Synopsis:
- America’s democracy is very much on life support.
- We face innumerable problems which must be addressed.
- The most immediate and important problem confronting America and the Biden Administration is to ensure that America continues as a democracy beyond 2024.
- For this to happen, all Americans and activist organizations must subjugate their personal and organization’s priorities to that primary goal.
- America’s press must clearly and repeatedly explain to the American public the ramifications of the issues at hand.
There are in numerable problems facing America, each of which must be solved expeditiously. Nevertheless, President Biden’s most important political priority must be to ensure that America does not devolve into a Trump controlled Russian style autocracy. Unfortunately, January 6, 2021 and the subsequent behavior of the vast majority of Republican Senators, Representatives and Republican voters have demonstrated that America’s democracy is very much on life-support.
How America Became Less Great
The Reagan Administration convinced Americans that her problems were the result of an incompetent Government and the private sector would solve these problems if the Government simply stopped interfering. Thus Reagan initiated a decades long process of Federal deregulation of the private sector, tax cuts for upper income Americans and he convinced America that “less government” should be our political mantra. The latter has largely remained the guiding principle of our political system through the Trump Administration. By design, Reagan and the Republican Party have since handcuffed the Federal Government’s ability to implement solutions that might solve our problems while sowing the seeds for an inequitable America.
The Consequences of “Less Government”
America now faces a plethora of issues which can not be solved without the intervention of the Federal Government, including:
- Irrational restrictions on the right of all Americans to vote.
- An inability of many Americans to earn a living wage despite a full day’s work, many of whom cannot afford an essential, unexpected $400 expense.
- A global climate crisis which will be more disruptive than a global war.
- Institutionalized racism which is baked into America’s judicial, policing and political systems and is the mantra of America’s largest television network.
- Irrational gun control legislation which has resulted in mass shootings on a near daily basis.
- The creation of 644 American billionaires who have a disproportionate influence over America’s destiny.
- An inequitable tax structure in which large corporations pay less taxes than middle class Americans.
- The loss of upward social mobility and the American Dream for many Americans.
- A higher educational system which is unaffordable for middle class Americans.
- A generation of Americans who have been saddled with an insurmountable educational debt.
- An immigration system which has failed to meet the needs of America.
- A crumbling infrastructure which lags behind most first-world countries.
- A healthcare system which is inefficient and overly expensive.
- An unregulated Internet which facilitates the distribution of conspiracy theories and propaganda and has crippled our political institutions.
This accumulation of deficiencies has rationally caused many Americans to have a very bleak view of their family’s future and America’s destiny. It has thus led many of them to caste aside America’s ever-evolving representative democracy and choose to throw their support behind a wannabe dictator who has openly sided with Vladimir Putin over America’s intelligence agencies.
How to Really Make America Great Again
As Trump has the ability to define “reality” for nearly half of America, using Fox News and the Internet as a 24/7/365 echo chamber, it will not be possible to use fact-based arguments to dissuade these Americans from continuing to support Trump as he marches them into the pit of a Russian style autocracy.
The only way to prevent the demise of America’s nearly 2.5 century experiment in representative democracy is for Biden to engender the loyalty of the remaining 50% of Americans and maybe peel-off a few Trump supporters, by giving them objective, irrefutable and tangible benefits provided by the Federal Government and repeatedly reminding them that the Federal Government was the inspiration and source for these benefits, whatever the cost. Clearly, that is the Biden Administration’s plan and the nightmare scenario for the Trump-Republican Party.
Toward this end, there are many problems Biden MUST solve expeditiously but no single issue is more important than the need to re-establish America’s faith in our Federal Government’s ability to redress America’s problems. This would cause many Americans to recognize that our representative democracy works and is likely to ensure the preservation of America’s democracy for future generation of Americans.
Of course this will require that all the people and organizations who have worked tirelessly to rectify serious problems which have made America less great will have to acknowledge that their personal political priority must be subordinated to the larger objective, which is the preservation of democracy in America. These entities must understand that democracy loving Americans are now in a war with authoritarian American forces over America’s political destiny; winning one battle, no matter how important, is of little significance if we loose the war. Because should we loose the war, all the aforementioned problems will never be addressed.
The Failure of America’s Press
Unfortunately, many political analysts have restricted their comments about the political factions who are attempting to influence the Biden administration to the relative strengths and redline positions of these entities and whether they will undermine the Biden agenda if their “demands” are not met.
These political analysts have been negligent in their professional responsibility to clearly explain to the American public, and to these political interest groups, that if Biden fails to convince a sufficient number of Americans that their lives have improved as a result of the Federal Government’s actions, then there is a high probability that a Trump controlled Russian style autocracy will takeover America’s government in 2024 and none of these problems will ever be solved and the press will forever be silenced.
And that will be the end of American democracy as we have known it for ~2.5 centuries.
During Ezra Klein’s 4/9/21 interview of Brian Deese, Biden’s director of the National Economic Council, Deese made it very clear that the Biden Administration acutely understands the stakes at hand.
I wish our political analysts would help America and the various political interest groups, understand that the singular most important political priority of the Biden Administration must be to ensure that we pass-on a democracy to the next generation of Americans and this will only happen if Biden can demonstrate to America that America works best when Americans work together, even if that means that not every American problem will be immediately rectified.
Hayward Zwerling
4/17/2021