Time and Tide

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

Now that bin Laden sleeps with the fishes and no longer leads the motley crew of zealots known as al Queda (a.k.a. the core,) this nation is rethinking the zeitgeist that has driven us to the edge of insanity for the last ten years. If we no longer have to be afraid of the cruel plots and twisted imaginings of one little religious radical and his group of malcontents — essentially putting an end to the hyperinflated Global War On Terror — what shall we fear now?

In some schools of thought — you know which ones I mean — America without a capital-e Enemy will soon turn all soft and flabby, lose ground as it stops to lick its wounds instead of standing guard, snarling and snapping with pitbull patriotism. Never mind that remaining hyper-vigilant against threats from without is the kind of Cold War paranoia that got us into the ‘liberation’ business in the first place, a euphemistic cover for our continued imperialism. Unable to dismantle government without the pretense of a clear threat, or to make his mark in the history books without an enemy, or to plunder resources without extreme nationalism, Dubby gave us a Global War on Terror. Thankfully, both are now distasteful — if not distant – memories, and while life is currently no bed of roses, it’s ever so much easier without either of them.

Free of distractions, then, can we finally agree that the threat to all the things we hold dear these days comes from within? Might we take a moment to carefully examine the intention of those holding power, to decide if their motives match our own? This is our moment to scrutinize those who influence our daily lives, not to demonize but rather to raise awareness and inform choice. It’s a sorry state of affairs when we must decide not if our country is misdirected or our president on the right trajectory, but rather if the representatives we’ve elected are behaving as friend or enemy to the public interest.

The Paul Ryan budget proposal for 2012 was enthusiastically approved by the Republican majority. By either substandard replacement or privatizing, it all but eliminates the so-called “entitlements.” Let’s spit in the eye of that moniker, shall we? Medicare and Social Security are NOT entitlements; they are insurance programs run by the government. Citizens make contributions with each paycheck over a lifetime ,which makes them partners with their provider, their interest shored by trust in the infallibility of those funds. The Pubs have rebranded that insurance as some kind of welfare give-away program, but that is not what those programs are or what they deliver.

While the GOP touts Medicare as a money-pit we can no longer afford, only about one percent of fees goes to administering this vast program, compared to more than thirty percent skimmed off the top by private insurance companies. The government is not in the for-profit business; it seeks to limit fees and does a good job of holding costs down. Medicare is vastly less expensive than any other form of medical care and, given our budgetary concerns, we’re seeing a renewal of interest in the public option. Unless we put the entirety of our medical system under some sort of government authority, we will never be able to bring down the inflated costs of American medicine. I’d like to see Medicare for all, and if that’s Socialism, then bring it on.

The Tea Party Caucus of the Republican Party has made it clear to upper leadership that it has no intention of raising the debt ceiling or approving a budget without a trillion dollars in tit/tat. That won’t happen unless we dismantle Medicare and Medicaid, it’s as simple as that. (Social Security doesn’t affect the debt level, so while it remains on the GOP’s hit list, it’s moot in this discussion.) In some camps, this is called “holding hostage,” the kind of activity attributed to terrorists. Even so narrow a philosophical box as the Catholic Church has trouble with such behavior.

House Leader Boehner recently received a letter from Catholic Bishops and academics who wrote him concerning his proposed commencement address to The Catholic University of America, “… in the hope that this visit will reawaken your familiarity with the teachings of your Church on matters of faith and morals as they relate to governance.” They continued:

“Mr. Speaker, your voting record is at variance from one of the Church’s most ancient moral teachings. From the apostles to the present, the Magisterium of the Church has insisted that those in power are morally obliged to preference the needs of the poor. Your record in support of legislation to address the desperate needs of the poor is among the worst in Congress. This fundamental concern should have great urgency for Catholic policy makers. Yet, even now, you work in opposition to it.”

We think a good deal of ourselves in this nation. We take a lot of pride in our country, in our form of government. If a single shred of that pride can be justified, then we must insist on ethics as the base of all legislation, broadly interpreted through the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. We must be constantly on guard against the class distinctions that continue to threaten our democratic process.

“The 2012 budget you shepherded to passage in the House of Representatives guts long-established protections for the most vulnerable members of society. It is particularly cruel to pregnant women and children, gutting Maternal and Child Health grants and slashing $500 million from the highly successful Women Infants and Children nutrition program. When they graduate from WIC at age 5, these children will face a 20% cut in food stamps. The House budget radically cuts Medicaid and effectively ends Medicare. It invokes the deficit to justify visiting such hardship upon the vulnerable, while it carves out $3 trillion in new tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy.”

The Tea Party has declared jihad against ‘Obamacare’ and Medicare. Outrageous spending cuts are their first set of demands; we can expect more. They represent the heavily financed core of the Republican/Christocrat intermarriage, determined to eliminate any liberal counterbalance. Throwing their cards to the wind and playing to their radicalized base, mainstream GOP leadership can rightly be accused of wanting to kill off Medicare entirely, hardly a winning ticket with the elders. Of course Medicaid has to go, too, as the poor have no voice or power to resist. Of all topics in the spotlight, welfare is the one that can turn the GOP into a hysterical mob in nanoseconds. How inconvenient for mainstream religion to awaken and turn against the right’s systematic strategy of class deprivation and exploitation, but how very welcome.

The irony of Paul Ryan’s budget is that it’s entitled The Path To Prosperity. Whose prosperity? Who gets all the goodies under this plan? Not those already teetering on the financial edge, I’d think. Not the old folks whom Republicans depend on for support: those same “greedy geezers” that Alan Simpson sees as part of the “310 million pulling off Social Security’s tit.” And I guess you’d have to ask the estimated 44 million people who would no longer be covered under Medicaid just how prosperous they’d feel without a medical safety net, even as food and shelter become more costly and less secure. Regarding our social contract as expendable, holding the country hostage to its demands even as our dollar remains vulnerable and our institutions weaken, the corporate party can no longer be imagined a friend to the public interest.

Economist John Kenneth Galbraith once said that, “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” I’m sure I’m not alone in thinking this akin to putting lipstick on a pig, and all but those who think that possible see it for the impossible exercise it is. The ramifications of this philosophy should be obvious to all: we’re living with the destruction wrought by selfishness. And now the tide is beginning to turn against this dysfunctional life-view, pushed on us by the corporate party and those who do not question how they profit, so long as they do.

We have some real enemies in this nation — climate change, crumbling infrastructure, manipulation of our food source, pending water wars, predatory capitalism — that are being ignored as we fight over basic assaults on human ethics. The big problems that need our immediate attention cannot be assessed or the public engaged while we wrangle over the nation’s ability to go forward into the 21st century or backwards into the 20th.

Here are some websites you might like to visit if you want more information, activist opportunities and a partial list of town hall meetings you can attend:

Hands Off Our Medicare

Don’t End Medicare

 

I encourage you to print out a sign that says, “Vote Republican, End Medicare” and tape it into your car window. It’s a jaw-dropper for the Pub base, and much less hostile than the sticker I saw on a truck yesterday that said, “I’m not racist: I don’t like the white half either.” The majority of elders depend upon Social Security and Medicare; I seriously doubt, push to shove, that they will care about matters of race should they lose either.

We can only begin to rebuild this nation as we come to understand that what serves us all, benefits us mutually, and promotes the common good is our last, best hope for restoring and renewing our American dream. The questions are ethical; the answers are compassionate. It’s time to acknowledge that there is no other future worth achieving, now that the tides are rising to lift us all.