For the Common Good — Apparel and Accessories on Shopify – my new store.
Enter Donald Trump 1.0
When Donald Trump was elected the first time, a lot of people thought it was a bad idea. At the outset, I could see him for the petty, thin-skinned, narcissistic, greedy human being he was. I believed Bill Maher when he said America was in a slow-moving coup, so I started a blog on WordPress: The View from Here (it was called Against the Wind then). Then I started selling bumper magnets on Wix (Big Blue Wave) with the idea that if enough people put them on their cars, we could be nudged to “Tax the Rich.” That led to creating and selling t-shirts, opening an Etsy storefront (BlueWavePolitics) and promoting a Democrat wave in election 2018, then again in 2020.
Along the way, Robert B. Reich, through his books, introduced me to the common good – that which does the most good for the most people. The Common Good is the glue necessary to hold us together… and we have lost that.
President Biden began the process of restoring the Common Good. He started repairing our crumbling infrastructure, threw a lifeline to working Americans during the pandemic, invested in Climate Change mitigation, lowered prescription drug prices, relieved student debt, expanded over-time pay, expanded access to contraception, reduced junk fees, put a cap on senior drug prices, and created more jobs than any president in history. Biden was the most consequential president of my lifetime except, possibly, LBJ.
Then came Trump 2.0. It paralyzed the Democrat Party. The silence of our elected Democrats was deafening. This time Trump made sure to appoint people loyal to him instead of the Constitution regardless of qualifications. Democrats? Silent. The coup was underway. He immediately began dismantling the progress made by Biden. He let tax cuts for the middle class expire and made tax cuts for the rich permanent. He started a campaign to silence the free press. Started retribution campaigns against anyone he did not like. People took to the streets. Elected Democrats hid in a closet, at least in part, because a sizable portion of them had become infected with the corrupting influence of the rich surrounding us. It was now time to start promoting what we need more than political parties: The Common Good
The Great Divide
If we are to survive the remainder of the Trump 2.0 regime, we must find more Common Good with our fellow Americans or there will be blood in the streets. The American Civil War may have officially started with the 1861 attack on Fort Sumpter, but 1860 America was already rife with division. I mention that here because, right now, America’s division are wider and deeper than those in 1860. Personally, I am nearly immobilized waiting for the right spark from the right person at the right time for wholesale shooting to begin.
Standing in the middle of the great divide is Donald J Trump but, it is not Trump that divides us. Nor is it the multi-headed snake of cultural division over the attacks on women, LGBTQ+ rights, immigration, DEI, patriotism, racism, antisemitism, or for that matter, war with Iran. Those are all false flags.
Endless War
The source of the Great American Divide is not left vs. right, Democrat vs. Republican, liberal vs. conservative. The smoke blinding and choking us from the fires of our divisions obscures who intentionally started and stoke those fires: The Rich. The Great American Divide is the Rich vs. everyone else. This was the truth in 1860. It is true today. Class War is the war that never ends.
Post WWII
The rich so completely destroyed American Common Good in the 1920s that it caused the Great Depression that, then, allowed Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in 1932, to become our 32nd president. Using Keynesian economic principles, he transformed America. It produced the largest middle class in the history of the world because he invested in The Common Good. Decent paying union jobs, excellent public education, progressive income taxes, and inexpensive food and housing. By the 1950s, the rich were already hacking away at our Common Good. This is when education funding began to decline (because uneducated people are easier to dupe).
Reagan
Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980. What followed can only be described as the ongoing rape of the Common Good. Reagan busted unions to lower wages. He cut the tax rate on the richest among us from 95% to 39%. The tax shortfall was taken out of education and other government programs. Each successive president continued with the destruction of the Common Good.
Bush, the first, raised taxes on the middle class. Clinton gutted welfare and changed banking rules (making the Great Recession possible). Bush, the2nd, cut taxes on the Rich three times and privatized government creating more Rich people. The cost of governing went up while the goods and services went down (paying more and getting less). Obama rescued the banks that created the Great Recession while abandoning working people who lost their homes. The Democrats lost the 2010 election (36% voter turnout) handing complete control of 32 state houses to Republicans who gerrymandered their way into permanent minority rule. The Supreme Court declared money to be free speech opening the flood gates allowing the Rich to buy elections.