An on-line journal exploring society, culture, and politics through an egalitarian lens.
Trump promised during his campaign to address inflation and lower costs for Americans, particularly food and energy costs. Yet if he really wished to honor this promise, he would be advocating for swift and substantial support for Ukraine and playing hardball with Russian President Vladimir Putin, instead of swooning in his autocratic bro-mance with him.
Let’s think about it. Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine is and has been a key cause of rising oil and gas prices, of energy costs overall, and thus of the surging prices for all goods and services. Most things we buy–groceries, clothing, etc–have to be transported via boat, plane, or truck, so rising fuel prices make the cost of just about everything rise.
The attack on American working families is real, and that attack is taking place through Trump’s efforts to undermine the economic well-being of Americans by destroying the economy and starving the government programs that provide vital services and safety nets for us all.
Trump wants America–and Americans–in his economic stranglehold. What can make people more dependent and powerless than completely immiserating them?
Trump’s tariffs function as a tax on working families in America, even if they aren’t called that. Yes, the tariffs may bring a lot of money to the U.S. government, but it’s not being distributed back to the average working family. It will go to the wealthiest.
The tariffs are just another mechanism for Trump to redistribute wealth to the top at the expense of average Americans.
Remembering King’s profound vision for an economy that first and foremost addresses human need and his incisive understanding of the key relationship between racial and economic justice and of the dignity and value of all labor has, perhaps, never been more important as Trump is installed back in the presidency.
While our political situation may be dire, we are not without options, choices, and chances. In order to help advance equality, people need to ask questions, read books, talk to their neighbors, friends, family and consider enrolling in a Humanities course. The enemy of ignorance lies within this companionship, and communication. People should continue to strive and advocate for equity and equal access to education, and continue to disrupt established systems that benefit the elite. Ensuring more equal access to education may help in promoting the democracy that you desire to see and live in and will help everyone to appreciate the important role of the humanities
While the Supreme Court turned back 50 years of progress represented by Roe v. Wade, let’s recognize, celebrate, and support the efforts that continue to move us forward — and the organizations such as the WNBA and the Chicago Sky that do so — and that show us in concrete and lived ways the value of actually existing democracy and democratic culture such as one experiences in the WNBA.
Indeed, at a moment when we see such backlash to racial justice, to LGBTQ rights, to women’s civil rights and right to control their bodies, we need to see the WNBA as a powerful organization trying to mainstream the values of equality and democracy for all.
Through his representation of Bigger Thomas in Native Son, Wright explores an African American population he diagnoses as hanging in a political balance, capable of turning either toward a brutal fascism or a more progressive liberatory politics. What will determine which way African America will turn? Wright brings us beyond questions of right and wrong and even of ideological preference to get to a perhaps more fundamental dynamic as he explores this question.
As Bruce Bartlett explained the concept in a 2007 article, “The idea is that if revenues are unilaterally reduced, this reduction will lead to a higher budget deficit, which will force legislators to enact spending cuts. Thus, using tax cuts to bring about spending cuts has been called ‘starving the beast.’”
House Republicans are no longer even trying to sell the lie that tax cuts pay for themselves by stimulating economic growth and bringing in more revenue to the federal government or that the wealth will trickle down. Instead, they are being very clear that to pay for these tax cuts they will need to make substantial cuts to important programs that have supported Americans’ health and well-being–to the tune of $2 trillion.
The fact is, if you think about it, Americans just elected the worst boss ever: the boss everybody hates, whose style of leadership is more interested in making your life miserable and thrilling in his power to do so, than in creating a happy and productive workplace that honors people’s talents and contributions.
The transformation of hearts and minds will require a profound cultural transformation, and promoting important stories that can define and inform a national self-consciousness and identity and narrate a new direction is one key element of this project of cultural transformation.
Our nation collectively, but especially white America, needs to confront and work through psychotherapeutically the deep cultural and collective mental illness of white male supremacy to understand why it’s damaging to the interests and well-being of white Americans and all Americans. We need stories that help us work this poison out of our cultural bloodstream.
One story that comes to mind is the 1998 movie American History X, directed by Tony Kaye and written by David McKenna.
I am not suggesting we not act with conscience per se, but I am suggesting that the call on conscience tends to root us in an individualist stance that removes us from our relationship with the many others in our world and prevents us from seriously imagining the impact of our voting behavior on their lives. We might just need a different term, maybe something like “social justice” or the “public good” which takes us out of our individual sense of rightness to think in broader terms. Indeed, the very problem with neo-liberalism is its evacuation of the concept of a public good, its denial of its very validity, as it insists we are motivated only by private interests.
