Larry Beck

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      Traveling on America’s Dangerous Path

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      As America plunges toward its own version of an election demolition derby, a choice is very clear to just about everybody. The problem is that there are two choices, no consensus and a lot of angry right-wingers with guns who fervently support the choice that is almost certain to be rejected by the majority. There is rightly a sense of dread that voter intimidation and armed resistance to the otherwise likely outcome will create enough chaos and institutional failure to undermine the nation’s normally routine transfer of power.

      I have just recently been on the road a couple of times in the US. First, for 10 days, trying to dodge COVID droplets in three deeply-divided states: Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan. My car radio provided the backdrop for the journey, filled with right-wing radio, Christian radio (often the same thing), oldies and some country music. I stayed in motels, carried some of my own food, ate in some restaurants and did some take-out.

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      The second trip was to western Maryland, a red zone in a blue state. This trip included some time in the outdoors on popular hiking trails, one of which was a microcosm of everything wrong with America’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. On a beautiful fall day, hundreds of people clogged a one and a quarter-mile path along a stream and river with four distinct waterfalls. At least two-thirds of those on the trail carried on as if they and their families were immune from COVID-19. No masks, no effort at protective distancing and no concern about the vulnerable people in their midst, often including small children and aging parents.

      “No Mask, No Entry“

      On the road, I did find one motel that actually seemed to do everything I could think of to protect me, their staff and their other customers. Otherwise, it was a very mixed bag. Almost no motel cleaning staff wore masks — they are going into the rooms of strangers right after they have left to gather up bedding, towels and trash. They breathe it in and then just to make sure that everything that can go wrong will go wrong, they breathe it right back out while sanitizing. Great idea.

      Bartenders with masks perched just below their noses were another common feature. I never saw a single owner, manager or employee of any establishment ever tell a customer to put on a mask or leave. Every place I went into had a big sign on the door requiring masks inside — no mask, no entry. I saw a guy with a gun on his hip but no mask on his face taking a leak at an Interstate rest stop — no mask, no entry. I left that rest stop quickly for a whole bunch of reasons.

      These trips provided ample evidence of just how sick the American body politic is. Words like “choice” and “freedom” permeate conversations from those resisting government measures to control the coronavirus pandemic. These words have been perverted to create a space for some of the most alarming elements of the national divide. It is but a small leap to fighting “tyranny” for those willing to angrily confront their own government.

      It should not be news to anyone that America is in the midst of a pandemic that is taking close to 1,000 lives a day and now infecting more than 50,000 Americans every day and getting worse. Wearing a mask in these times is a really good idea, according to every public health professional in the world. Every single one of them. No exceptions. Yet, here in America, the mask message is still not taking hold. Among some segments of the populace, a Halloween mask is good, but a cloth mask to protect yourself and the health of your family, friends and a bunch of strangers is somehow bad.

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      The key concept at play here is “choice,” as an easily recognized variant of “freedom.” This is OK if you are choosing between milk chocolate and dark chocolate, coffee or tea, Nationals or Dodgers, and the like. It is pathetic as a response to a public health crisis — your choice, wear a mask or sneeze directly into my soup. It obviously isn’t as simple as this, but it should be a lot easier than it appears to be.

      I am telling you this because there will be no end to the pandemic here until the vector segment of America either dies off or can be corralled and enclosed in one or more of the vector states. There is just too much stupidity and willful ignorance to be overcome by anything short of enforced mandatory masking, lockdowns and serious contact tracing. None of the above is on the menu yet, mask or no mask.

      Some of this would be funny if it weren’t so tragic. For example, many people who identify as “pro-life” turn out to be “pro-choice” when it comes to masks, and often choose the path that leads to more death. On the other hand, as absurd as it sounds, it seems that “Zoom” meetings have actually increased human face time for those whose lives are defined by the latest ping on their supposedly “smart” phone.

      A Political Symbol?

      But let’s not be fooled. Large swaths of America and the world are living restricted lives circumscribed by disease while losing ground socially and economically. A nation in need of some measure of collective conscience finds itself sinking ever deeper into a world in which delusion substitutes for judgment and care for others is no longer part of the equation, if it ever was. Sadly, those who seem to have benefited most from prosperity and privilege are often those whose contempt for community puts those less prosperous and without privilege at even greater risk.

      Too many of those with the opportunity to enjoy that waterfall trail seemed so unable to even consider a different way, a safer way. As long as callous people continue to wander dangerously in public places, it is hard to see how enough of these people will allow themselves to be organized to accept the type of vaccination mobilization program that will be necessary to finally end the pandemic.

      To better understand the challenge, it is essential to recognize that wearing a mask in public has become a political symbol in America, and nowhere else. Parents choose to ignore the safety of their own children and children ignore the safety of their own parents to proclaim their “freedom” from government oppression and their support for a president who has abandoned them to disease. These people are choosing to endanger others. (Unbuckle those seat belts and watch the bodies fly.)

      As the US presidential election approaches and the pandemic worsens, each of us has a clear choice to make. Side with the candidate whose venal face can be seen in full or the other candidate who wisely hides part of his face and shows all of his heart. This should not be hard.

      *[This article was co-published on the author’s blog, Hard Left Turn.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      Justice Ginsburg Secures Progressives for Biden

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      Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died and the political seas have changed. She was a beacon of American conscience in a nation that has no conscience to spare. For those of us in America who see a nation in steep decline, this loss further deepens the gap between hope and reality. Most importantly, Justice Ginsburg’s death puts the last of the nation’s three core constitutional institutions at deep peril. The Congress is already a dysfunctional failed deliberative body, and the executive has been overwhelmed by corruption and incompetence.

      This doesn’t leave much to fall back on. Progressives will allow for a moment of silence to celebrate Ginsburg’s life. And then, it will be time for her death to propel our determination that Trump be deposed and his acolytes dethroned. We will need to get even angrier than we have been and more committed to the singular objective of winning the presidency.

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      Many progressives surely wish that these were different times. Then, we could focus on social and racial justice, on a national plan to confront the coronavirus pandemic, on universal access to meaningful health care, on economic equity, on affordable housing, on quality public education and on reimagining good governance. But we cannot do that now.  Now, we have to do everything that we can to get Joe Biden elected president.

      On the plus side, there continues to be a somewhat encouraging sense in America that maybe, just maybe, all the lies, all the ignorance and incompetence, all the corruption and all the chaos are finally catching up with the demonstrably worst American president in modern times. And that is saying a lot given that George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon would be the competition. So with that said, and only Biden to choose from, staying focused on the singular goal will be easier.

      The Inspirational Candidate?

      To reach that goal, it would be nice to be able to say that Biden is an inspirational candidate who can will the nation to a better place, can open the eyes of the willfully blind, and define an agenda of transformational change. But he is not that candidate. Rather he is a candidate who can win the presidency, surround himself with honest and committed advisers, and begin the long and difficult trek toward undoing the Trump damage.

      For me and many others, being the only serious candidate not named Trump is enough to ensure my vote and to ensure that I will do what I can to get him elected. For others, however, it may be important that Biden be for something, not just against Trump.

      As Biden tries to define his agenda and demonstrate his policy priorities, he will have to do so carefully. The effort may win over some wavering or undecided voters, particularly if he focuses on health care issues and articulating an understanding of the intractable racial morass that is today’s America. Appealing to a tired nation with calm and a resolve to simply make things better could help as well.

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      However, there is peril for Biden in detailing much of anything beyond broad general policy themes. This peril lies primarily on his left. For the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, too much “visionary” detail of a future beyond November 3 can provide more insight than may be healthy for Biden’s campaign. For now, since it remains critical that “all the roads of our discontent must merge at this time to meet the singular threat” of a Trump reelection, progressives can and likely will stay focused on this prize alone.

      Yet, as Biden begins to define the policy goals of his future administration, the details as they are emerging crushingly disappoint. The goals are so connected to yesterday that it is hard to envision a better tomorrow. It will be easier, for sure, to live without the daily lies and the pernicious undermining of the nation’s institutions, but it will be no easier for those in need to live with a return to “normal.”

      To provide early solace, Biden and his administration will surely strive to return some measure of good governance to federal institutions, a key metric if there is ever to be the transformational change that America’s outdated and tired “democracy” so critically needs. However, it will all seem so incremental, especially to those in need now who have waited so long and to those who have spent a lifetime advocating for those in need.

      Final Tribute for RBG

      This is where Justice Ginsburg as that beacon of conscience can enter the fray anew. She never gave up on her extraordinary drive to simply right things that were wrong. She is gone, but her zeal has to live on in enough of us to get this election right and then move on to the hard challenges that lie ahead. As I have moved from sadness to resolve, I have looked at a lot of what Ginsburg had to tell us. There is something about the following quotation that seems worthy of the moment: “Yet what greater defeat could we suffer than to come to resemble the forces we oppose in their disrespect for human dignity?”

      Maybe it is respect for human dignity that so separates Biden from Trump, Democrats from Republicans, and progressives from conservatives. Look at the quotation again, and then reflect on the sickened and dying in our communities in the midst of a crippling pandemic. And then take as a clarion call that Trump, the Republicans and the conservatives in those same communities are fighting to deny access to healthcare to millions yesterday, today, and tomorrow. That is depraved. That is inhumane.

      If Joe Biden does not win the presidency, those with a palpable disrespect for human dignity will surely further stain America. If Biden is victorious, there will be a renewed urgency for progressives to step to the fore to stress that any new administration must commit to a respect for human dignity as the core principle required to elevate America to be so much better than it is. If Justice Ginsburg knew this, maybe the rest of us can learn it, some for the first time.

      We must make that commitment for ourselves, for our nation and as a final tribute to the extraordinary Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

      *[This article was co-published on the author’s blog, Hard Left Turn.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      Alternate Reality Is All the Rage in Election Time America

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      It should be obvious by now that “reality” has Americans very confused. This is nothing new. This happened when the word “reality” somehow became a synonym for fantasy, delusion, illusion and fake. I am not sure when this happened in the American lexicon, but I am sure that there is next to nothing real about any “reality” show. This observation becomes more worthy of note each day as “reality” is manipulated to feed fantasy narratives.

      First, there were “alternative facts.” Now, the oxymoronic notion of “alternate reality” is exploding its way into the vernacular. There used to be something called “parallel universe” that seemed to sum up the world inhabited by delusional people, particularly during delusional episodes. “Alternate reality” somehow seems more dangerous.

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      What we are witnessing in America at the moment is nothing short of the normalization of fantasy, delusion, illusion and fakery as a substitute for facts, truth and content in public discourse. Once this happens to a society, the negative impact on public policy cannot be overstated. Historic examples are everywhere, but just take a moment to reflect on the rise of Nazism in Germany and the destructive pathology of McCarthyism in mid-20th-century America. Those examples and the toxins they injected into the body politic still resonate.

      The persistence of white supremacy in America and ethnic purity in Europe is the spawn of one earlier “alternate reality.” The highly charged message that leftists and Marxists and socialists are burrowing into every corner of American life is the grotesque spawn from the other earlier “alternate reality.”

      A Critical Time

      So, at this critical juncture in America’s political journey, there should be no tolerance for any normalization of any “alternate reality.” Yet everywhere one looks, words are being reworked to create the space in which fantasy and delusion can reign supreme. Just two examples should be enough to make this point.

      First, when did an assault rifle become a “long gun”? Just within the last few weeks, a 17-year-old in Wisconsin murdered two protesters with an assault rifle — not a long gun or a short gun, an assault rifle. Second, when did “walked back” enter the vocabulary to describe someone trying to correct blatant falsehoods purposefully uttered?

      Within the same few weeks, and even more of a threat to public safety, the current commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration “walked back” a blatant public lie about the efficacy of a therapeutic treatment for COVID-19 offered originally to please Trump while knowingly posing a threat to the rest of us.  “Walked back” sounds like the first step on a road to redemption for some minor miscue, not an effort to excuse a purposeful falsehood that never should have been uttered in the first place.

      With a presidential election looming, what passes for the responsible media in America now features more “fact checks” than facts. Now, with “alternate reality” apparently all the rage, the media have cleverly added “reality checks” to their arsenal.

      It is long past the time when anyone should believe that the nation can be saved by tortured linguistics. It is time for a new and long overdue reverence for facts to simply overwhelm the untrue and delusional that pollute our public discourse. It is time for direct and specific language that may make some people uncomfortable. And it is surely time to stop trying to save the sensibilities of those who wallow in their own “reality.”

      Trump is a venal and pathological liar, and those who lie for him are at best dangerous collaborators. So, enough pretending it might be something else, hoping that if enough apologists get airtime, fiction will morph into truth. For those who are made uncomfortable by these uncomfortable truths, it is time to suck it up, admit that you have been conned and make those who took advantage of your ignorance pay a price for the harm that they and you have caused the nation.

      Discomfort Is Everywhere

      These are harsh words, and they are not written with kindness at their core. They are written at a time when fear and anxiety are being peddled by Trump, the Republican Party and all those smarmy people in their orbit. The rest of us are the losers, big time. The list is long but should not need to go any further than the almost 200,000 dead souls sacrificed in the American coronavirus pandemic at an altar of incompetence, narcissism and mendacity.

      Americans have reached a point where discomfort is everywhere, but is it enough discomfort to act individually and collectively to confront the unfolding threat of another four years of the Trump scourge and Republican Party complicity? Anyone who thinks that some cathartic unity will emerge from all of this isn’t paying much attention. Rather, all the roads of our discontent must merge at this time to meet the singular threat.

      It is for sure that if the effort is successful, some of those same roads will diverge again. But then, if our institutions hold, there will be new paths to progress and a much clearer picture of the reality of today’s America and the factual foundation that must inform this place and time. In that reality, some of us will again be able to dream of transformational change.

      But make no mistake. If the nation does not collectively act now to rid itself of the rot at its core, the road to the national discomfort required for transformational change will get even darker.

      *[This article was cross-posted on the author’s blog, Hard Left Turn.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      Pandemic Voting Needs America’s Full Attention

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      There is an increasing din in America that this self-congratulatory cradle of democracy is not up to the primal task of planning and implementing a free and fair presidential election in a couple of months. So sullied are we by the institutional failure to hold Trump’s government accountable for anything that there is a growing suspicion that the Trump cabal just might be able to thwart the coming electoral storm by undermining the electoral process at every turn.

      The first checkpoint for the nation on the road to Election Day is to see if anyone has learned anything from the national pandemic response disaster. The same Trump playbook that has left more than 170,000 dead souls in its wake is being dusted off again. And this time, it is the presidential election that is going to take a massive hit if Americans do not collectively and forcefully demand something better.

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      Remember back in early April, less than five months ago? By then, it had become obvious to virtually every public health official and every identified Democrat in America that the coronavirus pandemic was a serious threat to the health and well-being of the nation. All but Trump and his minions demanded a national plan to limit the spread of the disease that included development of treatment protocols, adequate and timely availability of supplies, a uniform and aggressive national testing program with contact tracing, and the federal funding necessary to do all of this. The nation is still waiting for that plan.

      Fast forward to August, now less than three months before the scheduled November 3 presidential election. Even while death and disease ravage large parts of the nation and subvert economic and social well-being, there is an urgent national need to prepare for and ensure a free and fair election process. 

      This should be obvious, even to Republicans who show little interest in free and fair elections. It should be equally obvious that an efficient and uniform national plan for mail-in balloting, early voting and a reduced number of polling places is more critical in this election cycle than ever before, including national standards and the federal resources to ensure compliance. So, why isn’t it happening?

      Human Loss

      The reason is as simple as it has been with the pandemic response: A venal cabal led by an ignorant narcissist will not use the institutions of the federal government to confront urgent problems unless any proposed solutions are sure to work for them and can be defined in politically advantageous terms. Neither human cost nor institutional integrity is part of the calculus.

      As with the federal government’s pandemic response, there is readily at hand the time-honored way to deflect federal government responsibility in America. Make a speech about the urgent problem and then consign responsibility for solving the problem to state and local “laboratories.” This is always done with a pious nod to the US Constitution.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The result has been a patchwork and often conflicting response to gun violence, educational deficits, poverty, health-care reform and infrastructure inadequacies, to name a few. So, Florida, do your own pandemic response. So, South Dakota, bring on the motorcycle madness in the midst of a pandemic. And then just to top it off, make sure that the federal messaging gives each state the right to define “freedom” for its own denizens in a nation with no internal borders. Does this make any sense? Of course not.

      After an initial burst of Trump testosterone and the conjuring of miracles, someone told Trump that if he took charge of the nation’s pandemic response like a real president, he would also bear responsibility if it didn’t work out. And that playing golf while people were dying on your watch would be difficult for someone actually in charge. Back in April, that quickly ended any effort to design and implement a national pandemic response plan.

      So now, it is time to apply the same “logic” to the upcoming presidential election. Someone has told Trump that he is losing the election because he failed to implement a national response to the pandemic. From there, it was a short crossed wire to the message that you can’t lose if there is no election.

      Back to 50 States

      What will save the day for Trump and his minions? That same 50 “laboratories” strategy that has undermined the national pandemic response will now be unleashed to ensure that electoral freedom rings. All Trump has to do this time is the same thing he did in April: undermine any cohesive message, create institutional confusion, and provide neither standards nor resources to ensure a free and fair election. In short, pass the problem to the states and localities and do everything possible to ensure chaos.

      And then, for an insurance policy, appoint a political hack to run the US Postal Service into the ground just when it will be needed most. (Remember the once-proud Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, now reduced to offering compromised pandemic “guidance” as soon as some unnamed Trump acolyte gives them the nod.)

      Even while running around the rest of the world telling other countries that voting and fair elections are singular components of democracy, America has never had a national plan that even begins to address its most fundamental democratic failure, pathetic voter turnout. Further, there are almost no national standards that control voting practices and procedures, even for national elections. In this ambiance of neglect, voting in each of the 50 states has been blighted to some degree by gerrymandering, voter suppression measures and dubious procedures that have thrived to undermine the equity of the US election process.

      The nation does not have the luxury of electoral neglect this time around. In the 2016 presidential election, only a little over 55% of the voting-age population actually bothered to vote. Think about that and how easily chaos thrives when so many don’t care enough to resist. Many will argue that there are lots of reasons for low voter turnout, from ignorance of process to impediments to voter registration and actual voting. Whatever the reason, we are back again to 50 states, 50 voting systems, 50 different sets of impediments to voting and a relatively mobile population.

      Thus, any attempt to undermine the voting process has a lot of entry points and almost no up-front vigilance. It seems that counting the votes of those who do vote is much more important than ensuring that most eligible voters can actually vote.

      The Playbook

      The Trump election playbook is clear: incite division and chaos, divert responsibility to the states and localities, undermine the credibility and capacity of the US Postal Service, repeatedly and falsely disparage the integrity of mail-in ballots, and most importantly, provide daily conflicting messages that will be gobbled up by the press. And this doesn’t even get to Trump’s open-door policy to foreign influence in the election process.

      If somehow Trump seems to have won the election, he will heroically claim victory after having vanquished all the impediments to such an unlikely event and quickly forget that he rigged the election. If Trump seems to have lost the election, he will angrily announce that he cannot honor the results of a rigged election and quickly forget that he was the one who tried to rig it in the first place. The surest path to avoiding either of these outcomes is a forceful institutional response, quickly setting forth a national plan for ensuring a free and fair election. That will have to come from Congress and be reinforced by the media.

      America cannot allow the 50-state “solution” to overwhelm what is left of the country’s democratic foundation. That is the same “solution” that now has over 170,000 corpses crying out for something better. 

      *[A version of this article was cross-posted on the author’s blog, Hard Left Turn.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Content, Not Culture, Separates Americans

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      It has finally come to pass in America that armed bands of federal government thugs in camouflage gear are taking over parts of selected US cities to serve the interests of the country’s fearful “leader” and autocrat-in-chief. At the behest of Trump and his stooge attorney general, unidentified Department of Homeland Security troops have swooped in to bring “law and order” to citizens hoping for some measure of police reform and racial justice. So, while the coronavirus pandemic rages out of control in the face of a chaotic response by the same federal government, Trump has decided to augment his failure by doubling down on leftists, socialists, anarchists and communists. This is real, it is an old playbook and it should be very scary.

      Armed and empowered federal government personnel with absolutely no training in dealing with citizen protests or protesters are being unleashed to confront largely peaceful demonstrators in America who are imploring their government to reduce police violence and address racial injustice. Local leaders and police commanders are confronted with an armed force that they have not asked for and that they do not want. This is American citizens being terrorized by American government personnel, ironically at the command of the federal Department of Homeland Security established to protect us from terrorists.

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      To be sure, this is largely theater. But it is theater that should shock anyone in America who smugly thought that the “land of the free” would never look like “other” despotic lands. It has been a very long time since America has come this close to rock bottom. As a nation, America is an international laughingstock, mocked by all those despots we bribed over the years to transform their way into our way, the American way. But guess what? We didn’t see it coming, but their way has now become our way.

      Turn on the news anywhere in the world, and it will feature some daily tale of woe from America. Turn on the news in America, and it is all a tale of American woe. Yet despite the perception that America has found new lows, amid pandemic and social strife, there is a palpable disconnect between the depth of the problems and a serious consensus about the solutions. As is often the case in America, this situation is a big problem in search of a label that will ensure that not much changes anytime soon.

      Every politician and pundit in the land seems to have settled on something called the “culture wars.” It seems so easy in the facile world in which we live to provide cover for complex problems by finding a meaningless catchy phrase that everyone can define for themselves instead of facing reality, particularly the reality of others.

      “Culture Wars”

      Today, everywhere you turn in American politics, “culture wars” are trotted out to explain away all manner of dysfunction in government and society. I am not sure what that term means. “Culture war” has been defined as “a conflict or struggle for dominance between groups within a society or between societies, arising from their differing beliefs, practices, etc.” The “etc.” at the end of this definition should be a clue that “culture war” means essentially whatever you want it to mean. What kind of definition is that?

      Embed from Getty Images

      Before there was the coronavirus pandemic, there was culture everywhere. Want to see a play, go for it. If art or anthropology is your interest, museums abound. Even a movie, particularly when called “cinema” or “film,” can qualify as a good solid cultural experience. Then there is the whole world of international and local cuisines, more cultural experience. Wines, beers, whiskeys, full of culture. When I think of culture, this is what I think of, along with the rich tapestry that defines some of who we are. 

      Somehow a war based on a film I like, what cuisine I choose to eat or the sports team I choose to root for seems trivial and even unlikely. So, a “culture war” must mean something deeper than that. It must mean, for example, that if you pay attention to public health experts in response to a pandemic, you are on one team and if not, you are on the other team. What a clever way to gloss over stupidity and ignorance.

      “Culture war” also implies something ingrained that cannot be altered or influenced by new ideas, new knowledge or new experience. However, the paralyzing conflict that we are enduring in America is routinely influenced by new ideas and new experiences. It is a policy conflict, a conflict over how best to address real human problems with a policy response. And much of it is driven by an individual’s momentary perception of the role of government in meeting these human challenges. 

      I truly dislike Senator Mitch McConnell, but we are both old white men who drink quality bourbon and could share a cigar now and again. What we disagree about is not culture, but content.

      As another example of what I am trying to convey, the urge to own a gun in America surely does not reflect the groupthink at the core of the “culture war” definition. The reasons for arming oneself or choosing not to cross every demographic and social line — that rich white couple in Missouri armed and ready in their front yard as protesters walked by would share little of cultural significance with a poor white subsistence hunter or a young, inner-city, Latino gangbanger. It is highly unlikely that these disparate gun owners ever cross each other’s paths except as casual observers inspecting the oddities of each other’s cultural foundation.

      I am sorry to take a dump on everyone’s latest label, but I am really tired of labels being used as a substitute for responsibility. If you choose to be ignorant, you can meet others like you at your church, your country club, your gym or your city council meeting. Willful ignorance is found in all cultures. It is a shame that it is so common and so misunderstood as the root of much of what separates us.

      That is not a cultural statement. We are not engaged in a “culture war.” We are engaged in a confrontation to define a better America and to find the policy solutions that will lead us there. This is America’s “war” for its future, not some wistful search for cultural reconciliation.

      *[A version of this article was featured on the author’s blog, Hard Left Turn.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      America Is a Nation in Darkness

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      As America’s 2020 Independence Day fades from memory, many things are clearer. Americans love to go to beaches and bars as their petri dishes of choice, masks are a better idea than they were before Independence Day, there will never be a national pandemic response as long as Trump is president, and it is beyond time for Trump to wear a ball gag in lieu of a mask. It is also clear that way too many Americans know way too little about the history of their nation and even less about the birth of the nation.

      Independence Day is celebrated on July 4, the date in 1776 when the Continental Congress ratified the text of the Declaration of Independence. However, it is a safe bet that most Americans know more about the contents of a margarita than they do the Declaration of Independence.

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      Some will note Thomas Jefferson’s stirring words near the beginning of the document: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

      Practically no one will know that immediately following these words, the Declaration goes on to state: “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”  

      Much of the rest of the document is a list of grievances against the British king and his minions leading to the conclusion that the colonies should be free and independent states absolved of any allegiance to the British Crown and free of any political connection to Great Britain. So there you have it, a quick history lesson. But before moving on to the US Constitution, pause a moment and actually think about what should be the cornerstone of this document: “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

      We know that the “self-evident” language was never actually self-evident, and that the notion that all men are created “equal” remains at the core of America’s living historical lie, birthed even before there was a Declaration of Independence. But the part that presents the solution, the path forward, is a declaration that government deriving its powers from the consent of the governed should be how a nation organizes itself to provide for and protect its sovereignty and its people, how it defines and enables life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

      Broken Government

      Now with America’s national government completely broken, the consent of the governed nowhere to be found, and the actual right of the people to alter or abolish their government at issue with every new and imaginative effort to suppress voting, the Declaration of Independence rings hollow. But if it means anything today, it is to be found in the concept that human beings living within some demarcated landmass should be free to institute a “new” government around a set of principles and organizational mandates required to protect public safety and provide some foundation for societal well-being.

      There have been times before, and surely now it is America’s time again — the time to wrest power from the corrupt and corrupted, the venal and the vengeful. There is Trump’s Independence Day performance, practically begging the nation to again take up arms against itself. There is significant social unrest because aged institutions have failed for centuries to include a huge swath of those supposedly equal folks. There is the daily inventory of undermined governance rendering the present government incapable of protecting public safety and promoting social well-being.

      And most of all, there is the sight of our government “leaders” standing by unmasked as the fools that they are, while death and disease permeate the land. I want to be clear about this: Trump has blood on his hands, McConnell and most Republican politicians at the national and state levels have blood on their hands. And, those around Trump who have enabled his vile ignorance to prevail have blood on their hands. America’s present government is literally draining the life from this land.

      Today’s catalog of legitimate grievances is even stronger than those of 1776, for they demonstrate just how far the nation has strayed from its lofty ambition. Today, when we well know that the words “all men are created equal” rang hollow then but seem even more devoid of meaning now, the failure to fight hard enough for that ideal in modern times dwarfs the earlier willingness to fight for words that meant so much less then.

      A New Revolution

      Without wishing for a renewed revolutionary war, I do wish for a new revolution. The time has come to stop America’s national retreat from an imperfect union to an even more imperfect union. In a nation that loves its Constitution, just reading the Preamble should be enough to know that the text to follow has failed us miserably: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” 

      Not one objective set out in that Preamble to the US Constitution is happening now. The institutions brought to life by that document in the text that follows are not working today to meet any of the lofty goals set forth in the Preamble. Think about it, read each one carefully, reflect on gaping societal divisions, reflect on today’s attorney general, reflect on marchers in the streets demanding racial and social justice, reflect on US allies discarded like vermin, reflect on poverty and lack of access to meaningful health care laying waste to many, and reflect on warriors in our streets supposedly “protecting” us from ourselves.   

      It is truly unfortunate that the world had to watch a black man die in the street before our eyes amid a raging tableau of disease and despair for many finally to see what America has become. When national institutions born centuries ago fail so completely to protect lives and save lives, they have failed in their original purpose.

      Now is the moment for we the people to argue loudly that the time has surely come to fundamentally alter what we have and replace it with something much better.

      *[A version of this article was cross-posted on the author’s blog, Hard Left Turn.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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