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What I really want to know is, how does telling me what they would not do, or un-do, inform me as to what they would do? The “they” I refer to here are of course the politicians – any stripe, really. I realize to say what they would do puts them on the hot seat should they actually get elected, but I’d rather have them explain why they ultimately couldn’t get “it” done than to have no idea going into this rather fixed relationship without knowing what the politician really hopes to achieve. I mean, ripping down the previous administration’s fences isn’t exactly a position. It’s more an attitude, really. And I really don’t like being asked to vote for an attitude – have enough of my own, thank you.
Besides, isn’t a plan, or even a loose set of ideas for moving the entire ball forward better than merely trying to cast aspersions on what has gone before? What, after all, do the voters really want? Yes, I know, every politician thinks the voters just want what that politicians wants them to want, but seriously? Who really buys that discounted second rate swill? Most folks want some pretty basic stuff: better roads, better schools, better functioning across the various aspects of society we all have to inhabit and interact with. We want these things for a reasonable cost – taxes per se are not the problem, despite the lunatic ravings of the Norquistas. The problem is the fairness of the tax system, and not just fair to the wealthy, but to everyone. Without taxes, we have no roads, no schools, no healthcare, no defense, no real agricultural riches. Most of the things that provide us with jobs in this society exist because our taxes built the infrastructure that make other businesses possible in the first place, a concept that most people these days seem to have a pretty hard time wrapping their heads around.
But the current crop of Wannabees have yet to tell anyone what they would do besides “get the government out of the way.” Exactly what does that even mean? Right- cut regulations? Really? So, the clean water (for the most part,) the oversight of foods that won’t poison us, (again, for the most part,) the vastly improved safety of buildings and machines and drugs and other things that make life work here in the 21st Century, which, sorry to burst any bubbles here, came into being and remain on a relatively improving scale due to, yep, regulations, should all be chucked out with the baby? Yeah, that’s really gonna move the ball further down the field – right into the dumpster behind the stadium. At least the homeless will have a few more things to pick through and haul to the recyclers.
This is how you know when an ideology is bankrupt – when it cannot produce a positive plan. Roll- backs (of services, of research, of improvements to infrastructure, of basic science, of human dignity and rights - only help those who are already so well off they don’t really need any help. All this time, I thought the Right was opposed to welfare. But now we know the truth – they LOVE welfare – for the well-off. Just not for the well-screwed, poorly paid, well-fleeced, and poorly-considered masses.
Would someone please tell me – how is this any different than the Middle Ages? You know - serfs, power in the hands of the wealthy, no middle class, abcesses, witch burnings, book burnings, religious pogroms, crusades? I mean, besides the apparent absence of the Black Death?
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I couldn't agree more - except for that "Black Death" reference. Are you keeping up with the teenagers in upstate New York with the strange tics? Seems there was a major chemical spill three miles from the school 40 years ago that was never cleaned up. We might not be as far away from the Black Death as we think.