It seems a bit too uncomfortable to speak in post-Bush talk these days. Just a few months ago, we witnessed the death of the Bush Age of Republican politics. Ever since, I’ve had this funny feeling in the back of my mind that closely resembles hope. Yes, hope! It is the hope that the age of Far-Right Republicanism is over. This hope is fueled by evidence here and there that confirm the Age of Reagan is at a close.
You really know that the nail is in the coffin when Time Magazine runs an article titled “The End of Excess: Is this Crisis Good for Americaâ€. The head of the article contains two contrasting photos, a photo of Ronald Reagan in a cowboy hat and a profile shot of Barrack Obama with a serious look on his face.
Obviously what is implied by such contrast is what we have talked about here at Soapblox.com for years: the end of 30 years of Republican domination in the United States Government. Some Soapblox readers may remember the story titled “The End of Reagan†written way back in 2007 (man how time flies). After months of signs, I declared the “Era of Reagan is Over†and proceeded to predict a large paradigm shift in the political culture and nation as a whole. Sometimes it takes a while to pronounce a culture dead, and Time, with its traditional Right leaning stance, is only speaking what many of us have known for years.
What’s more is they go even further, asking out loud whether or not the end of Reagan may actually be good for America and if the crisis may be altering the landscape of America towards a more positive and prosperous course. I applaud them for stepping up to the plate for once.
Every day that passes we grow further and further away from the politics of fear and lower class warfare that has been thrust upon us from wealthy Conservatives just trying to cling to power. The corporate boards are full of these guys who play the honest ol’ gun-tottin’, bible thumpin’, family values farm-fed conservative who just happens to come from extreme wealth and never worked an honest day in their life. While there are many people from different sides who make up the power structure in this country, the dominant force has come from these guys who pushed deregulation, tax-cuts for the rich and free trade, all of which led us to the mess we are in today.
They Myth of Reagan
Republicans have created a myth of Reagan. They painted a picture of an enormously popular President, a lie, a fiscally responsible President, another lie, who always lowered taxes, lie again, and was so successful at foreign diplomacy he won the Cold War by yelling a few words at the Berlin Wall, the biggest lie of all. They forgot about the time Reagan raised taxes, or his ho-hum popularity, record deficits and of course, the Iran-Contra affair as well as the El Salvadorian Death Squads. They always ramble on about the Cold War even though guys like Thomas Friedman attribute the death blow to the Soviet Union coming from oil trading at $10 a barrel. This myth of Reagan is discussed in far greater and better detail by journalist Will Bunch.
What the Republicans did with Reagan was create a successful brand name out of an inferior product. Reagan’s Presidency was all smoke and mirrors. They simply choose to focus on the dream not the reality and used it to create a populist movement centered around giving more money to the rich. They used the old ‘do you want Uncle Sam coming for your money, punishing you for your success?’ argument. The great fallacy about that line is that most people who fancy themselves as entrepreneurs are not successful. Many good products and good people have completely flopped with good ideas. The greatest myth of all about Capitalism is that it is a fair system that rewards merit. The truth it is that it is mostly the few, the lucky and the ones with money that actually get rich. I mean think about it. If we could make money than sooner or later it wouldn’t have any value. So the point is, if you have a slim to nil chance of getting rich, why are you so afraid of a capital gains tax or the death tax, I mean the tax on rich people’s estates. They actually have dumb rednecks who barely have the money to pay for food crying about taxes for rich people! Meanwhile, they cut government services that help some of these families and tell people to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.
Sure, easy for a guy who came from a rich family to say, like most top Republicans. Guys like Rush Limbaugh were born into political families with lots of money. What do they have in common with people like us? They’re snake oil salesmen pure and simple.
Rugged Individualism
The key to Republican philosophy is something called “rugged individualismâ€. It means that it is not we that make success, it is I. It is an argument that borrows heavily from Social Darwinism and declares that only the strongest make it to the top and the world’s ditch-diggers come from the bottom and stay there. You’d think these guys actually earned every cent they made the way they talk. Fact is, most families that earn their way to the top take a few generations and most families in the middle-class remain there period.
Rugged Individualism is largely an argument of rationalization. It stitches together facts to create an argument that justifies why they are just so damn successful. They forget about the people they stepped on, the money that came from daddy, and most of all, they forget about the employees who broke their backs for them. In industries like meat-packing (one of America’s first truly Capitalist industries), many employees lost their limbs. “Oh well,†cried the meat man, “it’s not my fault the man is so clumsy.†Imagine that same argument made by a general regarding a forward infantry man who lost his leg to a landmine!
The truth about Rugged Individualism is that it is a trick to divide the classes up into tiny pieces. The Upper Middle-Class looks down on the Middle-Middle-Class who look down on the Lower-Middle-Class who look down on the poor. It divides whites against blacks, blacks against Latinos, Asians against them all. It keeps us divided against our neighbors in a battle for material success and they ultimately divide our political voice, giving the smallest, most powerful minority in this country the wiggle-room they need to dominate our lives. Who is this minority? The Rich, that’s who.
Why do you think they fear socialism so much? It’s because it will require them to pitch more of their precious money into the pot (meaning loss of power). Any talk of leveling the playing field and they become terrified, suddenly calling the usurper a SOCIALIST or COMMUNIST! They said as much about FDR and look what a bunch of BS that turned out to be. Sometimes they call it CLASS WARFARE. Oh I get it, it’s only class warfare when THEY get attacked, when they used Jim Crow to distract the lower class whites from the ills of sharecropping, no that’s just politics.
The word “We†scares the rich. It implies unity and financial equality. Even though the phrase “We the People†reverberates across the hallowed halls of Washington, it is the last thing the rich and powerful are thinking about. They are terrified of a united nation who cares for the interest of the nation as a whole. You think multi-national corporations have a nationality? They just pack up their things and leave if they can.
We need to bring back the phrase “We†and replace the far too many “Iâ€s that have popped up in the last three decades. We need to start carrying for each other and looking out for one another. We can weather these storms as we did The Great Depression and World War II.
This begins with leadership and from what I can tell Obama is clear on this point. When he says things like “We can only meet this challenge together,” I almost get teary eyed. For the first time in a long time we have a leader we gets it.
Good Riddens
So I say goodbye to the age of excess. Material possessions are wonderful, however, our wasteful nature will have permanent and global implications that could destroy our children’s futures. We use too much metal, plastic and oil, we eat too much red meat and are destroying the fertility of our farmlands. There are so many habits that we indulge in that are poisoning the world we live in. It’s time we smartened up and begin fighting for real change.
I’m so tired of hearing about billionaires, the stock market and how much money a movie grosses. These are indicators of a culture obsessed with idolatry, the real American idol is money and it is a disease infecting our Democracy. There has to be limits on what you can make money on. Health care, for instance, should not be one of them. 20 years ago, it seemed sick to think of a hospital making money, now its an excepted and established fact. Doctors make well over $100,000 a year and they still complain that it’s not enough. Meanwhile, the real villains, the Insurance companies, make a killing on letting people die. They are a $30 Billion middle man that is supposed to keep costs down. Kind of ironic, isn’t it?
Schools too cost too much. Why is creating a job force of well-trained workers to task our economy such a money making industry? Beats me! We should be investing in our citizens, not bilking them out of their family savings.
Republicans love to talk about spending being too high, even though THEY are the ones with all the deficit records, yet we need to invest in our nation’s infrastructure. We need new jobs in the Green Sector, we need to renew the dream of the American Farmer and shut down the Agri-Business factory farms. We need cities that do not rely on automobiles and the cars we do have, should be clean. We can do all this if we try.
I suppose it does take a crisis to light a fire under the American people’s ass. It was probably the only way to shift our nation back on the right track away from the pro-Corporate stance. We were on a track towards becoming a third-world Latin American country, complete with oppressive Conservative government. Thank God thinks are moving in the other direction now.
What WE Can Do
We can’t leave all the problems to our new President. We have monumental challenges ahead of us. On the home-front, we need to build victory gardens like Michelle Obama did. I’ve seen normal middle-class suburban houses that get over three quarters of their food from their own yards. We need to recycle as much as we can, if we look around, it pays well enough for it to be worth your time. We need to make responsible buying decisions by buying more products made in America and are more responsible like Hybrid cars. We need to stop using our credit cards for buying every little thing. All you’re doing is handing over your cash to an industry of loan-sharks.
Most importantly, we need to keep our hope alive. We cannot afford to get too jaded. Imagine a team giving up at half-time. Are we going to give up? We have clear goals ahead of us, making America a strong nation again, rebuilding our dilapidated system and combating the global catastrophe that is looming in the distance. We will need every able bodied person on deck fighting these fires that threaten to bring our ship down.
Obama is not the end all answer to our problems, though he is a start and a damn good one too. He is living proof that the American Dream can exist for anyone and for those who try, they should be allowed to have the dream too. This may not be in a laziez faire Capitalist system but who cares? Capitalism isn’t in the Constitution, only the pursuit of happiness is. Democracy is not equal to Capitalism and vice-versa. If anything Capitalism is more Socialist but that’s a whole other article. The point is we are not defeated by this crisis, our current economical system may be but we aren’t.
Let’s keep our heads up high and our defeatism down low. It is in the trying times that America proves her greatness, so let’s get to work!