Rescuing America from the reactionary vise one bill at a time
Spring is here, and although many things are still bad, unlike during the Trump administration, every arrow is pointing in the right direction. Covid-19 deaths and infections down. Vaccinations rising and more available. Jobs up. Anti-scientific drivel from the top, way down. Lies, almost non-existent. Preening and bragging, brownnosing and bootlicking, not happening.
The butterflies and the birds dipping into my backyard feeder seem to sense the darkness lifting and the cold receding.
Soon, money will flow to people who really need it, people who lost their jobs and who have kids to feed and not to the 800 billionaires who watched their net worth, already obscenely large, soar by $1 trillion during the last year.
All that needed cash will be spent quickly by most people trying to catch up on car and mortgage payments, on rent, on a vehicle to replace the beat-up jalopy, on groceries and medicines and supermarket chains and bodegas, car mechanics and auto dealers will benefit.
The economists call this the “multiplier effect.” You can think about it as a virtuous circle, the opposite of the vicious circle created by Trump when he let the Coronavirus roam wild which in turn crushed the economy. Dead people don’t collect wages, terrified people don’t always show up for work or go out to bars and restaurants, sick people don’t do the best job, and investors are hesitant to pour money into an economy characterized by constantly changing policy and erratic leadership at the top.
Republicans are holding onto the hope that increased government spending will trigger hyperinflation, but Jerome Powell, the head of the Federal Reserve and the man who would step on the brakes at any sign of runaway inflation does not seem worried. He knows that even $2 trillion may not be enough to lift the economy from the depths it sunk under Trump. The U.S. economy is driven by consumer spending more than by any other factor, as Powell knows, and the legions of long term unemployed and the businesses with few customers don’t spend a lot.
Then again, the GOP protestations about inflation should be taken with a giant ball of salt. What Republicans, who have spent decades discrediting and dismantling government, really fear is that Biden’s bold program will work and belie the minimalist government GOP paradigm that has held sway for far too long.
If the rescue package improves the lives of tens or hundreds of millions of Americans, Republicans will be bereft of an argument to support policies that amount to austerity for the masses and bonanzas for the billionaires. The success of the rescue will show, as a former Republican long disaffected with Trump wrote, “It was all a lie.” It is the GOP’s pseudo-conservative small government schtick, its big scam, what they try to pass off as a “philosophy” and is nothing but a rationalization for concentrating more and more wealth and income at the top. But inequality can only go so far and may have reached the peak with only a cliff on the other side. The old GOP game is over and it’s not clear that they can invent a new con.
Now is the time for the Democrats to drive stake through the GOP’s lying heart. The Republican juggernaut has feet of clay, lacks a soul—or a heart. During the darkest moments of the pandemic and the economic crisis someone said we were in an “FDR moment and I don’t see an FDR anywhere.” Biden is not FDR, but he is proving to be a reasonable facsimile. If Biden and the Dems play it right, they will be able to progressively outdistance the Republicans, not in one year or one term but for an entire new era.
Ronald Reagan ended the New Deal era that built a broad middle class and began the construction of an American plutocracy. Restoring much of the middle class and helping the poor rise from their plight is tough but doable. Dismantling plutocracy is just as necessary for the sake of democracy, but an even harder project that will take at least a generation to accomplish.
There are plenty of tools—a wealth tax, inheritance taxes, higher corporate and income tax for high earners, the replacement of the regressive social security tax with a progressive one—to reduce the footprint of plutocracy. But inequality and economic concentration are like the law of gravity of capitalism; to counteract them requires power and design, the same things an airplane requires to overcome gravity. In both cases, a poor design or a loss of power is disastrous, thus it is a continuous struggle to keep huge levels of inequality from returning, not a one-off but a long march.
How have the Republicans been able for so long to shuffle the cards to always deal the rich the best hand? The magician’s trick: distraction. Directing people’s attention and hate toward scapegoats—African Americans, Muslims, Asians, Latinos, children pouring across the border—while picking their pockets. It is a maneuver that con artists and pickpockets are also expert in.
But what happens when the scapegoats coalesce and become able to decide elections? The jig is up for the GOP. Unless… Unless you can prevent demographics from being translated into political power. Voter suppression through endless mechanisms and obstacles is their only hope. That is why 253 bills have been introduced in Republican legislatures to suppress the vote. The message is the same as that of the Big Lie, the Capitol Assault and the attempt by Republicans in Congress and the courts to illegitimately overturn the election. If we cannot win democratically, screw democracy and escape to a more amenable alternative reality.
This is a watershed moment. We may be on the way to a normal society that jettisons all the old myths and bad habits: American exceptionalism; dog-eat-dog; the innocence complex; the essential nation thing; individualism on steroids; the fantasy of global dominance and all that other crap.
The shock of the Trump presidency may have finally been the catalyst for a New American Revolution, not one based on a reactionary white supremacy, but one founded on the primacy of life, democracy, and the pursuit of justice.
