Democrats, Republicans, and Philosophical Obsolescence
The current economic crisis is inexorably tightening the vise of poverty that has been strangling this nation’s poorest citizens for several decades.
Ragged, begging homeless people are the most obvious victims of the escalating tragedy of deprivation haunting our cities, towns, suburbs, isolated hamlets and barren, open spaces.
But there are so many other examples of expanding human deprivation in our midst, that homeless people are largely being ignored. For example, even though they are far more numerous than the high-paid Wall Street executives who are grumpily agreeing to temporarily accept salaries of only $500 thousand per year, homeless people do not receive anywhere near the same amount of attention, and compassion as the financiers, many of whom, may end up in prison because of participation in improprieties related to the current economic crisis.
In addition to the growing number of homeless people, there are many other, deeply troubling, signs that the U.S. is experiencing something akin to widespread social and economic collapse.
They include the escalating number of people who are losing their homes; the millions who have lost their jobs; those who are about to, or already have, used up their unemployment insurance, the rising number of people who can no longer afford health insurance, and those who couldn’t afford it before the onset of our current economic crisis.
Business failures, and individual bankruptcies, are on the rise all over the nation. And it should not surprise that suicides are also on the rise. All too frequently, those who take their lives have lost all hope of being able to cope adequately with their escalating financial problems.
President Barack Obama, who is obviously faced with a steep learning curve regarding the art of exercising real power and influence in Washington, D.C., is clearly finding it more difficult to accomplish real change than he imagined while out on the campaign trail contending for the job against fellow Democrats.
His recent, fumbling efforts to secure support from recalcitrant Republicans for his relatively modest stimulus program do not inspire confidence in his future ability to radically reform the nation’s balance of power, or its terribly askew priorities.
Moreover, there is little indication that President Obama’s financial stimulus plan will prove to be decisively effective. It will produce jobs. But that positive development will probably be offset by a comparable, if not larger, increase in the number of jobs being eliminated due to the financial crisis. Maybe more troubling is the paucity of new ideas being put forth by the Obama administration.
The new president is not alone in his confusion. The truth of the matter is that these days confusion about the financial crisis, and what to do about it, dominates certainty in most U.S. arenas of power. The hard truth that virtually everyone in Washington’s political establishment seems incapable of understanding, or at least publicly admitting, is that the philosophies of the Democrats and Republicans are largely dysfunctional.
As far as the Republicans are concerned, the brand of thinking currently known as “Reaganomics” is clearly obsolete. If this fact was not made apparent to doubters by voters in the last two national elections, then the current economic crisis should be all the proof any reasonable person needs. The Bush administration’s orthodox Republican thinking regarding financial matters is significantly responsible for our current financial debacle
Those who need additional proof that reality has usurped Republican Party philosophy should ponder the response of its leaders to the Wall Street meltdown. In the immediate aftermath of the collapse of Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers, the Bush administration abandoned longstanding Republican dogma regarding so-called “private enterprise” as if it were a dreaded disease. And in a philosophy-be-damned panic, the administration fought to give approximately $800 billion to Wall Street.
Communist Party barons around the world must have permitted themselves broad, knowing, smiles–because they have been practicing the same sort of state-directed fiscal policies for decades. The crude, ignorance inherent in the Republican Party’s embrace of “government-is-the- problem” dogma was exposed for all to see during the horrific Katrina holocaust.
As far as the Democratic Party is concerned, proof abounds that its leaders continue to embrace financial dogmas that are no longer pertinent to current reality. For example, Democrats have controlled the majority of the nation’s major cities for decades. Therefore, they must accept responsibility for the rampant poverty, and physical deterioration, so clearly apparent in those cities.
One only needs to consider the hundreds of thousands of city dwellers who are homeless, begging, and sinking into utter despair, to understand the magnitude of the Democratic Party’s failure to come to grips with current economic realities. The growing jobless rate, and the plummeting housing prices in every metropolitan area in the nation, are further proof that the Democrats are as bereft of good ideas as their essentially clueless Republican counterparts.
As far as the current economic crisis is concerned, the leaders of both parties are obviously confused as to how to proceed. Mostly, they are attempting to garner support for ideas and policies that were significantly inadequate long before we entered the current hyper-globalized phase of human endeavors.
Furthermore, as indicated by their make-it-up-as-you-go approach to the catastrophic collapse of the automobile industry, few Washington leaders from either party understand the full significance of post-industrialism, and what it portends for nation-based financial philosophies that have remained essentially unchanged for more than half a century.
Thus, outmoded thinking increasingly incapacitates our political leaders, Liberals and Conservatives alike. As a result, and all too often, their efforts to address the nation’s social, political and financial problems are undermined by various manifestations of the malady that the late Alvin Toffler referred to as “Future Shock.”
I accept the fact that we are stuck with the world as it is, and the leaders we have. However wrong he was about the War in Iraq, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was correct in his broadly criticized, but minimally understood, comment about going to war with the army you have. My point is that we are stuck with the leaders we have, and however we proceed toward fundamentally reforming our society, the process will have to be largely accomplished via their participation.
Therefore, it is critically important that members of government elevate their comprehension, planning and performance, as quickly as possible. Accomplishing this will almost certainly require a determined mass movement motivated in its determination to succeed by recognition that our very lives hang in the balance.