in. Also, don't wait for them to to thank us for sticking up for THEIR rights, THEIR Four Freedoms. That's the suck from where we are sitting but most Americans are both more generous and grateful for works of past generations.
Likewise, most Americans get the words from Federalist No. 12, (paraphrased; you would thank me for it) that a society that would be free must garner revenues, else resign its independence to another power. And that power, I will add, will come with its own tax collectors.
This is the message, no, the discourse of our day in a nutshell: Do we still want to pay for the Republic we have inherited, warts and all, promises and promises broken from our forebears? Are we yet willing to ante up on behalf of all Americans or, as I frequently joke both on and offline, have we become a society where one party (the Republicans) seem to think that socialism is fine - so long as we don't have to share it with people we can't effing stand?
I think most Americans prefer to stay American, to feel part of a society of regular citizens, yet part of an exceptional and ongoing legacy of greatness not because of the majesty of a self-styled deserving fraction but because in the United States of America, opportunity has been enshrined as an inalienable right.
Republicans get this. We do, too. We, as Democrats, simply recognize the practicality that sometimes life comes at Americans sideways. We have a social responsibility to prepare our children and communities to be prepared for the hardships of regular life and the disasters that strike us all sooner or later. For human beings often live long lives, and have long memories. We have so much time to make so many mistakes. We also have a great deal of time to get back up, and get back to business.
We can choose to chortle and say "Oh, that guy lost his job. He had it coming." "Dang. She can't make her medical bills because her insurance company cancelled. She should have picked a better carrier." "Stupid kid should have known not to wear his hoodie up in a gated community... shame, but the volunteer guard had Stand Your Ground on his side."
I could go on. The pattern of rhetoric and snide commentary is familiar to us all. It's not Republican, but it's heavily concentrated in people who vote for that party. It's not American values at all, but too many people (too many of these in our own ranks) just want to drop their chins and hum away the noise when prejudice rears its head.
Rallying to the cause of African-Americans is actually the easiest cause of all. People are a bit slower to step up for Hispanics, Asians...do I really even need to mention the afflictions that continue to blight the First Nations communities?
I've not even gotten to the third wave of civil rights underway now - the one that Republicans would quash as fast as possible, if but they could. Marriage equality. DREAM. Vote protection legislation not suppression legislation. A renaissance of labor as we work together, all of us, toward fashioning a true 21st century economy.
Paraphrasing on my favorite Marlon Brando roles: We can be a better people. We wish to be.
And Democrats have been pointing the way for a long, long time: Assert the Four Freedoms. Don't defend - EXTEND the New Deal.
And Republicans have been pointing the exact opposite direction. Freedom from want is freedom from opportunity. Freedom from fear is slavery. Catchy...and going on a century of evidence - the century in which the United States rose to the pinnacle of power among the nations of history - says the Republicans. Are. Flat. Out. Wrong.
We are the Party of the Freedom. They are the Party of Fear.
And 80 years of American history back up our claim.
Or, you can believe the claims of two men, one of whom can't keep track of what year he left the company that he founded, what his state of residence was when he ran for governor and seemingly can't stick to one single story line (even a false one) if his life depended on it. And that man wants to be president.
Don't even get me started on the one can't keep track of the times he agreed with President Obama... or of his road race times.