Boldly Going Backward

Thirty-odd years ago, America was in a hell of a fix. We had oil and gas prices through the roof. Monopolies were running all of the major industries, driving competition (and with it competitive pricing and servicing) through the ground. We were in an economic pickle that was driving many American families to desperation. Our environment was threatened by corporations freed from any type of government oversight.

Now, on the other hand, we have oil and gas prices through the roof, monopolies are running all of the major industries, we’re in an economic pickle and our environment is threatened.

I gotta tell you, folks… corporatism happened, and the one thing about the classic republican platform that I’ve NEVER liked is their ties to Corporate America. Of course, since Reagan, corporatism has gone from being a plank in the republican platform to being about 50% of the platform (God Hates Fags is roughly the other 50%).

You young whipper-snapper republicans who didn’t know Nixon or Ford or Ike don’t have any idea how great the republican party can be. (Yes, I said Nixon, don’t lynch me – the guy did some terrific stuff as president. It doesn’t excuse what he did, but let’s give him his due, okay?)

President Eisenhower saw a growing threat in our country, and that old soldier gave it a name: “The Military-Industrial Complex”. The idea was that when we became financially dependent on war, we would be looking for reasons to make war. Kennedy and Johnson came along next and fried different fish from the growing concern of the MIC. One of those fish was Viet Nam, which some say President Johnson escalated to help boost America’s flagging economy – exactly the kind of thing that President Eisenhower warned about.

Then came Nixon. Ah, yes, Nixon. President Nixon will go down in history, I believe, as our most complex and layered president. The man was a devout Quaker who swore like a sailor. He was able to resist so many of the demons that politicians fall victim to – sex, money, drugs – but was ultimately laid low by his own paranoia. Out of concern for America’s safety, he opened new lines of communication to China – which has ultimately led to the outsourcing of so many American jobs to China, and become a threat to America’s safety.

Nixon also came into a country run by the corporations that Ike warned us about. So he set about instituting reasonable regulations on these corporate entities to stop them from polluting our air, water and land. He created the Environmental Protection Agency. He took steps to make endangerment of American jobs more difficult to help with the tough financial times that we were still in, despite the war in Vietnam. Oh, he also ended THAT mess. He was the first president to carry forty-nine of fifty states in his re-election bid – a feat that has only been duplicated once, by Ronald Reagan in 1984. Then he promptly fell into the Watergate mess and beat impeachment by resigning.

A side-note here… a lot of republicans my age (mid-forties and later) who had role models like Ike, Nixon and Barry Goldwater feel abandoned by the modern republican party. You’ll see why when I get to the eighties, nineties and new millennium.

He was followed by his second-term vice president, Gerald Ford. Ford, for all of the malignancy aimed at his presidency, actually continued the positive policies of Nixon.

Then came Carter, who faced some of the toughest challenges of any modern president. An Arab oil embargo. A radical change of thought in the middle-east that led to the overthrow of the American-installed Shah of Iran and a return to Muslim fundamentalism across the middle east and the taking of 52 American diplomats as hostages in Iran. But domestically, he instituted higher taxes on gas-guzzling “luxury” vehicles, emissions and gas mileage standards for cars on America’s roads, and continued the good work of breaking up the monopolies that were running and ruining America’s economy. Probably the largest and most famous of these was the disintegration of American Telephone and Telegraph, AKA “the telephone company”, AKA Ma Bell.

Unfortunately, the international turmoil overshadowed Carter’s domestic policy, and by the time that he ran for re-election in 1980, Americans were feeling tired, dispirited and beaten.

Along came a man who we felt could change things. He was a strong, persuasive, charismatic former actor who charmed an entire nation: Ronald Reagan. In 1980, Reagan won 44 states for a huge landslide victory. And thus were the seeds of our current economic ruin planted.

It is said that no one-term president ever sees the repercussions of his policies. So as the policies of Jimmy Carter took root and blossomed in Regan’s first term, things started looking rosy for America again. Since we don’t realize that we weren’t seeing the results of Regan’s poisonous policies yet, we credited him for the success. We loved Ronald Reagan, and re-elected him with 49 states in 1984.

So the “Reagan Revolution” took a look around at an improving economy and environment and said “Look, everything’s fine. We have nothing to worry about. So let’s start doing things the way that we were before.” Perhaps the best indicator of this attitude was Reagan’s removal of the solar panels that Carter had installed on the White House roof to heat the water used by the president’s residence. (George W. Bush has since reinstalled them.)

What followed, under Reagan, President Bush, Bill Clinton and Mr. Bush has been twenty-eight years of deregulation. In this day and age, corporations are again allowed to run rampant over America, poisoning our soil, air and water and driving far too many of America’s jobs overseas. And so we are back where we started in the seventies. It’s almost as if Nixon, Ford and Carter never existed. We are having the same debates about outsourcing American jobs and protecting America’s environment (and, by extension, the world’s environment) that we had then.

How can we fix this? Well, knowing our history would certainly help.

Simple THOUGHT would also help. If, for instance, a major American corporation came before the American people and said “I’d like to make more money by ignoring America’s minimum wage, child labor and fair labor laws, is that cool?” Would we allow them to? Hell no. And yet that is exactly what we allow corporations who operate overseas, outside of American jurisdiction to do. Is enslaving Chinese kids for a dollar an hour, twelve hours per day any less evil than doing that to American kids?

I think that the answer, if you have a conscience or follow the Christian God has to be “no”.

So here we are again. Back where we were. Facing yet another presidential election.

One candidate is young, relatively untried but with great ideas and vision for America. The other is older, has been a part of the political machine for my entire adult life, and is saying “We need change, so re-elect the party that you’re trying to get away from.”

And, for any of you who think that three years in the Senate makes Obama too inexperienced to be president, I remind you that a man known as one of our better Presidents, John F. Kennedy, was only in the senate for eight years before he was elected president. And Abe Lincoln was only in the senate for two years, eleven years before he was elected president.

Guys, can we NOT vote this time for the guy with whom we’d like to have a beer, and instead, vote for the guy that we think can REALLY fix our problems?

Peace.

Randal