Conservatives do not conserve anything and liberals are not liberating anyone. The same with the left versus the right. Those labels exist to obfuscate and misdirect the real concerns of people. Most people everywhere are concerned about the same things - their health, happiness, and the well-being of themselves, their family, friends, and others. It is amazing how much overlap there is between conservatives, liberals, progressives, libertarians, and independents when the discussion is about needs and not policies or personalities. It is how those concerns are addressed that we start to see a dichotomy. Some people believe that an authoritarian approach is necessary while others are more egalitarian in their solutions. The authoritarians see the world as a hierarchy of classes requiring rigid top-down control by strong leaders whereas egalitarians take a more peer-to-peer approach. It runs so deep that I wonder if it is not built into our DNA. The fact that authoritarians have won at the ballot box in recent years is only a testament to their overriding obsequiousness. What's missing is a positive vision for all, integrity, and the wisdom, knowledge, and skill to actually realize that vision.
There is a difference between breakthroughs and incremental development. Breakthroughs threaten entrenched interests while incremental development enriches them. What we take for innovation today are actually incremental improvements on established products lines. Breakthroughs are difficult for businesses as well as government because they destroy working profit and power centers and replace them with expense and uncertainty, yet that is the only way forward.
This notion of "work" being the highest virtue and linking one's identity with one's job or "career" is only a recent phenomena in human history. For most of human history (and for thousands of years before) people did not have "jobs" nor were they "employees." It is only since the rise of oligarchs during the industrial revolution that "work" has taken its place as the supreme sacrament of a "working class". It has been so ingrained in our languages and cultures that it is difficult to even speak or write about another way of being.
The United States is the wealthiest nation that has ever existed yet all we hear is how we have to cut back. I don't see the Clintons, the Trumps, the Bushes, the Romneys, the Obamas, the Ryans, or the Gates, Bezos's or Zuckerbergs cutting back. The US already is spending many times over what the rest of the world combined spends on war and killing. Certain individuals profit immensely from this and will do anything to ratchet up the drumbeat of fear keeping people in their place just staying alive to be able to think much about it.
To put things into perspective, the taxpayer money spent on just one contract for just one military airplane, the $1.5 Trillion F-35 Joint Strike Fighter would have been enough to buy every homeless person in the US a $500,000 home and still have plenty of funds left over. Not that giving every homeless person a half a million dollar home would be such a good idea but it's something to think about when someone starts complaining that this country can't afford to take care of just the basic needs of its citizens so that they can have the "luxury" of enjoying life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
A retired oil company executive years ago told me that "corporations want worker bees, not thinkers. Workers need to have sufficient knowledge, understanding, and skill to do their job but beyond that it becomes problematic. It is loyalty, not creativity, insight, or initiative, that is rewarded." Our education system is a well oiled machine whose product is to turn out those loyal worker bees, not functioning citizens, and we are now paying the price ten-fold as higher and higher percentages of our population not fitting into their waiting positions are shuttled into the slavery of for-profit prison systems.
James Madison warned: "A popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."
The economy can become vibrant again but first the rotten stuff needs to be cleared out. The Almighty God of Wealth must give way to more human values if we are to survive. We must make a commitment to people over profit, education in critical thinking and creativity over rote and obedience, laws that promote free enterprise rather than crony capitalism. We must excise the power that special interests wield over government, our elected representatives, and the blinders they have pulled over all of us. Healthcare and education, like police, fire, military, and other necessities that serve the common good, do not work for ALL citizens when structured as capitalist endeavours. There is more to life than buying particular brands of products and services. The fact that there are billionaires while people starve is proof that the current system has failed. The fact that we have strong-arm autocratic leaders imposing their rule on people is proof that the current systems have failed.
Free democratic government has an obligation to ensure that ALL of its citizens not only have the knowledge and well-being they need to be functional and productive citizens but also have the tools they need to craft and maintain their democracy. The answer starts in education, not just with children but as an ongoing lifelong process for everyone. Education not just of facts and job skills but thinking, creative, and accomplishment skills. To be effective citizens it is also necessary to ensure that ALL people have access to health care. Sick and suffering citizens cannot focus on making good decisions. Health care and education must be divorced from profit making and political power and become everyone's right. People require good, diverse education resources, cognitive skills, and personal well-being to be effective empowered citizens. The well-being of the government is a direct reflection of the well-being of its citizens.
Capitalist authoritarianism created the culture we have inherited now ruled by cult ideologues peddling hate and fear, elevating ignorance and stupidity of citizens over everything even when it flies in the face of facts. Violence and gangsterism instead of accomplishment, ideological fantasy over reality. A caricature even of the capitalist dream. Democracy reduced to Idiocracy. The well-being of the government is a direct reflection of the well-being of its citizens.
It doesn't have to be that way. If the world were perfect what would it look like? Time to seriously start answering that question and making that real.
