Letter 2 America for December 28, 2012

Dear America,

The new year is about to begin, and it appears from the way in which this one is ending that nothing will change.  We are still debating the subject of gun control with the murder of twenty children with an assault rifle just barely behind us.  Our surrogates in Washington, D.C. are still debating whether to avert economic trauma for the ninety eight percent of Americans who need a tax cut by giving them one because the Republicans want to give one to the two percent who don't.  The EPA director has resigned  quite possibly because she is sick of defending her position on the debate over global warming and pollution, which position she and millions of others consider to be long past proven to be valid.  And the list goes on.  But what will all this mean for us in 2013?

My guess is that the pace of change in the modern world will continue so slowly that it will be imperceptible unless measured against where we were twenty years ago.  We will have another recession because the Republicans will insist on tax cuts for the privileged few if everyone else is going to get them, and as a result, no one will get one.  With billions fewer consumer dollars being spent, it will take us all year to get back to where we are now...which is a pretty good place for many of us, though many others of us are still suffering financially on account of the economy.  The news for them may be bleak as it appears, at least to me, that we have suffered a trauma that will leave us permanently scarred.  The way in which the wealth generated by Americans gets distributed will continue to put 80% of income in the hands of 2% of the population, and life will get both better and worse, depending on who you are, at a frightening rate.  We will get both poorer and richer as a nation with the working poor outnumbering the Sybaritic rich by ever increasing margins.  And the Republicans will continue to obstruct efforts to redirect us with the demonstrably vane hope that increasing the wealth of the rich trickles down on everyone.  And all this will occur with a minimum of attention from us because the extant political system is broken down into two parties whose identities are not ascertainable in any meaningful way.  We no longer make our choices at the polls on the basis of issues, but rather we vote for the party that we think stands for our best interests overall because we identify that party with certain dogma about all kinds of things: values, national pride, defense, affluence and who deserves it and the place of the United Stares in the world, just to name a few.   And all the while, as we vote on those bases, favoring those who claim to feel as we do on the softer issues that are determined by sentiment rather than reason, those based on reason will go largely ignored.  We will see our identity as a people recede ever more deeply into inactive memory as we become something else to our core.  It's a trend that I fear will define us for the rest of this century, and thus will change the world...mostly for the worse.

So, is there cause for optimism on any front?  I don't think I'm the one to ask, not that you intended to anyway, but there are signs of a return to a saner society at hand.  New York has now reported the fewest murders for any year since records of such things have been kept, and The Senate seems on the verge of formulating a plan that will obviate the sequestration cuts that are currently law on the books and maintaining the Bush era tax cuts for all those with incomes under $400,000, which John Boehner says he will put on the docket for action by The House whether he personally likes it or not.  As to New York City, it appears that a rise in overall crime is solely attributable to thefts of i-products like i-phones and i-pads, which might lead to a decline in the popularity of such devices--a good thing in my opinion given the rapacity of Apple as a corporation and the predation on both consumers and employees by corporations that it represents.  And as to the impending compromise on the tax and spending front, all of the pressure against Republican intransigency appears to have come from the voters as they still have impunity in congress when it comes to making demands by virtue of their numbers in both houses.  Between the success of popular sentiment in changing the vector of politics in congress by virtue of the apparent electoral rejection of dogmatic conservative principles like "no new taxes," and the likelihood that The Senate will feel compelled to change its rules to prevent the filibuster from continuing to dictate American social policy by dint of what might be called the Republican "super-minority" in that house of congress, it appears that not only is popular opinion once again becoming relevant, the opinion of the majority is also coming back into vogue as a raison d'être for politicians to act.  And as popular opinion is trending back toward the more civil and collective interest sensibility of prior generations of voters, we may be headed toward a Renaissance of American liberalism and social conscience, as long as it doesn't go too far, that is.

So, like those in Washington who are being asked about the prospect of a deal before the end of the year on avoiding the "Fiscal Cliff," I am "cautiously optimistic" overall.  We should have a better idea of what to expect in the near and mid-term future within a few days as the lame duck session ends and the new congress takes over, but for the moment, I am willing to make the assumption that sanity will reign in Washington starting in 2013 largely because sanity is returning to the nation in general.  We have a few more issues to deal with, but what we are dealing with now may well be the bellwether we need to boost the consumer confidence needed to get dollars back in the stores and jobs back in our factories to make the things those dollars buy.  With that in mind, I hope you had a Merry Christmas, and that we all have a Happy New Year.

Your friend,

Mike