Perspectives

If you vote Republican, I recommend you move on and not bother reading today’s column. I am addressing my comments specifically to disenchanted Democrats and Independents who are so disgusted with America’s direction that they may not vote in November’s elections.

I’ve been a Democrat since I outgrew my childish high school fascination with the simplicity of Ayn Rand’s Objectivism and the chimera of Barry Goldwater’s rugged cowboy individualism. There is a pronounced libertarian streak to my thinking that if we, as Voltaire so humorously wrote, “lived in the best of all possible worlds,” I would energetically advocate it. Alas, as good as life is, we have real problems (of human creation) requiring our collective thinking, collaboration and action.

The Tea Party numbchucks, Republicans by any other name, think all of America’s problems can be traced to government. This is silly. A number of our nation’s problems, yes, can be traced to government — to bad governance.

From the time we are born in America, we are indoctrinated with the Holy Grail of divine capitalism. Without a doubt, a market-driven economy has provided virtually all Americans with lifestyle choices unimaginable to our ancestors. America’s right would have us believe that if only, if only we unleashed the righteous engine of capitalism, unfettered by capricious regulation and punitive individual taxation, a new morn in America would arise.

The lifestyle we enjoy today was achieved, however, through a century and a half of social conflict, of progressives demanding from capitalists an eight-hour work day, safe working environments, livable wages, a modicum of health care insurance, of environmental safeguards, of the right of labor to collectively bargain with management. What we take for granted today as America’s work environment (such as it is) was secured only through the sacrifice of life and limb by everyday Americans, the common man, if you will, pressuring business and demanding from government consideration as equal players to corporations (their owners and their flacks).

Time and time again, we see government in the pocket of corporate interests. We see it locally when developers get approval for developments that make no “community” sense, other than specific interests being enriched. We see it at the national level when regulatory reform is watered down such that whole mountaintops are leveled (destroyed) for coal or Iowa chicken farms remain inadequately inspected, and 500 million eggs are recalled to stop death and illness from salmonella.

It is easy as a Democrat to be disenchanted with events today. We elected an alleged agent of change yet we continue to war in the Middle East. Obama’s economic team is a revolving door of Wall Street insiders. I could go on with my disillusionment. Yet.

Much of the current economic malaise (and wars) is a direct result of Republican deceit, corruption and misrule. If you sit this election out because you are profoundly disappointed with how our democracy is turning out, well, man-up, it will only get worse with Republican gains. Whether that be local, state or national elections. Government isn’t bad, bad governance is. Hold those most responsible for America’s decline accountable. Be aware of Republican perfidy. Vote Democrat. The Huns are afoot.