I recently made the argument that the things progresses are trying to achieve are inevitable, and that we need to frame them as such in order to gain ground and move the Overton Window. This progress at times feels glacial, but my argument here is that we let it be glacial. We appease the political sensitivities or people and a generation – mine, the boomers – as if it were their future we were talking about. It is not. It is the future for the overwhelmingly progressive generations coming behind us whom we have stymied in every election, in every airing of political priorities and, of every debate about “what’s good” for America.
Things that were unthinkable two or three generations ago are now the way things are. Patrick S. Tomlinson recently pointed out to criticism that the current Star Trek franchise was too “woke,” that when Captain Kirk kissed Lieutenant Uhura in 1968, it was a national scandal. Television stations refused to air it. In 2019, 17% of all marriages in the United States were interracial. This was 3% in 1967, when interracial marriage was first legalized in the United States. Sodomy laws were the law of the land until 2003, and enforced in many states and we now celebrate gay marriage, legal since 2013, a mere ten years later!
I get frustrated, as I think most progressives do, with the timidity of our politician and leaders. The timidity is often defended as “realism.” The “public” isn't ready for that yet. And while that is probably true for my demographic and Fox viewers of every age, it is not true for the rest of the population. If you are reading this, you already know that Data for Progress has the receipts. Americans are overwhelmingly progressive on nearly every important issue.
And yet, “progressive” politicians are constantly making speeches and commercials reassuring the Baby Boomers that we aren't going to change things too fast. See the mealy-mouthed disaster of Tim Ryan’s campaign in Ohio last year, or a hundred other candidates offering “Republican Lite” messaging for fear of alienating Fox viewers. It is maddening. Maybe we make commercials telling the ever growing younger generations that it's time and we are ready for the progress transformation of the country that they all think is self-evidently better.
There have been encouraging developments in Minnesota: Progressives voting for progressive politicians and those politicians voting for progressive policy priorities! What a concept!
The highlights:
- The Minnesota legislature passed a budget that invests in education, healthcare, and infrastructure.
- The legislature also passed bills that protect the environment and promote clean energy.
- In addition, the legislature passed bills that make it easier for people to vote and to register to vote.
Some impressive specific accomplishments of the legislature include:
- Investing $1.5 billion in early childhood education.
- Increasing funding for public schools by $1 billion.
- Expanding access to healthcare by expanding Medicaid and creating a public option for health insurance.
- Investing $1 billion in clean energy and energy efficiency.
- Making it easier for people to vote by expanding early voting and same-day registration.
One of the things that keeps people at home on election days and not even willing to do a mail in ballot is cynicism. “Both parties are the same,”“It doesn’t matter who I vote for, nothing will change!” And young voters, frankly, have earned the right to that cynicism. In a country where progressives had the US House, Senate, and White House for two years, we achieved precious little to suggest that progressives ruled the country. Minnesota has shown us how it’s done. (I will grant that Sinema and Manchin made the Senate control nominal in most cases, but still.)
Progressive change is inevitable. Does anyone imagine that we won’t have gun control, full reproductive rights, a green energy transition, strong workers and union rights, full LGBTQ+ rights, Universal healthcare, reformed capitalism and a repacking of the Supreme Court in 20 years? I can’t imagine an America where this doesn’t all happen.
And yet, we tiptoe around these issues like the kids at Thanksgiving not wanting to upset the grandparents by telling them that they’re atheists!
Why be so tentative about universal Health Care? Why be so tentative about aggressive green energy and climate change goals? These are things that need to happen and will happen and the sooner we do it, the happier we will ALL be, and the better a country and world we will leave to our kids!
OK, I am going to try a few ad scripts and see how they sound.
We can keep paying people to burn the planet, or we can start paying people to save the planet! For generations the fossil fuel industry has lied, cheated and politically stolen tax dollars. They get tax breaks and subsidies and lie with impunity about climate change. We get record levels of pollution and lung disease. We get poison with plants placed right in the middle of our poorest communities.
We must beat climate change, we must transition to a Green Economy with good jobs and fair wages. And the only way to do that is with new, aggressive, progressive leadership in [the state house, Congress, the Senate, the White House, and even SCOTUS – why not?].
For some reason, conservatives hate these ideas. They can always find money to spend on defense contractors (with their private jets and wealthy executives and boards), and send our kids to war, they are NEVER willing to spend money on ALL of our kids, to save all of us from catastrophic global warming. Let’s fund the war for our future.
Number Two.
In the 1960’s, a new kind of economics was born. Hatched by conservative economists, it became known as “Neoliberal economics,” and what it meant was, businesses one and only priority was to make the most money for its executives and shareholders as possible, and to share as little as possible with the people who did the productive work, and to pay no attention to the impact their activities have on the rest of us. Pollution? Poverty wages? Climate change? Unless they were forced to restrain their behavior, they would not change their behavior.
It got so bizarre that by the 1980’s a new term was coined, “Trickle Down” or “Supply Side” Economics. They were selling the idea that if the rich were just allowed to extract as much value as possible from their businesses, our natural resources, our tax dollars, and faced not only no consequences, but were lauded as great businessmen, that this would make a better world for all of us.
Now if you are under 40, your lived experience shows this to be the bullshit that it is. For the first time ever, your generation is doing worse than the last. It is time for us to reverse the catastrophe we are witnessing that has been unleashed on us by conservative economics.
We need to vote for politicians who will change our economics in fundamental ways. Pay must reflect the value created by employers, not the wages that corporations can squeeze out of individual employees. That means aggressive legislation to strengthen workers’ rights.
Corporations must start paying for the damage they inflict on the planet and on society. No more “chump change” fines and no admission of wrongdoing when corporations harm their employees, their communities, our country and our planet.
We live in a world of takers, enabled by conservatives for generations, “value extractors” who take everything they can without a thought about their communities. And they will piss on you and tell you it’s raining! They will point to their philanthropy and their oh-so-generous benevolence to the community, to the sports franchises, the arts, and even the food bank, push comes to shove. But it is not raining.
OK, I’m tired so going to post this as is, though I should edit it! But in the interest of “showing my work,” here it is!
Thanks for reading!
Cheers!