Many of my fellow protesters are very much hoping for, if not expecting, a Blue Wave to sweep over the midterm elections and install a relevant Congress. Of course, should the elections be fair enough to produce such a result, we need to remember January 6, 2021 to expect how Trump might respond to challenging elections. What would he do either to try to rig the elections or block the installation of newly elected Dems is anyone's guess.
But, as we might do in logic, suppose that there is a big Bkue Wave, and the Dems make Congress relevant again, what can we expect? As Presidents Clinton, Obama, and Biden have shown, we will have more freedom of speech but a kindler and gentler same economic system. And so the basic question is what will life be like after Trump? How different will it be? What can we expect?
In terms of economic systems, we should note that starting with Reagan, our nation transitioned from relying on a Bretton-Woods system for Capitalism, which started after the end of WW II and extended to through the 1970s, to Neoliberalism or a Neliberal form of Capitalism.
What is Neoliberalism? It could best be explained by the Biblical story of Cain and Abel (click here for the pertinent part of this story). In that story, Cain kills his brother Abel out of jealousy. When God asks Cain about the whereabouts of his brother, Cain responds with a rhetorical question: 'Am I my brother's keeper?'
Those who wish to directly benefit from Neoliberal policies, which include a huge reduction in tax rates that would have funded social safety net programs and the cutting of regulations that would have protected the people and the environment, desire to rhetorically ask Cain's question. What is the justification for this cutting of social responsibilities? It is the assertion that everyone is solely responsible for their own plight in life. And so whatever results from the cuts in those safety nets and protective regulations, the end result is that each person is solely responsible for their own standing in life.
What is absent from those who would play the role of Cain in today's world is that they are not solely responsible for their own success. They own their success to the workers who provide the goods and/or services that they have sold. In owing their success to the workers, they should note that the ability of the workers to produce depends on their skills, acquired through education, the health and welfare of those workers which enables them to succeed at their jobs, and the soundness of the communities and society in which they live which contributes to the workers' ability to better focus on performing their jobs well.
Those who would play the role of Cain also own their success to the customers who purchase their goods and/or services. Part of that includes that the ability of the customers to purchase goods and services.
Those who play the role of Cain also own their success to venders who provide the materials used in producing goods and services. They also own their success to the people involved in selling or transporting those materials they use in producing their goods and/or services.
Those who play the role of Cain also own their success to the government that provides legal systems and infrastructures in which their enterprisess can blossom and education for them and their employees.
And those who play the role of Cain also own their success to the environment that affects everything.
In other words, we see others as acting as their brothers' keepers in helping those who directly benefit from Neoliberalism to succeed while visions of ever increasing profits blind them from seeing their responsibilities in acting as their brothers' keepers.
Neoliberalism thrives on consumerism. But when consumerism passes a certain threshold, it can blind us from admitting our responsibilities in being our brothers' keepers.
Neoliberalism in America started with Reagan. Its principles blinded him from seeing the crimes committed by Pinochet in Chile. Its principles blinded him from seeing the sins that the U.S. was committing in both Central America and the Middle East as well as complicity in the future sins of Neoliberalism by establishing a foundation for it here.
And so regardless of any size of a Blue Wave occurring in the Midterms, because both political parties ascribe to Neoliberalism, we will still have an ideological war to wage.
However here, we need to be careful. That is because while Neoliberalism as a whole is destroying our democracy, and even our economy, if we approach its destruction employing all-or-nothing thinking which always causes one to throw the baby out with the bathwater, we will include unnecessarily negative tradeoffs in our war against Neoliberalism.
We need to battle Neoliberalism because of the harm it is doing. The ever increasing wealth dispaity between the classes and races can eventually infringe on economic growth and could lead to political instability. But something else must be added. As Neoliberalism increases in its intensity and consistency, it will eventually shut down our democracy and will lead to a corrupt oligarchy.
Neoliberalism destroys a nation's democracy by continually reducing the social responsibilities that the business and financial communities have toward society. That reduces a democratic government's ability to create and enforce the parameters in which businesses and financial institutes operate. Democratic governments then become impotent in controlling businesses and financial institutions. As democratic governments become more and more impotent, power continues to flow from the people who were democratically elected to represent us to business and financial elites. And so as the people lose power through a weaker and weaker democratic government, democracy becomes the shrinking person who eventual becomes so small that it disappears. And waiting in the wings for this disintergration are authoritarian leaders who are more than eager to grab the reins controlling the nation.
But despite the problems that Neoliberalism causes, we must not imitate the kind of thinking that proponents of Neoliberalism employ. That is that we must not take and all-or-nothing approach to the issues here. For just as Neoliberalism takes an all-or-nothing approach in assigning responsibility for a person's plight solely to the individual, one can overreact and take the opposite all-or-nothing approach by putting the whole blame for one's position in society on society itself. We need to avoid unnecessary all-or-nothing thinking approaches.
Both the individual and society share responsibility for each person's place in life. And the mix of individual and societal responsibility is different for each person seeing that some are more privileged and/or have more abilities and less obstacles than others. And so what we have to accommodate is a race between those who must jump over hurdles racing against those who don't.
Because the responsibility for each person's plight in life is shared by society and the individual, we need to recognize that those who directly benefit or even defend Neoliberalism have real concerns. And if we are going to stop Neoliberalism, we have to show its defenders that we all need a different kind of thinking than the all-or-nothing thinking that they are employing. And we cannot do that if we attribute to society complete responsibility for each person's life and their life choices. Rather than competing, supporters of Neoliberalism must understand that there are parts of life and society where we need to cooperate and collaborate to be responsible members of society.
And so we are all our brothers' keepers. And those who directly benefit from Neoliberalism must add to their belief that individuals are responsible for their own place in society, society, including its economic practices, also shares responsibility for where people end up in life. And thus those who directly benefit from Neoliberalism must embrace, rather than shrink back from their social responsibilities. One way by which they can do that is to not manipulate the government to lower tax rates and reduce necessary regulations.
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