Of the many clear things from yesterday’s riots, one of them is that politicians who think that they can simply let other people do the right thing are actively undermining democracy. Can we say that anyone who thinks it is someone else’s responsibility to do the right thing is actively making the worldd worse?
There is no way to know what will ultimately make the significant difference.
It’s important to do what you know is right anyway. That’s all there is. Do what you know is right. Why is that a hard statement for other people to accept? What is wrong with our culture that there is always a justification for not doing the right thing? “What good would it really do?” “Well, maybe there is a better thing i can do later if I just do this one wrong thing now.” “Someone else will do it if I don’t.” “Someone else will do it if I do.”
Sad.
The other less clear thing is that this wouldn’t have happened if the entire political system hadn’t failed so spectacularly many many years ago. And I don’t mean that the Republican party lost its way—which it did—or that the electoral college is bad—I don’t really have a clear opinion. I mean that politicians haven’t passed much good, people-centric legislation in a very long time.
Politicians, and media, and individuals too, have somehow come to believe that institutions and corporations and mass media are the engines that will somehow drive prosperity and have created laws and policies entirely around abstract notions of collective, coddifiable groups. Is a complex way of saying that believing that competition among competing interests will ultimately work out is false. Which is still a too complex way of saying that most laws past aren’t for individual people.
If Congress would cut out the cleverness and pass some laws for people then the people would feel like they had political agency and power. This is basically true on the racist white side and the angry left side. They are protesting in order to keep or get political agency and power (irregardless of the content of their policy). Congress could forgive student loans and transfer a huge amount of wealth into the handds of the next generation. They could give block grants to states explicitly to raise teacher pay and benefits. They could raise the federal minimum wage. They could create a public option in obamacare. They could raise taxes on the super-wealthy, break up big tech and big agriculture.
But, for the most part, the people who rise to the level of power in our system don’t really see how the system doesn’t work. Or, the luxury co-opts them quickly. (Like I sat in first class once and realized how quickly I could get used to it and how much its designed to tell me that this is system of reward that is fair and i deserved it.)
They could, at the very least, attempt to say that their agenda is for the people. Not the country. Not “who we are” not some abstract principles but simply for individuals. For people.
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