I have reshared the original on Facebook. What I want to do here is reshare, without change, the heart of what I wrote then. Especially as we watch the current administration deliberately dismantle not just the legacy of its predecessor, but much of the improvement made to our society over recent decades, as we confront the very real possibility of someone clearly identifiable as a sexual predator and a child molestor getting elected to the US Senate, as we consider the implications going forward of distorting the federal judiciary by packing it with idealogues, of selling off public facilities for private profit, of further distorting the tax system to shift wealth to the already wealthy, and so much more, I thought the words offered below the break might, even if somewhat dated, be relevant to at least a few people.
And from my perspective, while I could see it happening more than half a decade ago, it gives me little satisfaction that we as a society have failed to do what we already should have done.
Education. Health Care. Jobs. Profits. Security. Military Action.
I have heard many times that the best way to judge what is important in a man's life is to examine his checkbook when he dies - on what did he spend his money? Perhaps that is too simplistic: after all, many of us spend most of what we do on things that are pretty basic, like food, clothing, shelter, and transportation. Oh yes, and on education, which is increasingly priced beyond the means of many. And on health care that somehow does not seem to get covered by the expensive insurance some of us are able to get, usually through our employment.
Certainly the priorities of a nation can be seen in its spending priorities. Our spending priorities display a callous disregard for the wellbeing of far too many Americans.
We are unwilling to provide basic sustenance for those who cannot find jobs. How do you find a job in a community with U3 unemployment is a third of the adults?
We are willing to let some make obscene amounts of money without having to pay a fair share of the costs of the society and economy that allow them to so profit, while pushing ever increasingly unfair costs of society upon those who can least afford them.
We privatize the commons - criminal justice, in for-profit prisons and private security and even military services; education; health care; public sanitation; soon it will be even the very water we need to survive. We have resorted to private toll roads, with the Governor of Indiana, Mitch Daniels, who sold that state's toll road considered by some a credible candidate for the Republican nomination for President.
We have a Supreme Court willing to read the Constitution in a way that would have shocked Madison and most of those who sat in Philadelphia during that hot summer of 1787. They seem to have forgotten that the likes of George Mason were unwilling to support the original document because it lacked sufficient protection for the people against their government. The justices see nothing wrong with giving corporations all the protections intended for natural persons while protecting them from the social responsibilities of natural persons - a corporation cannot vote, cannot be sent to jail, cannot be made to do national service in the military, and is allowed tax breaks denied to ordinary natural persons.
The issue of the moral decay of the nation is not that same sex couples wish to get married, any more than it was when people of different colors (because we are all the same race, homo sapiens sapiens,) wanted to get married - something that has enriched our society with the likes of my wife's niece, half-Native American, my great nieces, half-African American, many of my students (here I think of one young lady whose father is Dutch and her mother is from India, but I could think of just about every possible combination of what we might consider different colors), or even our President, who like my great-nieces is of parents of two different colors. Of course, we know that is part of what infuriates some of the dimmer bulbs in our society, but why should their protests be able to outshout the rest of us?
There is an issue of moral decay. Or if you will, of skewed moral priorities.
We spend more to incarcerate young African American males than we do to educate them.
We spend more to kill people overseas than we do to rebuild our decaying national infrastructure.
We have effective tax rates that are higher on people whose only source of income is low wages than on those who already have great wealth.
We are willing to give unfunded tax cuts to those who already have too much and not willing to extend unemployment for those who have no jobs for which they can be hired.
We complain that our children are not being properly educated, then diminish the education of many by reducing it to narrow instruction for the purpose of passing tests sold by for-profit companies, such impositions often imposed buy those unwilling to subject themselves or their own progeny to the same conditions.
I will not say we are immoral as a society. Too many individuals do have a deep personal moral compass. The American people, if we do not unnecessarily scare them, are caring and generous.
Which is why we scare them - with lies and distortions about threats domestic and foreign.
Which is why we do not allow them to learn our real history.
Which is why it is important for the powerful to demean and destroy those institutions which could provide a balance to their power - the unions, the public schools, public services.
Too many in positions of power and influence are not held to moral accountability, be they abusers in the White House, the military and CIA, religious bodies, or business.
The "rules" do not seem to apply to some. We hear that they have "suffered enough" or "might not be able to get a job" if they are the likes of hedge fund managers who are allowed to plead to a misdemeanor when they should be convicted of felony hit and run, or they served as chief of staff to a Vice President who is a war criminal. We are told not to look back, which only emboldens similar wrong doing in the future.
Tomorrow we are supposed to give thanks. For what, I wonder? Do we know the history of the first real Thanksgiving Day, for the slaughter of the natives of New England? Somehow that is not part of the mythology of Squanto and the Pilgrims, is it?
Should we be thankful that our national unemployment rate is officially ONLY around 9.7%? Are our dreams and aspirations supposed to be limited by a sense of how lucky we are, how much worse it can be? Does not that merely affirm the destructive path we are on as a society?
I do not know.
I have today and four (in 2017 2) more before I return to my classroom.
I will be doing some thinking. I have some writing to which I am committed. I do not know that anything I can do will make a difference.
My words may be as ineffective as if I were spitting into a gale-force wind.
My actions by themselves seem to have no impact.
Neither does the falling of single drop of water onto a rock have any visible impact.
But there are millions upon millions of Americans.
There are multiple billions of people in the world.
If we do not give up hope, we can be many drops of water, perhaps even a stream capable of carving great canyons into the petrified souls that now dominate our national discourse.
What are our moral priorities?
How can we prevent further moral deterioration of the society and nation in which we live?
What kind of people are we?
I wonder.