Pining For Normalcy

All right, I understand the hand wringing and the pants wetting. I know that Donald Trump is the greatest threat to this nation's security and democracy since the attack on Pearl Harbor. And I know that Trump is being aided and abetted in his attacks on the rule of law, on our form of government, on the climate, and on our elections by a political party that has become so corrupt and self serving that it is willing to forsake the very principles on which this country was founded in order to further its own selfish interests. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that our situation is grave and that the panic of so many pundits is not without cause. I hear their wails and their cries: We desperately need to throw Trump out of office and to discard the soggy diapers covering his ass and hauling his water -- Moscow Mitch, et al must go! I hear the fear in the voices of pundits such as Cris Matthews and James Carville as the say we cannot do that by nominating a socialist to run against Trump. I hear them when they say that what they want and what they believe the people want is a “return to normalcy.”

While I agree that people want to reestablish a basic decency and patriotism to our society and our government, I have to say that the panicked pundits are missing something that is very important. “Normalcy,” is a word popularized by Warren G. Harding, and “normalcy” as it was defined then and now has failed. The American standard of living is on the decline and people are in pain! Sadly, too many people have responded to this by blindly embracing the demagoguery and destructive impulses of a tyrant who is lashing out at minorities and tearing our government apart at the very time that many of the services and protections our government provides are most needed. In other words the Presidency of Donald Trump is a product of the economic and social angst caused by our failure to adjust to a changing world. One only has to look at the almost fanatical followers of Bernie Sanders to realize that his rise is also attributable to this angst. Not since the great depression has their been a time when this country was so in need of wide ranging systemic changes. Bernie Sanders, Andrew Yang, and Elizabeth Warren realize this. The so called moderates fall way short of what is needed. Therein lies the problem. If it takes a moderate to defeat Donald Trump and the party of corruption the needed changes will not be made, and we will find ourselves with another perhaps even a worse despot than Trump!

This leaves us with a difficult choice. Bernie is jumping out to a strong lead, and I am concerned about reaction to Bernie calling himself a Democratic Socialist. Change is scary, and after one hundred and some years of trying the plutocrats and their Republican lackeys have succeeded in vilifying socialism. A perfect example of how successful the Republicans and plutocrats have been in making socialism and socialist loaded terms can be seen in Bloomberg's comments about Bernie calling himself a Democratic Socialist:

"We're not going to throw out capitalism. We tried that. Other countries tried that," Bloomberg told Sanders. "It was called communism, and it just didn't work."

Talk about a throw back to the cold war. I guess some civics teacher forgot to tell Bloomberg that communism and socialism, particularly Democratic Socialism, are not synonymous. Socialists are not monolithic. Communism is the most extreme form of socialism and has always been widely opposed by most other socialists. Americans who are democratic socialists do not want to nationalize industries. They want instead to regulate industries in order to protect and encourage competition and workers, and they want government health care, education, and safety nets, much in the tradition of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. The challenge for the Democratic Party if Bernie is nominated is to get people to look at Bernie's policies rather than the socialist label. It is easier to get young people to do this. Young people are not as afraid of change because so many of the things they are experiencing are still still new them. They did not go through the cold war and were not subjected to decades of disinformation about socialism and socialists, and they know that what we now have is no longer working for the majority of the men and women of this country.

The challenge of getting an older generation to set aside their fears and actually look at what Bernie is proposing is not an easy one, but that does not mean that Bernie cannot win. As some of the pundits have opined, it will take a movement, perhaps a revolution to defeat Trump and address the malaise that now afflicts us. This is no time for a nap! I will support anyone the Democratic Party nominates, but our candidate must not be the not Trump candidate or, even worse, the not Bernie candidate. Our candidate, whether it is Bernie or someone else, must be aspirational and inspirational if we want to succeed! We, as a nation, need to believe and achieve! We need to act boldly to build an economy and a future worthy of the great republic that became a symbol of hope, freedom, and prosperity.