Final thoughts on a Thursday.

 Final thoughts on a Thursday.

I am in mourning.

I started this post by reflecting on how much I appreciate the shared communications that I am experiencing with like minded souls who are concerned about the state of civic engagement.

And then I realized that what we share, really, is that we are mourning the loss of something we had valued.

The trajectory of the 20th century in our nation was one away from the tyranny of oligarchy which was manifest in the concentration of wealth among a small group of wealthy industrialists who had benefited from the onset of industrialization and the systemization of financial manipulation toward a more decentralized expression of opportunity through centralized supports for the middle class. We called it the New Deal, and it permeated economic and political thought across partisan divides.

I had the opportunity to visit the presidential library of Lyndon Johnson in Austin this past year. If you wonder about any of this, look at this man's legacy. He was probably the last president we had who was committed to this greater vision of who we could be.

Looking at tax policy and regulation as it existed in the United States from the beginning of World War II through the end of the cold war, it was a period where revenues were collected from those who could, and disbursed to those who could not. It was a period that is notable for the explosive growth of the middle class and the real opportunities that were created for ordinary citizens (as long as they were white).

And I am not even beginning to engage the question of civil liberties and marginalized communities. That has its own history that in may ways runs parrallel to this economic history that I reflecting on here.

I, personally, remember when Ronald Reagan launched his assault on this progressive vision of our nation and began a process of reinvigorating the powers of the oligarchy. The economic short hand for this process is generally referred to as the concept of trickle down economics. That is, the belief that if corporations and wealthy entrepenuers have more resources, that this would result in more jobs and opportunities for everyone. This has not resulted in the outcomes that were promised. I'm not going to go into the details of how it has failed here, but I challenge you to find any research that suggests that placing resources and wealth in the hands of the wealthy results in opportunity for ordinary citizens.

Somehow, through messaging and frustration, we as a nation have lost our belief in this vision of opportunity. We suspect the federal government, which exists almost exclusively as an entity dedicated to protecting and supporting ordinary citizens, of being corrupt and bloated despite the fact that government is made up of our neighbors who are working for less than they could earn in the private sector because they believe in a higher purpose. We are frustrated with paying taxes, despite the fact that our tax burden is lower than most successful contemporary nation states. We are suspicious of government health care, despite overwhelming evidence that government health care in comparable nations provides better outcomes and efficencies. We seem to want to privatize government provided services (trains, postal services, retirement benefits, etc.) despite the clear fact that a privatized system has an immediate need to cost at least 15% more to enrich its private ownership.

It is a mystery to me how we have lost our faith in America. The objectors to this tradition of mid-century America have as their slogan to Make America Great Again. And yet, rather than advocating to a return to the progressive values that actually made America great, they are condoning policies and practices that harken to an earlier time, to a time before the great depression, when America was not, actually, great. It was a time when America was rife with cronyism and grift.

America WAS great. When we were great the wealthy paid substantial taxes representing the fact that they benefited from the infrastructure that ordinary citizens created. America WAS great because we were developing and establishing systems that ensure that poverty and hunger were adressed. America WAS great because we supported free thinking nations across the globe with food and resources that they needed to ensure that they could resist oppression.

We now find ourselves in a time when all of the things that made us great are being dismantled and eradicated willy nilly.

And so we grieve.

So, no, I'm not actually happy to be having these conversations with you. I wish we were better. I wish we cared more about those in our community we want to other. I wish we were more willing to support those who need by using resources from those who have.

I am in mourning of an America that I really did think existed, and now, I don't know.

Who are we?