Samain Thanksgiving Moon
Time to admit our complicity in this mess. While is there no doubt that crotch grabbing racist xenophobes have had their say, while there is no doubt that know-nothings have seized control of levers they do not understand, while there is no doubt that license has just been given to violent police actions and violent action against whoever is the other, we cannot turn aside from our implication in this disaster.
We? Yes, you, the college educated. Yes, you, the climate change activist. Yes, you, the LGBT champion. Yes, you, the Black Lives Matter protesters. And, yes, even you, the brave folks of Standing Rock.
What? We have allowed identity based politics and the politics of climate change to blind us to the real, often more urgent demands of economic justice. It’s irony so thick it would require an obsidian blade to cut. Oddly enough what we just experienced was class warfare waged from within the very camp of those who have made such a struggle necessary. That is, the party of capitalism, of big business, of Citizen’s United nominated a man for president who claimed the mantle of working class champion. And, due to their own flaws and fears, working class non-college educated white folks followed him.
Trump reminds me of the pied-piper, offering a fun-filled, immigrant-bashing, race-baiting, pussy-grabbing jaunt out of town to a good place, a place with green grass and blue skies, a place filled with winning and winning and lots of guns. Only there is no such place. It’s really more of the same distractions the 1% have used for years, the American political equivalent of 77 virgins. Hear, strap on this Trump pin and help him blow up America. What’s that? A job? Oh, sure. Look, over here! Someone coming to take your guns and the job you might have had if we hadn’t just moved our company overseas.
How are we complicit? First, they came for the unions. And we did nothing. Then, they came for good-paying working class jobs. And we did nothing. Next, they let an antiquated educational system churn out high-school diplomas so worthless they were of no use in hunting for and finding work. And we did nothing. When the banks came for their homes, we stood by and did nothing. When the floods and the hurricanes and the droughts and the wildfires created disproportionate damage to working class folks, we stood by and did nothing. Even the one place where we did do something, Obamacare, it was so flawed that it may well collapse.
We have, as a culture, and as an educated and moneyed elite, ignored fundamental political matters. Each family needs a way to provide for itself, to have a home, food, a decent education, health care. When these key components of life are made difficult or impossible to obtain, a political price will eventually be paid. That note just came due.
Economic justice, an egalitarian distribution of the fruits of our common life, is central to a just and fair politics. It cuts across race, gender, sexual preference, ethnic origin. By allowing the perversions of capitalism to gut whole demographics, we, the moneyed and educated elite, have let our own comfort trump effective policy for the working class.
The good news here is that the way out of this political swamp, Drain the Trumpian Swamp!, is known. All it requires is political will. We need solid unemployment benefits, training in crafts and skills, support for retraining as soon as jobs are lost (see coal mining, for example), real healthcare access, support for unions, affordable housing and higher taxes on the 1% to fund all this. This is the program that can unite people of color with working class whites.
Let’s get to work.
