The Spirit of 2020

There was a time, in the 70's, when I could always find a job that paid a living wage, with health benefits, vacation, retirement.  Then corrupt Nixon got canned which led to narcissistic but pure-of-heart Jimmy Carter, an ineffectual president, fucked over by OPEC, embarrassed by Iran, wearing a sweater and telling us to turn down the heat.  We remember the gas lines and the cost-of-living skyrocketing.  That scared us so much that we let corporations steal our unions out from under us, giving up guarantees and hard-won benefits in order to keep our jobs, which we ended up losing anyway -- sound familiar?

Turns out the republican brain trust had been waiting in the wings, or under their rocks, all along; they knew we would tire of honor over promises of the good life.  And they gave us plenty of empty promises, and an actor to make them convincing.  Ronald Reagan told us it was morning in America, but what he really meant was "mourning in America," and that is what we got.  Mortgage rates up to 16% with scams a-plenty to make our mortgages affordable.  A tax cut that he promised would trickle down -- a promise that never seems to get old, a con that works every time, and never, ever trickles down.

After the trickle down free-for-all of the Dubya years, when we nearly fell over the cliff, we at least recognized Sarah Palin as an idiot and rejected her hate (back then we still rejected overt bigotry).  What still puzzles us is that we had eight years of an economy improving despite every republican trick in the books (and some that weren't), and we still elected a bloviating con artist.

Today I struggle to get by spending most of my meager savings on insurance -- home, car, health -- and repairs on old stuff I can't afford to replace.  We keep hearing that most of us don't have $400 for an emergency, but billionaires convinced us that their families should not have to give up a penny in inheritance tax, making it sound like we were taking food out of the mouths of their children while they in fact were cutting food stamps and Medicaid to those who were truly in need.  The further irony being that the reason so many of us today are in need of basic services is that the wealthy fixed the system decades ago.

Our children live in financial insecurity like many of us have never known.  It was our fear that allowed us to compromise and give up the rights we grew up with.  It was anger over having lost those rights that allowed us to swallow and even bigger con.

Unless things change, my children will never know financial security.  They will work hard and never have time for their families, even though they won't be able to afford good quality child care.  They will never be able to take their eyes off the ball that is their next paycheck.  They will see their children receive education that offers less than I had back in the 50's and 60's, when fear of Russian exploration led to a surge in funding for better schools, better teacher training and salary, critical and creative thinking, sports, music and science.  In other words, quality of life.  They will worry about health care because the wealthy continue to work to snatch it away.  The cost of necessities will continue to skyrocket, the poor will be taxed so the rich can get richer.  And the rich will scorn the struggling middle class while learning bigger and better ways to con us with flattery and fear.  

Our Democratic politicians have tried everything to turn this tide.  Everything, that is, but the hard stuff.  But that is about to change... if we let it.  We have for the first time in decades people standing up who aren't afraid to fight to right those economic wrongs, and they now control the House of Representatives.  Proof that Americans aren't afraid to vote for dramatic change.  It was the young generation who saw how bad things continued to get under the whispered lies that compromise will keep them safe.

My generation was once fearless.  Some of us still are.  But we have been lulled into complacency by the battles that we won long ago.  We have been the frog in the pot of water that doesn't see that he is incrementally being cooked to death.  We keep hoping that if we don't rock the boat we won't get our lives stolen away.

What is utterly ironic is that it was the bright-eyed fearlessness of young women that won us the House in 2018, and now, facing 2020, we are hearing the mantra of the need for "safe" candidates.  That is indeed the sign of insanity, or maybe just of desperation, when we keep insisting on doing what hasn't worked before.

Women in the House, women of color, Muslims, LGBTQ, people we thought were unelectable.  And yet I am hearing the sighs and watching the wringing of hands over who is electable.  You know who isn't electable?  Donald fucking Trump.  And yet because he was fearless we let him lie his way into the White House.  I'm hearing qualms over being too extreme.  You know what is too extreme?  The republican party under Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump.

It's time to stop being afraid.  It's definitely time we stopped allowing the enemies of the people to define us and frighten us.  Proposals to clean our atmosphere and give health care to all are not extreme.  Plans to fund and improve education are not extreme.  A living wage is not extreme.  Building bridges that don't collapse and hospitals in rural towns, that is not extreme.  Protecting the rights of people of color, and making women's health care private is not extreme.

The opposite of all of the above is what is extreme.  What the next election is about is protecting us from the extremists.  It is about democracy.