It Took a Pandemic

It Took a Pandemic

It took a pandemic. It shouldn’t have, but it did. Some of us knew before the pandemic, indeed we knew for a long time before the pandemic, that there are serious things wrong with our country. Some of us knew, but far too many of us didn’t. Now, in the midst of the pandemic, it should be obvious to everyone. Indeed it should have been obvious to everyone before the pandemic, but it wasn’t. Far too many of us think of the status quo as just fine. Far too many of us are far too used to voting Republican. Far too many of us have bought the Republican lie that government is necessarily a bad thing. Far too many of us think taxes are necessarily a bad thing. Far too many of us depend on the military and the defense industries for our livelihood. Far too many of us don’t know how racist our history has been and our culture today is. Far too many of us just don’t worry about millions of people not having health insurance. Far too many of us don’t care that we’re destroying our planet with our unchecked consumption and burning of fossil fuels. It shouldn’t have taken a pandemic for more of us to wake up, but it did. Or at least I hope and pray that as a result of this pandemic enough of us will wake up to reality that we will be able to do something at long last to transform our reality in the direction of peace and justice. If enough of us are now awake actually to accomplish something constructive the things we need to do include:

1.      Vote Donald Trump out of office next November. There hasn’t been a really good Republican president since Abraham Lincoln, but Donald Trump is both the worst president of modern times and the worse person ever to hold the office. He is a narcissistic megalomaniac. He gives not a damn about anyone but himself. He has no real personal political beliefs other than that he should be an authoritarian or even dictatorial president for life, but he pursues an agenda that benefits only the wealthy and is hellbent on destroying planet earth so already wealthy people can make even more money doing it. He lies almost every time he speaks. He simply does not operate within the categories of true and false. He says whatever comes into his head as long as he thinks it benefits him politically or financially. No sentient person can possibly support him, but his approval ratings hold steady in the mid-40% range. Far too many Americans believe that if the president says or does something it must be right even if the president is the misogynist womanizer Donald Trump. As president he wields even more power than the president should have. He can block anything constructive that anyone in the government wants to do. He fires Inspectors General, especially any who has done anything he does like such as sending the whistleblower complaint about his illegal actions in a phone call to Congress. We really can’t hope to accomplish anything good while he is in office.

2.      Create a universal single payer health insurance system. Illness and injury afflict everyone and don’t care if you have health insurance or not. The coronavirus we’re dealing with doesn’t care if you have health insurance or not, and everyone who gets sick from it needs the same level of care. We are the only supposedly advanced country in the world without universal health insurance. Shame on us. Maybe this pandemic will at long last get us to create one.

3.      Reform the tax structure. Our current federal income tax structure benefits the wealthy and big corporations at the expense of everyone else. People blame corporations like Amazon when they pay little or no income tax on enormous incomes, but that’s not the corporation’s fault. It’s the fault of the tax code. Wealthy people and big corporations hire first rate accountants and lawyers to advise them on how to avoid taxes and to claim every possible exemption, credit, or deduction on their tax returns. The solution isn’t to expect those people and corporations to pay more tax than the law requires. The solution is to change the law. The wealthy don’t pay their fair share of the cost of the government from which they benefit so immensely. Middle income taxpayers pay too much. However we do it we need to revise the tax code so that the wealthy pay more.

4.      Drastically reduce the size of the military and the defense industries that get rich off of it. We spend a higher percentage of our gross national produce on the military than any other nation. The people in charge say that’s because we have to “defend freedom” around the world. Nonsense! That’s not what the US military does. Rather, it projects and protects US political and economic power around the world. We sell massive amounts of armaments to other countries, not all of which can be said to be our friends. We have no business being the world’s policeman. Yes, reducing the amount of money we spend on the military would cause some not insignificant economic and social disruption. We’d save so much money, however, that we could easily spend some of it to alleviate that disruption. The amount of money we spend on the military is obscene. We really do need to reduce it significantly.

5.      Take meaningful steps to address climate change. The Trump administration’s record on that issue is shameful at best. The records of previous administrations on the issue are hardly stellar. We are destroying our planet. If we want humanity to survive we need to stop doing it now and hope and pray that it’s not too late.

6.      Reform the criminal law system. I won’t call it the criminal justice system because it has precious little to do with justice. We incarcerate more people than any other nation. A grossly disproportionate percentage of the people we imprison are people of color. Our systemic racism shows itself as much in criminal justice as it does anywhere. We need to stop writing laws and pursuing law enforcement policies and practices that disproportionately affect people of color.

7.      Reform our educational systems. The American system of public schools is pretty much a mess. Wealthy school districts have much better outcomes than poor ones. In many places all teachers can do is teach to some standardized test. They are evaluated by how their students do on the test rather than how well the students have actually been educated. A college education has gotten so expensive that many people who would benefit from one don’t even apply. Many others do go to college but come out with enormous student loan debts. We need to make sure every public K-12 school has sufficient resources. We need to pay teachers like the professionals they are and let them truly educate our children. We need to make college affordable and relieve the debt so many college graduates have.

There is I suppose a lot more that we need to do. We need to repair our country’s crumbling infrastructure. We need to make farming profitable enough that people will want to do it. We need to reform our wildly unfair immigration system. Maybe the health crisis of the current pandemic will wake us up to all of these needs. I doubt that it will, but a man can hope.