Like Waving to the Shore From the Titanic

I met with a group of intelligent people yesterday. Trying this once in a while is not an entirely bad idea. It was in a coffee shop, and trying as I may to shed the coffee klatch syndrome from decades past, it’s still a good experience.

The topic of the state of the society came up during our conversation, and a member of the group engaged in hand wringing about the space we occupy in terms of the effect of right-wing politics on the society. These sentiments are not unusual, as people of goodwill are shocked on a daily basis, if not an hourly basis or less, by how far right the society has moved. One conclusion that this person reached was that the Democratic Party needed a candidate in 2028 with charisma.

The problem of waiting for a charismatic figure to arise from the ashes of the political maelstrom is that it’s a similar hope that many religions have. We’ll eventually be saved is the generally accepted line of reasoning. I’m not opposed to a spiritual inclination, but in politics it has to be accomplished on Earth.

The problem is, however, that our current morass, unless you’re a fan of the chaos that surrounds us now, is that the long march toward right-wing policies has been in full swing since the beginning of the decade of the 1970s. Even if a person accepts Nixon’s views on the environment and a few other issues like occupational safety, his disastrous quagmire in Southeast Asia really blocks the light of day in terms of viewing him as even somewhat liberal on those other issues.

The Democrats have been on a very, very long downward slide from Johnson’s Great Society, which was also lost in Southeast Asia.

What happened after Johnson, indeed long before Johnson, was the US footing as a hegemonic state leading the world following World War II. Despite gains for the working class and middle class during that era, our endless and sometimes secret wars had already been a hallmark of foreign policy. On the domestic front, globalization has long since hollowed out huge swaths of the US. I recall doing hurricane relief work in Florida and traveling to an area around Lake Okeechobee and witnessing a level of poverty that I had not seen since 1969, when returning from basic training and seeing the shacks along the railroad tracks.

Protest in the face of extreme reaction has limited success. The nuances of that conclusion are complex.

It’s all about money and war and an antipathy for the helping hand that at least was once a purported ideal of the society. Power has coalesced in the hands of a few of the power elite and the military-industrial-investment complex calls the tune as to who will be called upon, or allowed into the halls of power. It’s that simple and calling for help, well, recall what happened to the Titanic long ago.