By Tom Kando
I just returned from Rome, and I have been reading Roman history. There are many parallels. 2,000 years ago, the struggle was similar. Patricians and Plebeians fought each other for centuries, the former to preserve the privileges of the few, the latter to expand the rights, the opportunities and the lives of the many. Even the political arguments used by the Roman plutocracy are uncannily similar to those used by Republicans today: affluent Patricians pontificated in the Senate that success should not be punished; that a man only has himself (and the Gods) to thank for his success, and should only blame himself for his failures. Social Darwinism was alive and well then, and it thrives today. Change takes time.
I suppose there is no getting away from this nasty election. I do agree with the media hyperbole: It IS an exceptionally important election. It is a choice between two very different moralities. One is the morality of progress and justice, the other one is the morality of greed and regression. It’s that simple. How can any reasonable person vote Republican today? To summarize the arguments again:
1. Romney is the talented “job creator.” He has proven how to create wealth. False: his wealth is inherited, he is a silver-spoon-fed multimillionaire, he was admitted to Harvard on his family wealth and connections. Any mediocre person can inherit vast wealth and hold it.
2. Obama’s Achilles heel is our 8.1% unemployment rate. It’s Obama’s fault. False: He inherited it. No one can miraculously fix a vast economy in 3 or 4 years. Even so, he has already managed to turn the economy around, despite the Republicans’ desperate efforts to sabotage him. Had the Republicans won the 2008 presidential election, we might well have a 20% unemployment rate at this time.
3. By far the most salient fact about America today is our skyrocketing inequality. We are becoming a third-world-like, Brazil-like, Ancient Rome-like country of the very rich and the very poor. One side wants to accelerate this trend, the other side wants to reverse it.
4. On social issues - abortion, gay rights, immigration, crime and firearms control, the environment, birth control - one side wants to go back to the Middle Ages, the other side wants to remain in the 21st century.
5. Conservatives claim that there is a lot of liberal extremism in America today, that there is a double standard which tolerates more extreme views on the Left than on the Right. False. Recently, Newt Gingrich was ranting on Meet the Press that the media always harp on Conservative faux pas, while they let liberals get away with much more outrageous statements. That very interview itself with Gingrich showed the opposite to be true: The entire panel sat timidly, cowering, while Newt was haranguing them, unchallenged.
People at places like Fox News claim that Obama and the Democratic Party have moved far to the Left. The opposite is true: Republican movement to the Right is incomparably more extreme than the relatively centrist position of the President and of most Democrats.
6. Take abortion: In no other civilized country is this still an issue. Only in the US. Abortion is a medical procedure which must be subsidized by the government. In that same Meet the Press interview, Gingrich was raising red herrings such as 8th and 9th month abortions. None of the other panelists responded, no one told Gingrich that he was being fraudulent, that liberals oppose procedures that approach infanticide as much as do conservatives.
7. Contrary to the conservative claim, the media equivocate far too much. They bend over backwards to see “both sides” of all issues, even when there is only one side. At this rate, we may soon start a debate about the pros and cons of Hitler’s policies. We may start debating whether the earth is flat or round (no more absurd than teaching evolution and creationism side by side!)
8. President Obama is a moderate centrist. According to some liberals, he even compromises too much. But the wacko’s on the right say that he is the most radical left-wing socialist President we have ever had. This is mixed with racism. I sometimes get spam in which the President is called a monkey, and worse.
9. As I said, the major trend in America today is growing economic injustice. The plutocracy has successfully foisted on a somnolent population a cruel, social-Darwinistic ideology. The euphemism is that “we should not punish success; we should reward, admire and emulate it.” By “success is meant just one thing: $$$$$$.
10. When President Obama reminded us that no individual ever achieves “success” without the support systems of family, education, infrastructure, law and order and other governmental involvement, his enemies jumped on him and distorted his point through the derisive short-hand “you-didn’t build it.” Another example of Republican demagoguery.
11. The September national job report was sobering. It makes Obama’s re-election more difficult. But look: Everyone should understand that regardless of how “mixed” the results of Obama’s policies have been so far, replacing him with a Republican president would make things infinitely worse. Romney is a tax evader who hasn’t shown a shred of competence either in foreign policy or in domestic economic policy. To elect him would eliminate any chance of improvement.
