Politics Plus

Soon after the COVID-19 pandemic got under full swing, and we reluctantly went into lockdown in hopes of curtailing the spread of coronavirus, we started hailing first responders and front-line essential workers as “heroes.” We applauded them from our high-rise balconies, we put up signs that say “Heroes Work Here!”, we sent pizza and flowers and masks. We share memes that show people on the front lines of the pandemic as superheroes. We do this because we want those workers to feel appreciated.

Genuine gratitude is always in fashion, and always will be – especially when expressed not just to make ourselves feel good, but because we are truly thankful for the kindness and hard work of others. However, there is a better way to demonstrate appreciation: Pay these people decent wages. In other words, the CEOs of all those companies and hospitals need to put their money where their mouths are.

Appreciation is nice, but applause and thank-yous don’t pay the bills or cover the rent. They don’t ease the pain of long, hard days or the fear of catching a potentially fatal disease that has catastrophic after-effects of so far undetermined length and intensity. They don’t provide overworked people with protection from fears of getting behind on bills or being evicted if they get sick and have to take time off.

A lot of workers in the United States are overworked and underpaid, not just in health care and other essential services. These people put there bottoms on the line every day for us all, including whiny mask-burners and misinformed COVID deniers who make the spread of the virus a lot easier – and the jobs of healthcare providers a lot harder. I have read a couple stories about front-line healthcare workers dying by their own hands during the pandemic, or just plain collapsing and giving up. Essential workers may be tough, but even the toughest can take only so much.

Our essential workers deserve more than symbolic gestures. They need to be able to keep up with all of their bills, feed themselves and their families, and save up for the future. Society owes them at least that much.

How many heart-wrenching mass shootings have there been in the United States over the past few decades? How many times has the public risen up and screamed for a sensible gun policy? How many times have we marched, filling the streets for blocks? How many petitions have we signed demanding that our government representatives heed the will of the people instead of cravenly kowtowing to the gun lobby? How many times have we come close to getting Congress’s ear, only to have our voices drowned out by the jingle-jingle of the filthy lucre from the powerful, vicious NRA?

Enough is enough! We The People are sick of gun violence. We are sick of our cowardly Representatives and Senators catering to gun manufacturers and their astroturf gun lobbies. We are sick of turning on the news only to learn of another bloodbath. We are sick of living in fear that our children may not come home from school, or that we may not be safe in our work places, our churches, our venues of entertainment. We are sick of going through the cycle of mass shooting, public outcry, sensible gun bills, opposition by the well-heeled firearms lobby, Congress refusing to act, and then waiting for the next slaughter.

After the mass shooting at the Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, thousands of students across the country staged walkouts and the March For Our Lives. Survivors of the Douglas High slaughter formed the Never Again MSD PAC. How did conservatives react? With baloney about paid “crisis actors” and the same old tired pro-gun propaganda. This incident should have turned the tide on the gun control debate. Indeed, numerous incidents should have been that watershed. Yet here we are mourning yet more senseless massacres, while yellow-bellied politicians belch their insincere codswallop about “thoughts and prayers.” They can take their empty thoughts and prayers and shove them where the sun shineth not.

This past year we had two horrific mass shootings in March, one in Atlanta that took 8 lives and shortly after that one in Boulder one that took 10. The FedEx shooting in Indianapolis in April claimed 9 more. A shooting in San Jose during May left 10 more dead. And those are just a few of the mass shootings that took place in the “great” US of A.

Gun nuts pound on the 2nd Amendment to our Constitution, forgetting two important things. First, they pay attention to only the second clause, conveniently forgetting the first one about a “well-regulated militia.” Originally, the Founding Fathers didn’t want a standing army; they wanted a citizen’s militia that could be ready at any moment to take up arms against this nation’s foes. Second, in the late 18th century most guns were muskets, with a firing rate of once per minute, maybe twice if one was exceptionally quick (and lucky). Science fiction was not a thing back then, so they could never have anticipated repeat-action rifles, let alone assault rifles and machine guns.

The firearms manufacturers’ stooges love to spew such bromides as “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” Sure, guns don’t act on their own – but when they are easily available, they make it a lot easier for bugnuts to take more lives. Can you imagine the Virginia Tech shooter going after students and teachers with a butcher knife? Can you imagine the Las Vegas shooter firing arrows into the crowd? Can you imagine the Pulse Nightclub killer going after patrons with an axe?

Excuses about violent video games, TV and movies don’t fly, either – nor about mental illness. Every country on this planet harbors people who have mental issues, and just about everybody has access to violent entertainment. Many of them have access to guns, albeit strictly limited. When was the last time you heard about some wacko causing a bloodbath in London, or Toronto, or Tokyo, or some country that has a sensible gun policy? Mass shootings do happen outside of the United States, but they are rare; and at least other governments do something constructive when they happen. After the 1996 massacre, Australia banned private ownership of assault rifles. They haven’t had a mass shooting since. Nudge-nudge-wink-wink!

There is nothing wrong with owning a gun for personal protection or sport. (If you object to hunting, that is another story, which will be told another time.) However, there is no reason why a regular citizen should own a military-grade weapon. As for the idea that a citizen’s militia could take on a modern army, don’t make me laugh! Can’t you just see a bunch of poorly-organized yahoos armed with AR-15s and shotguns going up against well-trained, well-organized soldiers who have not just assault rifles but also bazookas, grenade launchers, tanks, cannons, flame throwers, drones, etc. at their disposal – to say nothing of practice and maybe actual experience in urban warfare? A lot of them have probably watched Red Dawn a few times too many.

We The People are sick and tired of this! We are NOT going to be silenced, we are NOT going to be drowned out by the gun industry’s dark money, we are NOT going to be ignored anymore! We are going to fight, and keep fighting, until Congress listens to us and stands up to the gun industry’s goons. It is only a matter of time before the mighty oak of the NRA finally meets the windstorm that will topple it over.

Right-wingers bellow and scream constantly about the “evils” of socialism. They declare that they will do all they can to keep the U.S. from becoming socialist. Yet they benefit every single day from the “evils” of socialism.

So, all you righties, you don’t want socialism? Good. Let’s take away everything that can be regarded as socialist. No more public schools, public libraries, public transit, public parks, public works, municipal or county fire and police departments. Don’t like government intrusion? Good – no more workplace health and safety regulations. No more minimum wage, no more overtime pay. No more laws making sure that the water you drink is potable, or the food you eat is reasonably uncontaminated, or the drugs you take are reasonably pure. No more environmental statutes to keep harmful pollution out of the air you breathe.

You hear about socialism, and trot out Venezuela and the poop-show it has become – while conveniently ignoring countries where socialism works. No mention of Canada, or Norway, or France, or Sweden, or numerous other countries that practice the “evils” you fear. Not a peep about the fact that 500,000 to 600,000 U.S. residents declare bankruptcy every year due to medical bills, and certainly not that 75% of them had health insurance.

You say that the Left want everybody to get everything for free without contributing. Utter hogwash. They aren’t seeking free health care and college, just affordable health care and college. They’re calling for everybody to have the opportunity to work, and for everyone to be paid a living wage. The Left is not anti-business; they are for making sure that the working class – the very lifeblood of this country and its economy – can make ends meet. They are not about regulating everything to death, just passing reasonable regulations to keep our air and water and land clean and making sure that workers are paid fair wages so they can pay their bills and feed their families without government aid.

You tout the so-called virtues of deregulation. In reality, this is the hoary cliché of putting a fox in charge of the henhouse. Did you really think that Big Business would govern itself fairly? Corporations will do what is good for their bottom lines, and their rank-and-file workers and the environment and human rights be damned.

For a few years I supported the Libertarians. Then I realized they were really just GOP Lite. They parrot the line “Government is best when it governs least” without thinking about the consequences. Minimal government means minimal protection for working people from exploitation, minimal protection for the environment, minimal protection for civil and human rights. It means a return to the Gilded Age, when a handful of ultra-rich snobs control nearly all of the money and the 99+% struggle for scraps.

Time and again, the countries that top the list of the happiest nations are among the most socialist. Nor are those people getting all that stuff for free – they pay taxes, but the rich and big corporations pay their fair share. Also, those countries don’t have obscenely bloated military budgets, paying for weapons and systems of questionable value and reliability. People in properly socialist countries don’t worry about being bankrupted by medical bills, or saddled with ballooning student debt. Children get nutritious lunches in school for free. Parents get months of family leave. Meanwhile, the “great” United States forces women to return to work shortly after giving birth, refuses to raise the minimum wage a nickel, refuses to make daycare affordable so mothers can work, subsidies mega-corporations that are already profitable, gives the ultra-rich huge tax breaks and lets them invest in overseas tax havens, etc., etc., etc.

Too many people have been brainwashed into thinking that socialism is communism. Far from it. Communism is just socialism that has caught rabies, and it is undesirable. Democratic socialism, on the other hand, seeks to strike the right balance between the private and public sectors, maintaining individual freedom while protecting people and the environment. You can still have your own car and house and cow, but you share other commodities and services. Your taxes pay for someone else’s health care, and his or hers provide your children with schooling. Government is not best when it governs least – it is best when it governs where it should, and does not govern where it should not.

Besides, many of these minimum-government advocates are hypocrites. They want gub-mint out of everything except for our private parts. They howl about “cancel culture” while practicing the same. Many of them want to pervert the US of A into an autocracy, and furthermore, one in which only people of the “correct” color, gender, creed and sexual identity have power and rights. That is NOT a government “governing the least.”

The right is “I, me, mine” while the left is ‘we, us, ours.” Right-wingers emphasize individual rights and liberties while ignoring the fact that we all depend on each other. They harp on the myth of the rugged individual – which is the subject of a future essay. We cannot survive as a society, and not even as individuals, without the support of our fellow human beings.

Mahatma Gandhi said, “The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.” According to his observation, the United States of America measures up very poorly.

Who are the most vulnerable members of U.S. society? The people who have hit rock bottom – the homeless. A lot of you have seen clusters of tents and makeshift shelters where the homeless have set up encampments, often under bridges or overpasses. Many of them live out of their vehicles. Some have children, or pets, or both. Not all of them are junkies or winos, contrary to the beliefs of many people. Some just plain made bad decisions, such as investing too much in a doomed enterprise, or marrying the wrong person. Some had a run of rotten luck, some were bankrupted by mounting bills, some lost their homes to disaster, some foolishly frittered away their money, some got swindled out of their hard-earned savings. The homeless come in as many human flavors as those of us who have residences. People have on occasion gone from multi-millionaires to undomiciled vagrants, and not because they were stupid or got addicted to drugs or booze or gambling.

A long-time friend of mine wound up homeless even though he was intelligent and hard-working; fortunately, at the time I lived in a townhouse that had an extra bedroom and was able to provide him with a roof over his head for the last 2 1/2 years of his life. He was one of the lucky ones who had friends willing to look after him. Not everybody has such a safety net in case of a nosedive. Not everyone has friends or family who can provide a place to stay in case the worst happens.

The way this country treats the homeless is in many cases execrable. People steal what few possessions they have, slash their tents, offer them food and then toss it into a trash can. Homeless people are regularly persecuted, rounded up like criminals when they have done nothing wrong and harmed neither people nor property. Many cities have laws against vagrancy, which specifically target the defenseless. Spikes and rocks are placed where the homeless like to sleep, and park benches have armrests in the middle to prevent anybody from stretching out. Some ordinances allow people to keep only what possessions they can fit in a container the size of a large trash can. Some cities will give homeless people bus tickets to another city, along with a direct order to never return on pain of arrest.

Some cities have laws making it illegal to provide the homeless with food, clothes, or other necessities. Good Samaritans still defiantly set up soup kitchens, or roam neighborhoods to pass out socks and hygiene items. Never has the old saw that no good deed goes unpunished been more sadly true.

Churches should be places where the homeless can go for a decent meal and a safe place to sleep. Instead, many of them not only lock their doors, but also set up spikes and automatic water sprayers to deter rough sleeping on their property. Funny, I thought Jesus said that we should care of the unfortunate instead of treating them like vermin.

Whatever happened to compassion for those in need? Whatever happened to loving thy neighbor as thyself? Whatever happened to concern for one’s fellow human beings? How can we be so ice-cold that we have no problem tormenting and persecuting our society’s most vulnerable members?

Shelters are only a partial solution, as many offer only temporary housing and have strict rules about when people must be out and when they can return. People who have jobs may not be able to get back to a shelter until late in the day, when all the beds are taken. Even in shelters they run the risk of theft, harassment and assault.

Gentrification is one factor in homelessness. When affordable housing is torn down to make way for houses that cost $300,000 a pop or more, lower-income people have fewer options. Far too many have joined the ranks of the “perma-rents,” unable to get a mortgage and thus forced to rent apartments or even rooms in a house for their entire lives – even if the monthly mortgage payment is less than what they are shelling out for rent. Without the ability to purchase solid real estate, they cannot provide a solid home or possible cash source for future generations. Meanwhile, companies that own houses and condominiums laugh and oink all the way to the bank.

This is why we need more inexpensive housing – as well as better wages, affordable healthcare, and affordable (if not free) higher education. Far too many people are living paycheck to paycheck, and not because they are spendthrifts but because they make barely enough to squeak by. Millions are literally one broken arm or one speeding ticket from the streets. Nobody should have to live like that. Especially when the 1% are getting fatter and fatter at the expense of the working class, on which they depend, and the planet.

Those who mock the homeless, who automatically assume that anybody without a permanent home is an addict of one sort or another, have no clue about the true lot of those experiencing homelessness. They need to learn what it is truly like, because the mockers could, under the right circumstances, join the mocked.