I’ve been thinking lately about all the doom and gloom in the country right now, and the Democratic primaries, and how hungry people are right now for change. The main political focus is on some horrendous problems that are causing significant and continuing hurt for most working people: the subprime mortgage mess, the tight credit market, job loss & unemployment, global warming, the health care crisis, Iraq, and the generally dismal state of the US economy. When conditions get this grim, people want solutions. But I’ve been thinking that even more than we need solutions right now, we need a new sense of who we are as a nation and where we are going. Otherwise, all we are in for is four years of slapping band aids on gaping wounds.
For most of my life, America has been the industrial leader of the free world. We made the most cars, the most steel, the most electronics, the most airplanes. We made the most and we made the best. Making stuff was our forte, and we loved it. Now we make very little. Asia has taken over the production of small electronics and cheap useless crap, India and Pakistan make our clothes, and Japan has cornered the auto market. The American automobile industry, which single-handedly created a prosperous middle class, is dead in the water. During the Bush administration this country has practically hemorrhaged industrial jobs. Thousands of people who used to earn middle class wages with good benefits are now out of work or adjusting to the crappy pay and depressing grind of corporate service sector jobs. NAFTA helped this to happen, but instead of looking backward to assign blame, it’s time to ask ourselves some hard questions about where we go from here.
It seems unlikely to me that the US will be returning as an industrial leader anytime soon. We simply can’t compete globally. What we could do though, if we had the vision and the guts, is to become the leader in green technology, renewable energy, and sustainable living. We have the knowledge and the resources. We have a crisis that makes such innovation wildly popular and desperately necessary. We have a crumbling infrastructure that could be replaced by a new aesthetic based on short-distance vehicles and human bipedal motion (a.k.a. “walking). All of these could create millions of new jobs.
Canada is already marketing an affordable electric car that can be recharged at home. (Check it out at www.zenncars.com. Zenn is and acronym for Zero Emission No Noise.) The state of Michigan is aggressively courting green industry to replace the dying gasoline auto industry. Individual households are learning about conservation and self-reliance because their jobs are disappearing, or they just suck. As a nation, we could follow suit, we could have a green agenda, and lead the world to a better future.
Not that I think for a moment that this will happen. Already the press and both major political parties are mocking Ralph Nader again, even though all he is doing is stating the obvious out loud. Right now we have a government that is of the corporation, for the corporation, and by the corporation. Even though the law currently says otherwise, we know that a corporation is not a person. Corporations exist for profit only. They do not make human choices, they do not make decisions that enhance the life of human beings. They make decisions that increase profit and enrich stockholders, no matter what the cost to the rest of us. Over the last eight years, we have watched half of the wealth in the US float up to 1% of the population, while the other 99% of us are still witnessing our standard of living erode minute by minute.
Sometimes I think we will not be able to change until everything falls down. I don’t want to think this. But experience has taught me that people rarely change until they have to. We are rapidly approaching that point, but we aren’t there yet. I just hope that once we get there, it won’t be too late. I hope Obama has a dream. I hope somebody has a dream. Anybody. And soon.
Nader is an activist first, and a politician as an afterthought. He’s not interested in building a political movement, or in anything which involves negotiation or compromise. Once again, he has made it clear that he does not want to be involved in any political party whatsoever.
There are still good candidates running for the Greens. Check out GPus.org – Jesse Johnson, Cynthia McKinney, Kent Mesplay and Kat Swift are all excellent candidates. Personally, I support Jesse Johnson.
Unfortunately, Nader is the only name the press is likely to report on in conjunction with the Greens.