Dear America,
It is strange that the Republicans, conservatives in particular, never learn when it comes to some things? Larry Kudlow--the "trickle-down" CNBC financial commentator who thought the "bubbleheads" who were predicting doom in consequence of the sub-prime mortgage phenomenon were nuts in 2007--is now going to lead President Trump's economic counsel. With his counsel guiding them, how can a Republican inspired recession be very far behind. And the movement to mitigate the impact of the Dodd-Frank Act--which was passed only to prevent another financial catastrophe like that which Kudlow predicted was nothing but a figment of alarmists' imaginations--managed to pass an act through The Senate with the collusion of a few moderate Democrats supporting them on what apparently seemed to the Democrats to be a staunching of free market zealotry worth taking a hit for. But in The House, the Republican chairman of the Banking Committee, Jeb Hensarling, is squelching any conservative optimism that the bill might pass in favor of a pedantic insistence on von Mises-Hayek style free market dogmatism. And then there's the Pennsylvania special election for a soon-to-be extinct, Republican gerrymandered congressional seat, in which they had to call off their television campaign tactic of touting the recent tax cuts as a Republican boon for the middle class when they discovered that less than half the country think it was a boon to anyone they might know, much less to themselves.
They don't seem to realize that when the average American asks himself what was the last thing to trickle down on him, money is the last thing that comes to mine. That may be because a few years ago, our congress crossed a Rubicon of sorts: more than half of its members were millionaires. How can such people be expected to understand the moral vacancy of their policies when they already have theirs...and most likely so does everyone they know. I read the columns of David Brooks and Paul Krugman in the New York Times this morning and I realized that my style of commentary runs more to the snarky style of Krugman, the Nobel Prize winning economist, than it does toward the restrained, albeit slightly didactic style of David Brooks, the intellectual, and frankly, I found myself disappointed in myself. But as that realization was coming into consciousness, I also realized that Brooks and Krugman were saying the same things today though the former is a realistic conservative and the latter is a rabid liberal. It is a thing I have said in every election cycle since I started writing these letters. The 2018 election is not as much about policy as it is about who we are as a people, and though we are of ethnically diverse backgrounds, variegated levels of education and a panoply of different religions, we are a people. We are the American people, and we are better than what our politics reflect at the moment.
Both Brooks and Krugman commented today about the lapse into partisan expediency that the Republicans have allowed to co-opt what used to be a commitment to what they characterized as integrity and character. Brooks expressed the fear that in an attempt at political self-preservation the Democrats might suffer the same moral and ethical lapse. Krugman said little if anything about the Democrats, but he pointed to the same moral bankruptcy in the Republican ranks as did Brooks. The Republicans inadvertently elected just such a president, a president for the Republican Party of today, not that of yesterday. And they have been reluctant to reject his lack of an acquaintance with candor and his possession of only passing familiarity with either the truth or reason, they cleave to his every misguided pronouncement. Trump continues to control the minds and loyalty of something in the range of 35-40% of the electorate, and in this year in which Republican "accomplishments" aren't seemingly defined as such universally... even among Republicans...they are afraid as a party to lose even a few of what appears to be a minority on which they must capitalize if they wish to stay in power. And since staying in power trumps, if you'll excuse the expression, a desire to do the right thing in the Republican ethos of power, what their man Donald says, goes.
But the fact is this, America. The image of the "ugly America" that prevailed around the world in the fifties is enjoying a second coming. While I don't necessarily care what the world thinks of us as a nation, in this instance I do because I share their perception of what we have become. So if you despair over what it has come to mean abroad when you are called "an American," remember to vote in November, whether you are a Republican or a Democrat. Vote for someone who cares about his or her fellow man, not just his or her party.
Your friend,
Mike
Leave a comment