HAPPY BIRTHDAY, AMERICA

      The 244th birthday of the United States of America passed recently. Since most of the traditional Independence Day celebrations could not be held we were forced to face probably the biggest existential threat to our existance in my lifetime. It is not a single threat, but comes from multiple directions: we have a pandemic that shows no sign of waning. This is further complicated by a president that refuses to wear a facemask, and insists on throwing his people into a petri dish of Corona virus by putting them in close places with no demand for masks. We face an economic crisis brought on by that pandemic, and the necessary closure of businesses. Additionally there is ample evidence that much of the financial relief passed by congress is going to the richest businesses. We face a climate which is warming and its concomitant ecological damage. Some 96% of climate scientists agree on this danger and that it is caused by the burning of fossil fuels. Only businesses which depend on fossil fuels for their viability, plus republicans who depend on those businesses for campaign financing reject the scientific cautions. But there's more. We are facing street protests brought on by excessively harsh policing toward people of color. This has been exacerbated by mass incarceration and outright brutality in the way laws are enforced for some, while those of high status are subjected to a softer landing. All of this and more is accompanied by the rise of white racism and fascism. Whether we celebrate our 245th birthday, reborn or descend further into an authoritarian oligarchy remains to be seen.

     There are many people responsible for this sad state of affairs, beyond those hinted at, and explicitly stated above. Of course we can add Christian zealots, Republican loyalists, business elites, and the usual group of racists and fascists. But one group that gets too little blame is the the small group of 3rd party purists. Based on past experiences with the electoral college, this country is split about 52% 48%, with the Democrats in the plurality. Republicans have used voter suppression to give them an edge in the battleground states. Twice in this century the Democratic presidential nominee has won the plurality but lost the electoral college. On the Republican side, George H W Bush lost the a second term because a 3rd party candidate took just enough votes to give the contest to the other parties candidate in 1972, but that is rare. You would have to go back to 1912 when Teddy Roosevelt's progressive party took enough votes from William Howard Taft to give the election to Woodrow Wilson. What makes this more frequent in this century is that we have watched the bulwarks of social progress be eroded away by the tides of Republican dominance. That peninsula of social advancement has been attacked until it has separated from the political landmass. Since it is Republicans that have consistently chipped away at those social advances we had relied on, it is up to Democrats to band together to select and elect a viable candidate to legislate and govern. Often that means voting for the lesser of two evils.  A prospect distasteful to the purist. Often there is good reason for that distaste. Hell, that reason is nearly universally clear! Because we have not done the distasteful things that Republicans have done, their purists outnumber our purists and win those closely contested spots. Where they then create more distasteful tactics that give them the advantage in subsequent elections. And thus, democracy is lost.

     Perhaps this moment in time may turn out to be an inflection point. The electorate is abandoning Donald Trump and his party. Joe Biden is not the candidate we might have hoped for, but he is the candidate who we must choose, should we not wish to see a Trump second term. The thing that we have long hoped for, candidates who actually live up to Democratic hope's, are becoming more numerous. We must put our energy behind them in this and subsequent elections. We must nurture more of them, and we must pressure serving legislators to pass election financing laws, laws we once had in place (though they were even then porous). We must push for social safety nets that we once had in place, albeit insufficiently, we must change election laws that make voter suppression possible, something once in place, though less effective than we might have wished, laws that strengthen, rather than weaken environmental regulation, yet another thing we had some control over till recently, though not what many of us wanted. In short, we have fewer regulations protecting us, because we elect legislators from a party hostile to regulation. Why? In some cases because we want to end abortion, in some cases because we seek a more God-fearing candidate whose connection to Jesus is questionable, in some cases because we fear socialism as we witness corporate socialism growing. In some cases because the Democratic candidate does not hue closely enough to the purists among us. And nearly always we lose and things get worse. 

     It took nearly a century for slaves to be emancipated. Another century for them to be protected by a voting rights act. It took 75 years for women to be allowed to vote, another 75 years for womens rights to be recognized. It took less than 50 years for republicans to weaken these regulations, all too often because the candidate was insufficiently Christian (Carter), too close to a president who got oral sex in the Whitehouse, not liberal enough (John Kerry), or possibly guilty of destroying emails and other crimes that were implied but without evidence (Hillary). In exchange we got people that changed the Supreme Court from the great liberal courts of the 50s and 60s to the conservative court today. A court that granted business "personhood", a court that weakened the voting rights act, a court that allows deeper encroachment of religion in our secular life. And don't make me enumerate the tax cuts that have weakened our economy. 

     We must defeat Donald Trump in this election. We must tip the Senate democratic, and retain the house. When that is done we must push our legislators to punish those who have done nothing to restrain an over-reaching president, punish the president for his crimes and anyone connected. And, while we are accomplishing that we must resume our quest for justice and fairness. This is a challenging quest and won't be accomplished in the short time it took us to get where we now are. Progress is measured in increments, it is lost in bushels.