It’s me, It’s you
Together as one…
Waaaayy back in Ronald Reagan’s day, he (or one of his speech writers) coined a phrase, which he pushed to the American people as the nine most frightening words you can hear.
“I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”
Now, for a while now, I’ve pushed the idea that our country was founded by Rich White Men (RWM) whose goal was to steal the American colonies from Britain with the idea of gaining control of them and thus the financial rewards that, before the Revolution, were going to Britain. They didn’t want just part of the pie, they wanted it all.
To do that, they needed the cooperation of enough of the American colonists to manage that Revolution. Well, they did, of course. manage that, as we all learned in history, though we didn’t exactly get it taught to us that particular way. (Eyeroll.)
Of course, they needed something to excite their “base”, and telling everyone the truth would not have impressed many of their fellow colonists, now would it? So they did it differently. They started talking about something old, yet something new — democracy. And it worked.
And we “won.” The result of that was one of the biggest lies the RWM told us all, that “all men are created equal.”
They didn’t mean ALL men, because of course we all know they meant white ones, and yes, they were serious about that gender thing, and we also know they meant “rich” white men, because of that whole “gotta own property to vote” thing. But, the propaganda worked, and we ended up with a constitution to base our government on.
Now, for the purposes of this article, I’m gonna pass over the entire RWM thing for now, because that’s not my focus here. I just wanted you to understand it and go back to read some of my earlier work. So, let’s assume that propaganda was actually true, because in the longer run, the American people actually made it work (certainly to the chagrin of those RWM), so let’s get to the real point.
Reagan and his nine scary words thing is further propaganda from the modern versions of the RWM. Because they were, even back then, preparing the country for the whole Authoritarianism thing we’re facing today.
Yes, they were planning this that far back!
So for at least fifty years now, the right wing has been teaching their minions to fear the government. Which is, if you’ve followed American history, hilarious.
And also frightening.
Why?
Because they’ve been taught to fear…themselves. So, now go back up and read the words in that nice picture I posted. The Preamble to the Constitution. Go ahead, I’m not going anywhere, so I’ll wait right here.
Ok, got it? What are the very first three words (since we’re counting words)?
We. The. People.
Now, skip over all the hoopla in-between to that word “do” just before the word “ordain.” Finish the sentence.
“…and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
Minus the reasons for doing it, what does that sentence mean? It isn’t that complex.
It means, in clear language, that the Authority for the establishment of the country we know today as The United States of America is based on the will of The People of the United States.
That’s you and me. It’s our neighbors, our families, friends, coworkers, and every other citizen of this country. It’s our authority. Yours and mine, together.
The right wing is trying to teach you that you should be afraid of…yourself?
Regardless of the RWM at the beginning in 1789 attempting to gain control for their own financial benefits, they managed to establish a country based on democracy. As a People, we managed in the ensuing two hundred years to overturn their initial attempts to control this thing we’ve got and give more control (through voting) to minorities and women. So, you “other” folks, welcome to the Party!
You see, regardless of their selfish attempt to gain financial control, what they did manage to do is to establish something else — the idea that The People are giving the authority to a government for the purposes of, among other things, “providing for the general welfare.” Not a deity. Not royalty, not nobility. The People. All us common folk.
Obviously, we’ve managed to expand the meaning of those five words quite a bit, and frankly, us Progressives have grabbed onto that and are getting ready for some major changes.
You see, one of the things that falls under “traditional American values” which come out of our long history of stealing this continent is the idea of taking care of one another. Helping those in need, as it were. The sick, the injured, the old. Those who needed help were assisted by their neighbors.
Worked great in those much heralded pioneer days, but then, the population exploded, and a lot of folks headed west, and that got a lot more complicated. So, today, those much heralded values have gotten dropped off to the wayside somewhere. (…and I ain’t talking about the Wayside Inn in Virginia, folks!)
I read things on a site called Quora.com, which is a question/answer themed site. People ask questions, and others answer them, often in the form of stories or personal antidotes. A question I saw yesterday caught my eye.
What is the government’s reasoning for being involved in personal decisions regarding one’s body?
Of course, it’s a loaded question, as many of them are, but it got me thinking about this whole “why does the government exist” thing. The answer, to me, isn’t that complex.
Understanding that whole “general welfare” thing, look at it this way.
As with the abortion controversy, and the donating bodily organs thing, our laws pretty closely (till Dobbs) aligned with the idea that our bodies are ours, and nobody has a right to tell us what to do with our own bodies. And I (along with other Progressives) fully agree with that point.
But you’ll notice, there are exceptions.
Like, with say, drugs. Yes, we give the government the power to make selling and using certain drugs illegal. Alcohol, for instance, is illegal for underage kids.
Why? If one has autonomy over your own body, why can the government tell me I can’t use it? I believe that reason is a bit more complex, but it works.
They can because of that pesky “general welfare” clause.
Because taking certain drugs and/or substances can cause aberrant behavior, which does not necessarily only affect the user. Lump those behaviors together, and the social problems they cause are major issues in a community, both immediate (as with drunk driving), and longer term (bad health and eventual death as with drugs.)
As citizens of this country, we determined through our representatives that these things are badly affecting our General Welfare and needed to be controlled.
In a similar way, Progressives believe that other issues should use the government’s powers to benefit all of us. Why?
Go back to that old American value of taking care of our unfortunate neighbors. Yes, it used to be simple. A few folks got together, and we helped folks out. A few casseroles, making sure sick neighbors got a doctor’s help, etc. But today, when the numbers are, nationally, in the millions, that private assistance/donation thing gets overloaded. Sure, we still do that, and yes, churches get into the act, but still, the numbers are daunting.
This time of year, you see tons of advertising for food banks, senior centers, etc., asking for donations to help out the less fortunate of us. Private donations help, but they fall far short of the help truly needed.
Plus, none of this gets to the root of those issues. Yeah, food banks are great. But they cannot help those who have no job, which is why they need food! Churches do great with a lot of their assistance, but again, they cannot get to the root of the issues that cause people to need that help in the first place.
That’s because a lot of those issues are caused by things that only a government can fix. Businesses that pay too low wages, for example. As a society of diverse people, we cannot force companies to pay better wages.
But governments can, and since we control ours, if we desire that outcome, we can use our authority our Constitution gives our government to fix those kinds of issues.
European countries use something called socialism to do that all the time. Just like the US in the past hundred years slowly consolidated our fire fighting systems under local ownership and control, and also did that for law enforcement, the things that used to be privately controlled and billed are now funded and controlled by We, The People.
We pool our resources into our taxes and make the government responsible for using those funds to fight fires and crime.
We can do that for health care. We can do that for child care. We can do that for education — and in fact, we do that now for grades kindergarten to 12th grade!
Why not professional schooling for the trades? Or colleges? Most states have state funded colleges. European countries offer classes at theirs (both college and trades) for free. So could we. It’s more efficient to have central control throughout the 50 States, and the costs are lower, too, with fewer control systems.
A very common, and very wrongheaded, accusation towards “Socialism” is that it failed with both the USSR and China. (That is, when they’re not busy conflating socialism with “Communism.”) It’s wrong because both countries were/are controlled by dictatorships, and any economic system is going to fail under dictatorships, because those have selfish people in control who hog all the resources to themselves and maybe their minions. “The People” never really count. Those systems are ruined by Authoritarianism.
Europe has numerous countries today using various forms and amounts of Socialist ideas and systems with excellent success to the benefit of their citizens. I married a German girl 47 years ago, and our first daughter was born in a German hospital. They spent several weeks there because of an infection my wife contracted, yet the stay cost us nothing. Not a single German pfennig - and that was 47 years ago. Yes, her taxes were high compared to mine (I was a GI), but she still managed to bring in more cash than I did. And look at what it saved us. All of those countries control their economies using democracy. That’s why they’re successful.
My youngest grandson is five. His parents are still paying off the cost of his birth! And they had insurance. Now think about all the folks who have no insurance.
This is my entire point.
Millions of Americans have no health insurance at all. The social consequences of that lack are immense. Lost work time, lost wages. Early deaths, which decimate families, and cause employers to lose good workers. That translates to fewer taxes, and also to more families with poor incomes going onto welfare.
Much of which leads to higher rates of crime.
Republicans want to point to the individual families or the individuals involved for those negative outcomes, and especially, the crime. They like their companies paying fewer taxes and making more profit.
What they don’t think through is how those bad outcomes increase social costs (and often local taxes) and thus, higher costs. Costs like security, to fight that crime. The costs of training new employees to replace the dead ones. They don’t see that something like Medicare for All would eliminate the need for them to have entire departments devoted to sending paperwork to insurance companies, or the company’s portion of the premiums, thus tremendously reducing costs!
When those kinds of costs get spread around 360 million people through taxes, the increases are a lot less noticeable than the cost of insurance.
The healthier the population is, the more people can work and pay taxes, further reducing the impact. The more active the economy, the more money circulates, and the higher profits can be. The more people who don’t need to pay for higher educations, the more people available to work. The more people working, the fewer feel the need to fill endless time with drugs, and the fewer people commit crimes. And the more people who can afford to buy luxuries, nevermind the necessities. And the higher the demand, so the higher the need for workers.
Really, this is simple economics, and it truly isn’t that hard to see your way through these things.
But right now, there is a growing and desperate need for us to make these things clear to more Americans. To help our fellow Americans understand that the government is nothing to fear, because the government IS US.
And if We, The People, use the Authority We give The Government, we can fix all this crap.
It ain’t that complicated, people. This is high school civics.
