Limbo Land

Part One: Decline

NATIONAL POLITICS

There is no better example of America’s precipitous decline than to look at our political parties and the way the government we expected them to run now handles and mishandles the problems we expect it to solve.

Republicans:

Despite the seeming reality that the Republican Party has come to belong to Donald Trump – a man who became President not despite his open disrespect for our government and the people working for it but because of it – the truth is that the Republican Party we see today was reformed during the Reagan years in the 1980’s. Then, driven by forces helped by the religious right and by carefully-spoken racial attitudes, the party shifted from its historical position of supporting the needs of the wealthy to go deeper into conservative policies they could not win with in the 1960’s. They drove liberal Republicans in Congress and in State governments out of office. It became the party of Karl Rove’s “Big Lie” technique (keep telling it until people believe it) and then under subsequent leadership like Newt Gingrich, the party of No.

Unless the Republican Party holds the Presidency, it seems committed to saying “No” to anything the Democratic Party leadership proposes. Compromise? Gone. Bipartisanship? Only if it benefits key members and their States…otherwise “No”.

In New York City, where the Republican Party barely exists. It was always in the minority in the city and is now in upstate New York as well. Where it once controlled the State Senate, it no longer does.

It’s interesting that Mr. Trump, a political novice but a TV reality star, used the ‘Big Lie” approach to win powerful public support. What he understood better than those 16 who ran against him in the Republican Presidential primary and certainly Hillary Clinton, his Democratic opponent, was that millions of Americans no longer respected our government, felt that they had been forgotten, that immigrants were taking their place and totally distrusted the politicians they blamed for everything. Hence the Trump introductory speech featuring “Mexicans are rapists” and other severe anti-immigrant comments.

This was not a matter of misunderstanding democracy because few people can genuinely explain democracy to themselves or others. This was a matter of hate and when a big blonde TV personality showed the same feelings and shouted them loud and clear, this was the man for them. And still is.

Now Republican candidates who are political novices with no government experience think nothing of running for the US Senate and Governor using Trump and his Big Lie about the ‘big steal’ to gain his support in primary elections.

Candidates using one man’s obsession with being a loser to get something for themselves? Sure, why not?

Novices without a clear policy agenda using “common sense” as a reason for running? So what?

So this: Where there is no knowledge there can be no common sense…it cannot exist.

It makes perfect sense that Trump denier-candidates still speak of the Republican Party as the ‘party of Lincoln’. If you don’t know what you are talking about, and nobody can tell the difference, why not.

Democrats:

The Democrats are going in a different direction. They are at war with themselves. That problem is not new for them. But this time the fight exists in a very different way.

They are now the party of the old and knowledgeable vs. the young and uneducated being taught as our education system failed them. at a very different time and in a very inferior way.

There is a difference between stupid and ignorant. Stupid is when you know better and do something dumb; ignorant is simply not knowing at all.

The old seem unable to understand how the young – the essential progressive wing of the party – is sabotaging them with policy demands that while essential and meaningful totally lack the possibility of immediate implementation.

No matter. The demand is for NOW or the threat of withholding their votes on other key Democratic-led legislation; something like a brat lying on the floor holding his breath until he gets what he wants.

West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin will forever be the devil who stopped Joe Biden’s Build Back Better legislation. But it was the progressive wing of the party demanding “our way or we will not vote for the bipartisan infrastructure bill” that threw negotiations with Manchin off course and the rest is history…

The Democratic Party leadership has simply lacked the ability to do what all leaders in government must do – guide, direct and order the methods of activity and rewards for compliant newcomers.

Giving AOC and her squad important committee posts before they had shown any understanding of their role was stupid; LBJ turned over in his grave.

Perhaps this generation of parents might fear their children, but a government leadership of grandparents should know better.

Here are a few examples of what this Democratic Party split has meant to the nation and to those in New York.

The progressive demand for an end NOW to fossil fuels that run our electricity, heat, automobiles makes sense given their understandable fear of the future driven by what is happening with climate change now – decades before expert predictions of the future.

Yet even if America would launch a massive attempt to develop solar implements and wind-driven turbines there is no immediate way for them to be CONNECTED to existing structures across the country.

You cannot simply stop the critical source of energy day to day without a new source ready, established and able to take its place. Let’s hope the new legislation will begin to make a difference.

In New York the calls to Defund the Police after the George Floyd murder did not produce that result on either the State or local levels. But other changes were made which have hampered Police work in the new Adams administration.

This attempt to punish acts of Police brutality and misconduct (68 million dollars was the cost of settlements made last year) didn’t work but a newly elected young State Legislature and City Council did produce bail reform. And New York City has not seen a level of crime and willful gangsterism since the 1970s and 80’s.

The range and levels of crime are across the Board…dozens of shootings every night, gang activity in all the boroughs, people thrown off Subway platforms, Asian women attacked and robbed…it goes on and on. Office workers refuse to return to work and midtown New York is still full of empty high-rise office buildings.

The Mayor of New York cries out against bail reform to the State Legislature. A former State Senator of seven years, the Legislature ignores him.

Kathy Hochul running for a full term as Governor of New York refuses to recall the State Legislature to consider the problem because she knows that Democratic legislature will not.

The Mayor reports that just ten criminals have committed 485 crimes over 945 days and most are still free. The City Council looks the other way.

Here is where the ignorance comes in: The young progressives saw this as a way to fight racism. Change the fact that poor black and brown men accused of a crime are kept at Riker’s Island for months because they did not have the bail money. So, free them as the answer to what is a basic criminal justice system failure to provide more Judges to handle the overload of cases.

Recently, the NY State Legislature passed a law limiting the number of children in elementary, junior high and high school classrooms.

The law- laudable though it may be – ignored the fact that there are not enough school buildings, classrooms or teachers to accommodate this change. They approved it anyway.

If you do not know how to do something, chances are you will do it badly. That’s human.

If you do not know or care and do it anyway – that’s ignorance.

We are awash in ignorance.

Our political, education, healthcare, economic and criminal justice systems no longer produce what they once did.

And the limbo bar of success keeps going lower and lower.

But there is a reason for the decline we are experiencing that explains it and gives us hope.

That’s next.