One of the fundamental elements of liberalism is that it is willing to go beyond the norms of community beliefs in order to make societal changes that broaden the chances for justice, freedom and opportunity for everyone.
When the effort to make such changes succeeds, it is because the changes reflect and absorb the history of what really can work. The more they do, the greater the chance for success. When they don’t reflect what is known and what can be done…the attempt at “righting wrongs” can too often make things worse. If change-agents don’t recognize the reasons for failure they will never be corrected. “Well-meaning” exists when there is no understanding about what works. Well-meaning is rarely good enough but when it makes things worse it is unacceptable and must be abandoned.
We’re living in a ”well-meaning makes things worse” New York right now.
Critical changes of policy with absolutely no understanding of the steps necessary to do it right is usually the result of fundamental ignorance so that just providing “something better” can do just the opposite…and does.
BLACK LIVES MATTER?
George Floyd’s murder by white policemen while he was being filmed was a stunning example of the truth that does not go away: American racism and the subsequent violence that can accompany it continues.
It took a recent act of Congress making lynching a crime one hundred years after the fact for us to recognize that what we saw happen to George Floyd was just another form of lynching. There were no trees with black men or boys hanging from nooses so a local citizenry could watch. There was one man kneeling on another’s neck with the World watching.
And the World and this country noticed. Three things happened since that murderous day:
We’ve entered into a determined effort at diversity.
Policing stopped in city after city.
And a loosely formulated group called Black Lives Matter found its cause.
The organization was formed in 2013 as a decentralized, political community organized to fight racism and discrimination. When it acts it is to protest incidents of police brutality and racially motivated violence against black people.
The New York Times suggested that the Black Lives Matter movement may have been the largest in US history when it formed massive, vocal protest marches in cities across the United States on June 6, 2020 to protest the Floyd murder.
And yet today, with shooting crimes in black neighborhoods clearly out of control in New York and other major cities, there is not a single sound by or presence of Black Lives Matter to protest these incidents.
Perhaps BLM only acts when crimes against black people are committed by white policemen.
Perhaps BLM is satisfied with a headquarters that was once a famous Hollywood, California mansion, visited by the likes of Humphrey Bogart and Marilyn Monroe and has absolutely no interest in black lives being threatened – and ended – every night by black gangs that randomly shoot up black neighborhoods.
Perhaps BLM doesn’t really mean that Black lives do matter except when they are threatened by police; or maybe they haven’t heard that more black lives are lost to criminal acts by blacks against blacks than whites against blacks.
Whatever the case their silence speaks volumes.
But BLM was smart enough to recognize that in a world of social media, slogans mean everything. They successfully provoked a national effort to “defund the Police” – to rid them of program funds, to cut the number of police officers, to otherwise disrupt the relationship of the police in communities which need them.
That effort was quickly and vehemently supported by young politicians identifying as either progressives and/or Democratic Socialists – and their actions were supported by Mayors like Bill DeBlasio in New York playing to them, by quickly ordering a multi-billion dollar budget cut, dismissing an entire new class of police recruits, ending the plainclothes detective units charged with getting rid of guns and ending overtime pay for the NYPD officers.
Despite the fact that the plainclothes units are being reinstated as uniformed police by Mayor Eric Adams just to focus on getting rid of illegal guns, BLM expressed concern that they will lead to more police brutality.
Yet that legitimate concern highlights the reality that the nightly shootings for months and months in this and other cities seems not to concern BLM at all.
They are not represented at the meetings of city officials and parents and community leaders who continue to plead that enough is enough.
They are not conducting marches across the city calling for an end to black violence against blacks.
What they did not do is recommend that the way to end racial discrimination against those accused of a crime was to develop a bail reform law that frees criminals who aren’t accused of violent crimes.
That law came from a very different crew.
KNOW HOW
We realize very early that life isn’t fair. When Mom says no to something we want or something we’ve done, we complain “that isn’t fair”. How do we know what ‘fair’ means at that young age? No one has ever explained it.
It’s only when we grow up that we realize that life isn’t fair.
Now we know that when our founding Constitution declared that all Americans are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness…they really didn’t mean all…certainly not the slaves shipped from Africa or those who didn’t own property.
And so our history is marked with the never-ending struggle for equality of opportunity and fairness knowing full well that “all” still doesn’t mean everyone regardless of color, ethnicity or economic standing.
It is true that in the struggle for equality the most accepted path for opportunity and respect has been ’education’; that an education would help level the playing field of opportunity for those not born into it. And the possibilities for getting that education were among the great promises of America – a reputation as the only country where that opportunity existed for all.
But the truth is that America’s unparalleled public education system stopped working in the 1970’s and that this nation was following the course of history by losing its power because it stopped educating its young.
The result? Today we see “well meaning” substituting for “know-how”.
Would people with know-how insist that the criminal justice system would be fairer if bail was no longer required from those who couldn’t afford it but only for non-violent crimes?
And since we are asking questions: would anyone with know-how propose that a New Green Deal could simply overwhelm a fossil fuel industry that has been a force for years, or seek trillions for a host of good programs without having the votes to insure the passage of any of them?
These are loaded questions in a very difficult time for an America now capable of dividing itself on any given issue; an America which no longer seems to understand the difference between fact and fiction; an America so lost that it feels and sounds immature…tired of wearing masks to protect themselves from a disease like no other and so abandoning caution like children bored by a game.
Once there was a media made up of journalists who seemed to be so independent that we called then the Fourth Estate – government divided into an executive, a legislature and a judiciary and then journalists to help us find and understand the truth.
They are – by and large – gone.
We are living in a strange time when a pandemic has slowed the World down so that all of our differences and mistakes seem far worse than ever.
It has been many, many years since Congress acted in a unified effort to pass legislation despite differences and a great deal of self- concern. Now self-concern (being reelected) is all that is left.
It has been several generations or more since the Republican Party stood for a wide variety of legislative elements…even liberal ones. Now they seem to stand for nothing but the concerns of the wealthy and the fear of Donald Trump.
Once the Democratic Party had its heart in the lives of the working man. Today it wants the support of the monied class, is led by people of an older generation who spend their time trying to court the younger generation who – like children – simply want what they want because they want it.
In New York totally controlled by Democrats, this younger generation is pushing the old guard out of the way and passing legislation that is all about the worst well-meaning efforts anyone can make in the name of fairness.
This is America where we still are the nation people run to in an effort to find freedom and opportunity. While our education system will help these immigrants we must find the energy and brain power to again educate our young at least so they can live up to what was the basis for ‘public education’ in the first place…to make citizens knowledgeable enough to govern wisely and humanely.
An educated America led the World as the most powerful nation in recorded history. Losing that education we are becoming less but if we recognize how we can genuinely remake the system…an effort we have not made…solutions will be found to change the current ‘lost’ status.
There cannot be a “and if not, what then?”
4/18/2022
This is a well-written piece diagnosing the current problems in the American body politic.
The time has come for a re-alignment of the political parties, or perhaps more accurately, a new centrist and independent party that focuses more on workable solutions. Recent polling by respectable organizations such as Gallup and others have reported that 40%+ of American voters do not align with either the GOP or the Democrats.
As Ronald Reagan once said, “the time is now.” Perhaps the LP can take the lead in helping to form a new American 3rd Party. I am sure that there are many millennials willing to be part of this effort.
Professor Stephen R. Rolandi
Larchmont, NY
There is considerable food for thought in this posting. It’s beyond doubt that know-how beats well-meaningness when it comes to likelihood of good results, The former is much rarer than the latter.
Did the former NYC mayor cut the NYPD budget to please the defund advocates or was it part of across-the-board budget trimming?
I’ve heard members of the so-called fourth estate called pressitutues who work for corporate pimps. I suspect that this thought isn’t new.
The call for a new third party goes back a long way. This nation has quite a few “third” parties which will never coalesce