Why are Dems so distrusting of the GOP? “The Republican Party is fighting for a freer and stronger America where everyone has the opportunity to achieve the American Dream.” The Party also reminds us that to achieve this Dream, “Our Constitution should be preserved, valued and honored.” It is the Preamble itself – the legislative intent of our glorious Iroquois inspired Constitution – that guides; promoting the general Welfare is government’s obligation. I’m sure Democrats mean well, but their promotions fall victim to human kind’s most significant cognitive bias: optimism. The GOP operates understanding that the future is not simply going to work out somehow because of good intentions.
Enter: the GOP Tax Bill which passed in the Senate to the outrage of many, but Dems, you need a little perspective, a little sugar to help the medicine go down more readily. The price of civilization is economic inequality. According to Stanford Professor Walter Scheidel, history’s only reduction in this inequality – since the Stone Age – is widespread violence. “Something truly innovative and original may have to happen in order to create lasting change,” Scheidel warns, as only massive casualties like those resulting from war, plague, and civil unrest have ever better balanced the scales.
But who are we kidding? Since the Stone Age humans haven’t walked a different path. Dems imagine true, original innovations as if The People are simply going to step in line. They are not. Freedom of choice means human kind – certainly Americans – preferring free-markets in which they can purchase a lot of entertaining stuff they don’t actually need. The price tag may include slave labor, exhaustion of valuable resources, pollution, and discrimination, but the newest new thing is a joy for as long as “Whew! It’s getting hot!” aren’t the last words out of your mouth.
Since 1970 when President Richard Nixon first vigorously advocated policy to protect the environment, what have The People done? Let the 2016 window close on avoiding catastrophic climate change. We literally cannot keep living if Earth can no longer sustain us, but we venture toward becoming the new Venus day by day, mainlining products that guarantee no future. From leaking oil pipelines to acidification of ocean waters, even if the problem is just that people are terrible at math and can’t figure how it all adds up, Dems have not embraced the truth that human beings are simply not capable of so. very. much.
The easy problem of light pollution? Unsolved. Hunger? Grocery stores could easily give unsold food to the needy; distribution in general could be better coordinated, crops only grown in hospitable terra to curb further waste of resources, especially water. Universal health care? Such a system would streamline access for veterans who frequently wait more than a month for appointments at the VA; the workers’ compensation system would also lose bureaucratic steam and improve care if treatment were simply a component of universal access. Do we have it? No.
Universal basic income? Increasing automation of jobs requires introducing subsistence provisions. But we know Americans will not agree to it. Hand outs? How dare anyone get anything for simple adherence to a social contract that exchanges survival of the violent fittest for coordinated civility.
… and as if voter suppression is not still a guiding principle here. Administrations in Washington are supported by an Electoral College that was intentionally and blatantly designed to gird slavery, a way to get free labor as well as White supremacist states an increased proportion of votes while disenfranchising Black people. Neither side of the aisle clamors for replacement by popular vote.
Dems are so upset about the GOP Tax Bill because they aren’t looking at the big picture. As countries face ever increasing water shortages coupled with rising temperatures, mass migrations are inevitable, and borders will have to open or there will be war, probably nuclear. Which brings us back to the beginning. Poor medical care, lack of basic human rights, starvation, dehydration, climate catastrophe … these will all lead to massive human casualties which will as consequence usher in income equality. There is nothing new since the Stone Age to suggest a more optimistic path.
The GOP is realistic. They know that violence works and has been working to obtain and maintain power for millennia, whether it come from a pen or a sword. English is spoken far beyond its tiny origins. A minority population (males) marginalizes a majority (females). Where would we be – and what language would we be speaking – without violence? Expand national parks? Gun control? Why? That would interfere with the genocide. True, another way is imaginable, but it is impossible. People can’t do it. Dems are the only folks who think we can.