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Edited on Wed May-24-06 08:12 AM by Armstead
Just want to get this off my chest.
Being in my 50's, I've experienced the changes of the last 40 years, the good, bad and indifferent. Over those decades we moved forward in some ways, and backwards in others.
Although it wasn't a straight line, there were many advances and changes in the "conventional wisdom" for the better. On the positive side of the scale, attitudes about tolerance and civil rights and the environment and freedom of expression became mainstream.Among them the basic idea that blacks are entitled to the same rights and status as whites, that women are entitled to the same rights and status as males, the idea that homosexuals are as entitled to the same rights and status as straights, the idea that ethnic diversity is a positive thing....The idea that we have to be careful to protect the environment. The idea that we should allow expression that we don't agree with or find personally distasteful. ...The idea that religion and government should be kept separate, and that all spiritual positions should be protected and accepted.
In addition, there were also positive ingrained economic values that preceded that. The notion that wealth is acceptable, but excessive wealth at the expense of others is immoral. The idea that everyone deserved a fair days pay for a fair days work. The idea that maintaining and protecting and enlarging the middle class is a goal of the economy. The idea that the poor and otherwise disadvantaged deserved at least some protection and assistance to help them survive and hopefully advance.
Over the last 30 years, however, the conventional economic wisdom was turned on its head. In economic terms, we backslided. The middle class was convinced to eat itself to advance corporate interests. The poor were forgotten, or told it's their fault. Wealth was worshiped as the highest good.
That has been disheartening. But at least there was the compensation that we seemed to have progressed on other fronts. Environmentalism moved from being a fringe into the mainstream, and was accepted by conservatives as well as liberals. A person's color, gender and sexual orientation became less important in terms of rights, achievement and acceptance.
But over the last six years, we have even lost those advances. Now your version of environmental science depends on your political orientation. Corporate interests and conservative knuckleheads have successfully undermined acceptance of the basic tenants of environmentalism. Racial divisions are resurfacing -- and now blatant racism is directed at new groups. Homosexuality is once again controversial. We've gone backwards -- past debates over separation of church and state, and back to the days of the Scopes Monkey Trial. And now the bsic idea of freedom, privacy and liberty are threatened.
And economically, we continue on the backward course of the last 30 years, back to the Gilded Age of extreme wealth and widespread poverty. The Middle Class continues to willingly participate in its own destruction. Corporations have become nations unto themselves.
I refuse to believe that this undoing of everything that has been won or taken for granted is what the majority of Americans really want. I maintain a naive belief that it is being driven by the combination of a Corporate Oligarchy who has allied with a minority of conservative knuckleheads, and that the majority still believes in positive social values and economic justice. Even the large group who have moderate and/or conservative leanings support many of the basic values of liberals. But they have been bamboozled and have also been made to feel powerless.
If the liberal/progressive side of the spectrum, and the Democratic Party, want to both solidify the positive gains of the last 40 years -- AND restore the positive economic values that existed before the mid 1970's -- then we have to stand up for them. Enough of this accepting the unacceptable, ignoring the underlying unraveling of the middle class and allowing the right wing to take us back to the dark ages.
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