We are rapidly, but not rapidly enough, approaching the end of a year whose departure will dismay no one, as well as the beginning of a year which we hope will be a deliverance from the nightmare called 2020. So it's time to feel a bit retrospective, to once again try to look at the last twelve months and ask ourselves where we are, and where we are going.
It's unfortunately hard to do that, because events at this time of year normally slow down enough to permit a period of reflection. But when the President of the United States is still Donald Trump, and the dumpster fire of his time in office is coming to an end, his rage at the unraveling of his life of deception is so great that he is finding new and increasingly troubling ways to add fuel to the dumpster. Four weeks before he's exposed to the absence of immunity from (at least) State prosecutions, and the deceptive tweets, the destructive pardons, and the distracting attempts to meddle in the work of legislative grown-ups are multiplying at a pace that makes the thought of keeping up almost impossible, even as it increasingly becomes more and more necessary.
But, with G-d's grace, and a certain amount of luck, Trump will be gone soon. And it will be time to take stock of the damage that has been done to us, and to our democracy. And that damage will take years to repair. Maybe decades. And there's the question of whether all of it can be repaired. So we might as well avert our eyes and our attention from the long con of the Donald for a little bit, and take some stock.
I'm taking the Rachel Maddow approach with this, in which I start light-years away from Earth, ultimately land on a specific spot, and thereby hope to connect the big picture with the moment at hand. So here we go.
I've spent much of the fifty or so years in which I've discussed politics preaching that economics is never a simple capitalism-versus-socialism frame of analysis. Economics requires the perspective and initiative of individuals, but no less requires cooperative efforts as well that channel those characteristics into productive channels, and help to avert them from producing destructive results. So, some mix of private and public enterprise needed in order to make things work. And there's no perfect "middle ground" in calibrating their respective roles, either. Sometimes, we need more of one; sometimes, we need more of the other. And one of the trickiest calculations a political leader can make is deciding where the emphasis needs to be placed, as well as when and how it needs to be changed.
In that sense, economics is no different from any other aspect of our experience. Human history is a story defined and propelled by different forms of conflict. Between faith and reason. Between conquest and settlement. Between construction and destruction. Between two fundamental choices: the betterment of humanity, or the advancement of venality. It's why, for a number of years, I used to make a point at about this time of year of watching "Things to Come," a 1936 science-fiction epic based on a screenplay by H.G. Wells, which endeavored to depict the next hundred years of human progress. Wells based it on his understanding of history as a struggle between those who advocated those fundamental choices. Despite the film's flaws, including one scene reflective of Wells' anti-Semitism, it's worth watching at least once. I think Wells' fundamental analysis of how human history works is sound, and applicable to an analysis of our present circumstances.
We are where we are, in the middle of a deadly pandemic with no clear end in sight, despite the recent emergence (thankfully) of vaccines that may help to build a path to a new normal. That pandemic has led to the biggest economic collapse since the Great Depression, and exposed beyond any doubt the existence of structural racism that perverts our supposed founding values and virtues. All of this--all of it--demands action on a national level, a coordinated plan and program carried out by the federal government that reflects the size and scale of the crisis as well as the solution to it. This fact has been screamingly obvious to the majority of Americans, to Democrats and Republicans, which s why we are now counting down the days until Joe Biden's inauguration.
So why didn't we get it? And, even worse, why is there still a sizable possibility that we still may not get it, going forward?
Because of the border crisis.
No, I'm not talking about the border crisis as reflexively covered by our woefully inadequate, co-opted media. I'm not talking about what Trump calls "hordes" of people of color ready to stampede across the Rio Grande to take jobs away from white people. The world isn't being threated by immigration; if anything, the right to travel is one of the oldest, most recognized, most fundamental human rights on Earth, one that has continually reshaped the world and always for the better. Yet now, more than ever, that right has been restricted to the point, even prior to the pandemic, that people could only move around the world at the speed of sludge.
But money is a very different story. Money has an unquestioned right to move around the world that makes light look like a slowpoke. That's been true for at least half a century, and probably longer, ever since the rise of the modern multinational corporation. However, since the end of the Cold War, and with the subsequent creation of international trade agreements that facilitated the existence and growth of the global economy, money has assumed an unprecedented role in its control of our lives. And that's because global companies, and the global investors that control them, feel no need to be constrained by the decisions of government. An international consensus had emerged that government was less essential to the affairs of humanity than the needs and concerns of the marketplace--a marketplace that covered the entire globe.
That consensus, and the extent to which our national government has attempted to adhere to it over the past several decades, has dragged our standard of living and even our level of civility down to the lowest international common denominators. On both of these fronts, this nation used to lead by example. Now, its "example" is one that many of its long-standing friends openly shun. Instead of organizing the world into a noble crusade for the benefit of humankind, as we did during the period from the end of the Second World War to the close of the first Gulf War, we are now allowing ourselves to be stripped for parts and auctioned off to the highest bidder.
And that is far from all.
Our leading corporations, including ones like Boeing, whose bombers helped to save the world from Hitler, now openly and systematically compromise safety to wring a few extra dollars onto their balance sheets. And they co-opt the state referendum process to not only defeat proposals that would restrict their ability to oppress workers, but do so in ways that can only be overturned by impossible-to-achieve supermajorities.
Our national legislature has seriously considered and advocated budget provisions that would not only allow corporations the right to systemically endanger the public, but give those corporations the right to sue you if you try to fight back against the danger. And it has likewise advocating changing the powers of the Federal Reserve so that it will always be there, if needed, to provide socialism for the rich, but not for anyone else.
One of our two leading national parties has, as its primary organizing principle, the systemic restriction of the popular vote by any means necessary, undoubtedly operating under the theory that, if the people vote, the party's donors will go looking for even more supple politicians to do its bidding. And it goes out of its way to cripple government's ability to fund itself and conduct what even Richard Nixon once called "the people's business."
And the Fourth Estate? Please. If only. That formerly worthy institution is now dominated by, of all ironies, a naturalized immigrant whose systemic willingness to abuse women in print and through the airwaves serves as a demonstration of his confidence that Biden and the incoming Administration does not pose a threat to his ongoing destruction of American journalism.
Pretty bad, huh? So, you ask, what's to be done? How can we push capitalism back to the "middle ground"? Especially now that it operates on a scale larger than any one government can operate?
Wells would have advocated, or at least supported, the creation of a worldwide government to constrain the more destructive aspects of capitalism. "Things to Come," in fact, implicitly presupposes the existence of such an entity, although its details are not explicitly spelled out. Rather, they are reduced to glittering generalities, like the slogan "Wings Over The World" (and now you know where Paul McCartney got that from). That's just as well, perhaps. An entity that attempted to operate on that scale would almost, by definition, be too cumbersome to effectively respond to the rapid pace of change in the 21st-century world.
I think that what would be better, and what should certainly should be attempted, is something that provided some of the basic ground rules and at least some of the enforcement procedures that a world government might possess, but that relied in a fundamental way on the actions of participating nations to make short-term responses to changing circumstances. What I would envision, and suggest, is that this should be based on international treaties not unlike the trade agreements that came together in the 1990s, but that addressed concerns typically addressed by national and local governments, such as voting rights, living wages, health care, and environmental issues.
Obviously, some of these structures already exist. But what's needed to find a "middle ground" for our times is something that has to function more like a cohesive system of regulation and enforcement, but that still allowed nation-states certain rights of regulation over domestic affairs and unilateral (as well as multilateral) action in international ones. The closest thing we have right now to something like this is the EU, which is not a particularly encouraging example. And yet, it is precisely because the EU has thus far limited itself to addressing economic issues that its effectiveness has been thwarted.
And what role can the U.S. play in this? Our own experience at the domestic level with the type of federalism I am advocating on the international level has, to put it politely, been something of a mixed bag, to say nothing of its willingness--or lack thereof--to date to participate in international agreements. It would help if there were changes in the elected political class; there are already signs that this may be in the offing. In turn, it might help if the workers of this country could finally come to understand that unity, and even short-term sacrifice, are the only way to create a climate for fundamental change. That has always been the case, and it is no less true now.
Beginning in 2021, we all need to come together to move the "middle ground." We can only do that, however, if we start by recognizing the nature of the border crisis that we actually face, and the increasingly desperate need to address it.
Oh, and Happy Holidays. I'll be back before the New Year.
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