The thing that keeps popping into my mind as more details of the president’s budget emerge is the notion of how small-bore our political leaders are about everything. We face enormous problems – climate changes, massive unemployment, deindustrialization, economic inequality, rampant militarism, an out-of-control justice and penal system, rampant gun violence, and so on – and yet our politicians behave like the wizened, stingy little men they are and fail again and again to recognize the scale of what’s confronting us. Obama is no exception, his desire to reach a “Grand Bargain” with the Republicans so overriding that he appears to have forgotten who stood out in the sun, rain, whatever, for hours and voted for him last November.
Honestly, it’s hard to imagine that a Democratic president, serving in the wake of two decades of steady decline for the poor and working class, would opt for a plan that would cut the meager supplemental retirement checks of elderly people in order to preserve preferential treatment for the nation’s wealthy, who have been doing just fine since the Reagan years, thank you very much. He talks about balanced approaches and shared sacrifice, but what he seems to forget is that the vast majority of us have already carried more than our share of sacrifice. Many have paid with their jobs/careers, others with their homes, their retirement funds. And they are supposed to give up more on top of that? Ludicrous.
This is not a new formula, nor is it a surprise. Obama has been signalling this decision for a few years. He is just following the example of previous Democratic party presidents, particularly that of Bill Clinton, who was a master triangulator and who ruled in a way that assumed the poor, the workers, people on the left, and people of color had no where else to go politically. The only remedy for this cynicism is push back. Politicians respond to public pressure – it there is any “law of gravity” in politics, that is it. Look at how quickly the Occupy Wall Street movement changed the conversation over a year ago. It has since drifted back to austerity and small-mindedness, but that can be overcome. Look at the gun debate, at immigration, at gay rights. There is movement because politicians are looking at the masses of people moving these issues forward.
So… if anyone is going to save the poor, the disabled, the elderly, from a greater level of penury (imposed to service the interests of the rich), it will be us. Make a ruckus…. or they’ll fuck us. That is all.
luv u,
jp
