Righteous Notes on the Trump Protests, the American Ideal, and Getting Down to Business
Jimmy Buffet is playing on the stereo in my apartment right now, singing about guzzling gin and getting back to his honey. His song is one of the only things, in the last few days, that’s given me some lightness and delight. Because for the past week in Los Angeles, we’ve seen everything that’s wrong and crooked and mean about certain leaders of our country, and it’s been weighing on me. So rather than rant and rave, I’m going to try to sort out a few things, hoping it can, in some way, make a difference…
Let’s first put ourselves in the shoes of the protesters in Downtown L.A. You’ve worked hard and contributed to this country. You’ve kept your head down and lived by the rules. You love your friends and family and have tried to be a decent person.
But then you hear about heavily armed, masked men storming into homes and places of work, grabbing people, and driving them somewhere so they can be quickly shipped out of the country. And you worry that, legal or not, you may be next – because there’s a man in the White House who has no regard for you and the rule of law.
You, too, would be freaked out. You, too, would say, “Enough is enough!” You, too, would take to the streets to claim your humanity. You just can’t allow yourself to get rolled over.
That’s what’s happening, in part, with the Trump protests in Los Angeles – and now in San Francisco, Austin, Seattle, San Antonio, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, New York, and Washington D.C.
But the thing about the Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids is that they’re ultimately a diversion – pushed by the Trump administration – to take people’s eyes off the ball. I’ve seen it far too many times as a journalist and activist.
Say, for example, that millions of people desperately need affordable housing so they don’t end up broke or living on the streets. But a politician doesn’t want to work on that, for one shady reason or another, so he or she comes up with something to divert the public’s attention, such as saying a certain group of people is responsible for all your problems, and he or she is going to yank those people out of their homes and send them back to wherever they came from.
Then one group of people gets angry and starts making noise about families getting yanked out of their homes and another group of people gets angry at those people for not wanting to get rid of the so-called troublemakers. The desperate need for affordable housing, for millions of middle- and working-class people, has been forgotten – and the politician has dodged another one, for now.
We should back up, though, and try to answer a very important question: What is America? Because that question, in the end, keeps causing problems in this country.
In the past, we’ve allowed politicians to define America, but that’s always trouble because many politicians will slant things to their own benefit, trying to divide and conquer us. (I’ve written about the divide-and-conquer technique in the past, and I’ll keep bringing it up because it’s so important.) So I’m going to define America, but I’ll keep it simple by using what I was taught in elementary school as a kid.
I was taught, back in the day, that America is the land of opportunity. I was taught that America is a melting pot. I was taught that the American government is of the people, by the people, for the people. (Not of the corporations and billionaires, by the corporations and billionaires, for the corporations and billionaires.) I was taught that Americans are united with liberty and justice for all, which means we’re all equal. And I was taught that Americans are at their best when we’re unified and looking out for each other. I was probably taught a few other things, but that’s the main stuff.
So America is more of a beautiful concept or ideal than merely a physical place. (The American flag, by the way, stands for the ideal, not a political ideology.) And it’s up to us to try to live up to it, make it a reality, and, if possible, improve it. I honestly believe most Americans want to do that, and they’ll probably agree with the concept of America that I learned as a kid – because I’m guessing most of us were taught those things when we were kids.
Now here’s a very important point: the politicians and corporations who run America are flawed (sometimes dangerously so), but the ideal of America is pretty darn good.
Something I realized when I traveled around the world some years ago is that I was grateful to be an American – because of the ideal. It wasn’t a slight against the countries I visited, but more of a conclusion that was based on the hard facts I was learning as I traveled.
In Africa, for example, I visited a country where gay men and women could be sent to prison just for being themselves. In another country, the government tried to control the flow of news and information by blocking people from using Facebook. In other countries, I got the distinct feeling that people couldn’t protest without the prospect of being immediately jailed – that freedom of speech was very risky.
So the American ideal is wonderful. The real problem is the politicians’ screwy implementation of it. Big distinction. And the politicians should be held to account whenever they fail the ideal.
How do we live up to the American ideal? How can politicians make it happen? For me, it’s about helping to provide basic needs so people can live healthy, productive lives – and so they can access opportunity.
We obviously need liberty and justice for all to have opportunity for everyone. So the politicians and fringe groups should never get in the way of that. And there are the other basic needs: 1) good education, 2) good healthcare, 3) stable, affordable housing, 4) clean environment, 5) good jobs with fair wages, 6) a safety net for when we’re older and retired or can’t work, and 7) corporate accountability.
We need the last one, at this point, because corporations and their billionaires have become extraordinarily wealthy and, therefore, extraordinarily powerful. Only government, with its massive resources and awesome power, can properly protect the public against the predatory business practices of Corporate America. I’ve seen that hard reality, over and over, as a journalist and an activist.
There may be other needs, but that’s a good start. So politicians should work on the basic needs before anything else. Without those things, people will seriously struggle, even die.
A great book that I’m reading is The Second Bill of Rights: FDR’s Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need It More Than Ever. It’s by Cass R. Sunstein. With the Second Bill of Rights, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was essentially trying to guarantee most of the things I mentioned so Americans could survive and flourish in the land of opportunity – in the 1940s, a clean environment wasn’t really on people’s radars.
But as far as I can tell, too many politicians, except for U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and some others, are doing next to nothing to make sure we have good schools, affordable housing, and all the rest. They refuse to get down to the crucial business of serving us, not just the corporations and billionaires. Both Democrats and Republicans are guilty of that.
Instead, the politicians get wrapped up in culture wars and attack each other on social media and whip people up into a mean, ugly frenzy by telling all kinds of lies and distortions. It’s all done to divert our attention – and to divide and conquer.
Just so you know, I’ve seen, as a journalist and activist, politicians get things done rapidly, if they want to get them done. If something isn’t getting done, blame the politicians – and probably the corporations. Because the politicians have chosen not to do it, often because the corporations don’t want it.
So the politicians need to stop wasting time with diversions and trying to divide and conquer us. They need to get to work on our basic needs. I don’t know about you, but I want to thrive in the land of opportunity. I want to live, and contribute to, the American ideal.