Someone told me today that the Middle Class is dead. I don’t know about that; however, it is clearly dying and will be dead if we do not take drastic steps against the status quo. Certain government, corporate, and political interests have been waging systemic war against the people since the time this country was founded. It is not a war that can be won overnight, but it is one that can and must be won. Part of the battle involves political tactics, and part of the battle involves positive plans for action.
It is not enough to curse the darkness that is being wrought on this country and curse the attacks on our Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the values that our founders along with the Iroquois Nations (from which we got our Constitution) held. We must show people the way to the light as well. In 1992, Bill Clinton won over George H.W. Bush because he offered specific, concrete ideas for improving the country. Ditto for 1996. That was the last time that Democrats have had a comfortable majority except for 2008, when John McCain tanked following the Great Recession and bailout crisis. This is because most average voters tune out when the campaign gets too negative. In 2004, Howard Dean allowed himself to get into a pissing match with Dick Gephardt, which led to both of them finishing out of the money and allowing John Kerry and John Edwards to break up a four-way tie and finish 1-2. In 2006, around here, almost 10% of our voters voted for third parties after the county was saturated by negative robocalls from both campaigns in the final weeks of the Talent-McCaskill race.
Our first priority has got to be to tackle the root causes of the disintegration of the Middle Class. I submit that while Bernie Sanders is right to talk about the rampant inequality that we have, we have to do more. The reason we have such a weak Middle Class is because of the forces of white privilege. Black lives have to matter, or we will never have a strong Middle Class again. If they don’t, then politicians will continue to scare voters into voting against their economic interests out of fear that those Scary Brown People — whether it be Blacks, immigrants, or Muslims — will take their jobs away if they don’t vote for them. Housing discrimination is alive and well despite attempts to stamp it out. The Ferguson shooting laid bare the fact that criminal justice is unequally administered. Given that racism is alive and well in this country, Donald Trump’s call for a “beautiful wall” can be seen as a ploy to get voters to vote against their interests so that people like him can continue to extract as much profits as possible from all of us.
Next, when police state apologists call for more rollbacks of our freedoms, we have to push back with the opposite approach. Yesterday, I wrote about the need to take in more Syrian refugees. But I did not go far enough. After thinking about it some more today, I came up with a basic lesson in revolutionary tactics — if the other guy pushes one way, we should push back harder. We should take in two million refugees if that’s what it takes to end the refugee crisis. It does, as I noted, take careful planning, vetting, and coordination with faith leaders, businesses, relief agencies, and municipal leaders. But that does not mean that it can’t be done. It must be done; we have more than enough room in this country given that we are one of the least densely populated countries in the world. My point is that when Donald Trump calls for shutting out all Muslim refugees, we should call for letting in 2 million more refugees from all faiths and from people all over the world. We took in more during the Vietnam War, and most of them turned into productive citizens of this country.
More and more people are being considered disposable by Corporate America thanks to NAFTA, technology, TPP, and other free trade agreements. Therefore, people will not see any kind of difference between the two parties unless we do something to directly affect their wallets. This is why we need to put Basic Income front and center. It will strengthen the Middle Class and address a whole host of social problems. So, when the other side calls for austerity and sacrifice, we should push back with a basic income. We can do a $30,000 basic income without any cuts to either Social Security, food stamps, or the rest of our welfare system.
Some more examples — when the proponents of austerity call for the end of Obamacare — like the GOP House is doing once again — we should push back and call for Single Payer. When people like the militia movement seize federal land in order to get more money from either the sale of said land or royalties from Big Oil, fracking interests, logging interests, or tar sands, we should push for protecting more land against such exploitation. When the anti-tax extremists try to push the tax burden onto the poor through the “fair tax,” we should push back against the offshore tax shelters that the 1% store their money in — estimated at $21 trillion according to Forbes. When huge multinational corporations seek to leave our shores thanks to TPP, we should push back and call for promoting sustainable businesses which are structured in a way in which they won’t be outsourced as well as universal employment. When multinational corporations like Uber seek to push more cheap labor, we should push back with calls to Fight for 15.
Once we achieve victories, we cannot let down our guard. Let’s use the Civil Rights struggles as an example. Too much of White America assumed wrongly following the passage of the Civil Rights Act that the struggle had been won and we could go back to sleep. But in fact, the struggle had just begun. The Southern Strategy has been systematically seeking to roll back our hard-won victories under the guise of “Law and Order,” the “War on Drugs,” and the “War on Terror.”
Furthermore, if we achieve partial victories, then we cannot go back to sleep either. Let’s use Fight for 15 as an example. If Hillary Clinton were to beat Donald Trump in a landslide that sweeps in a Democratic Senate and House, and they pass a $12 minimum wage, I would say that is great, and will serve to lift a lot of people out of poverty. However, I would say that there are too many places where a $12 minimum wage is not enough to make ends meet and that we still have to do more to protect workers and strengthen our unions, including the Fight for 15.
Finally, we have to understand that the fight for universal human dignity never ends; therefore, we can never go back to sleep. Let’s use Tolkien as an example. At the end of the Second Age of Middle Earth, everyone thought that the Dark Lord had been defeated for good. A watch was set to ensure that he would never rise again. However, over the years, the watch slept and the Dark Lord and his minions eventually rose again. Men, elves, dwarves, and other races became estranged and fell away from each other. Fortunately, the halfling came and saved the day. In the same way, even if we achieve final victory in our lifetime, we cannot let down our guard against the rise of greed and selfish materialism which only cares about the bottom line and the accumulation of wealth for one’s self.