- The US is involved in a status quo trillions dollar war in the middle east
- Green house gases threaten to damage the world
- We are in the middle of a pandemic which is on top of an opioid crisis which is related to a national suicide increase
- Student debt is crushing
- Health care costs are a major dampener on the economy
- Job automation continues at an unparalleled pace
- De-regulation has left us defenseless against all kinds of corruption, foreign influences and corporate abuse
- “Graying of America” is causing an increasing pool of power in a particular segment of Americans that may or may not represent broader interests and will have implications for our economy
- Wealth inequality — “ Household incomes have grown only modestly in this century, and household wealth has not returned to its pre-recession level. Economic inequality, whether measured through the gaps in income or wealth between richer and poorer households, continues to widen.”
- Demagogues are electable making dictatorship possible until the conditions that elect them are changed
- The Supreme Court is on a knife’s edge from removing major human rights
- Our most popular sport causes brain damage (I know this one doesn’t sound as important but I assure you were the country not such a shit show we would be having congressional hearings)
Its a startling long list and no doubt I’ve still left out some major concerns. So I did some research to find out how we could be tilting more conservative in the face of the calamity:
After 10 years of hard times, when the Depression felt like a natural as well as economic disaster (made worse by real environmental catastrophes such as floods and dust storms), what people wanted from their government and their popular culture was comfort. By the late 1930s all but a few Americans were longing not for revolution but for recovery, not for uncertainty but for stability, not for more social conflict but for a sense of national unity.
These essentially conservative impulses dominated the closing years of the Great Depression, though they had been present all along. Franklin D. Roosevelt recognized the craving for solace in the midst of chaos by clothing his reforms in conservative language. The very names of the New Deal agencies and programs—the National Recovery Administration, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Tennessee Valley Authority, Social Security—promised that America would be repaired and strengthened rather than transformed. Floods would be “controlled”; hydroelectric power would be “harnessed”; the soil would be “conserved”; order would be “restored.” In short, Americans would get a new, fairer deal of the cards but not a brand-new game with perplexing new rules.
In short there is a human tendency to cling to the exact traditions that caused disaster in the first place. IE progressives have a marketing problem. There has to be a revolution but we must at all costs avoid calling it a revolution.
Instead of “Medicare for All Act” we need “Medicare Expansion Act”. Instead of “free college” we need the “Tuition Adjustment Administration”. Instead of “Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity Act” we should propose the “Election Regulation Authority”.
We have to follow FDR’s lead not just in the reforms we make but also in the way they are introduced.