~a column by Colleen O’Brien
This country enjoyed a brief respite for sensible people when Joe R. Biden was elected honorably – without ANY cheating or lying – President of the U.S. by a majority of the people of the U. S.
But the nightmare soon returned, in the form of mayhem and murder, televised across the world under the tutelage of the ex-president of the U.S.
The victims? Democracy. And all of us who live under this particular one.
Several states are already lining up bills for their legislatures to restrict voting when next we are called to the polls: immediate counting of ballots, proof of self in the form of photo I.D.s, fewer polling places, no mobile polls, no mail-in ballots and on and on.
This past election in which the country legitimately elected Joe Biden has been scrutinized upside down and backwards and found to be the cleanest election of our country’s history.
So, the far right is scrambling to rewrite the rules so there will be corruption in the form of regulation. (To the far right, that word regulation is a bad word only when it’s used on banks and other financial behemoths.)
These various lawmakers across the country are not clear thinkers, but they are clearly greedy. In their almost laughable haste to pass anti-democracy laws in State Houses across the land, they undermine themselves.
I can understand the uber rich trying to get rid of regulation of bankers and stocks and bonds folks. They are the bankers and stockbrokers.
I can understand the uber rich wanting to lower their taxes, well, at least taxes on them. They don’t want any of us getting our greedy mitts on their honestly earned money.
I can understand the uber rich hating the idea of dropping all student debt. They can educate their children without help and who cares about an educated citizenry? In fact, the uber monied prefer an uneducated lower class (anybody who is not an uber money monger).
I can understand the uber rich unwilling to pay for decent schools but willing to buy more guns and other military equipment for law enforcement. They can pay for the price of a college education without blinking. And they want the cops on their side when they’re stealing.
The uber rich get whatever they want and more; and by god they’re not about to subsidize people not as uber as they are. If they managed to climb to the top one percent by their own bootstraps, the rest of us can, even if we don’t have wealthy grandfathers.
Their greed dumbfounds many who are not wealthy; many who are not even rich, many of the young among us who owe tens of thousands of dollars for their educations. (The huge cost of attending college in this land of the free is strange, considering that it was only after the equalizing Civil Rights legislation of 1964 that the uber rich caught on that Blacks and other people of color, as well as the majority of whites not rich, were now going to be able to get an advanced education. In the 60 years since I attended college for a pittance, the uber wealthy figured out how to start charging everyone too much to get educated; the wealthy could pay easily for their progeny to get a degree, too bad for the rest of us.)
They, the uber rich, are perfectly aware that they don’t need Social Security, universal healthcare, libraries operated on tax money, minimum wages and so on, so they will never vote for them, and they will use everything in their power to step on our necks, metaphorically speaking, of course.
They are willing to subsidize police to the point of dressing up all cops to look like Darth Vader but make it difficult-to-impossible to get ahead if you have been feebly subsidized in elementary and secondary schools, with slim chance of post-graduate possibilities.
The lack of foresight in these basic things is astounding. It really is no skin off their noses for someone less wealthy than they are to become well-educated. Other than their well-placed fear that educated people of color and poor white people might vote to tax the wealthy as a logical and humane way to a decent society.
We do not live, currently, in a decent society. It will get worse if we rid ourselves of a democratic way of governance.
Rather than taxing oil companies, the uber wealth class believes in subsidizing themselves with tax dollars paid by middleclass and down; they do own the oil, after all. The “welfare state” is corporate.
And if they’re from Texas, theses uber rich try to convince the world that wind energy (windmills) is the reason for the breakdown of the energy system of their beloved gasoline industry that can’t keep its people in heat and clean water during bad weather.
And the far rightwing legislators of that southern state are willing to ask FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) for help with their collapsed energy system. FEMA is a tax-supported savior system for the people and their areas struck by disaster.
And Texas will no doubt accept the $2 million relief money raised in New York City by Democrat Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Although we have a fresh and decent leader now, the nightmare continues. Just because the ex-president remains the ex-president and probably will, at least for four years, the losers think they’re going to be punished because their vote was wasted on the then-president. He’s trying to lay the blame elsewhere, anywhere.
The losers were punished already by the very existence of the ex-president. And so were we, those who did not vote for him. And yet we still have to pay attention to the imbecilic and dangerous bully behavior of the defeated.
Because he’s still yakking, I am finding it easy to return to the pessimism of the last five years, but I keep reminding myself that democracy is the only form of government that works for everyone, and to keep it as our way of governing is worth working for.
We are weary, but we finally have a good leader, a man of stability, compassion, wisdom, experience and heart. These human ways of behaving will win over greed and dimwittedness. Some commentarians believe that racism and fascism are in the DNA of all Americans. Because of the centuries-long system of slavery that made this country so prosperous, I, too, believe it.
But also within our DNA is helping one’s fellows rather than hurting them; educating all our children rather than merely the rich kids; providing healthcare for every person, not just for those who can afford it anyway; saving our forests and wildlands.
I just don’t understand the greed, don’t understand the selfish gene; I’m counting on the brave gene, the one that’s connected to our better instincts.
And I remind myself that this country fares better and is more prosperous under Democratic administrations – gross domestic product, employment, incomes, productivity, even stock prices.
Look it up.
