critical thinking

Ordinarily, this is where you would see a pic of my adorable daughter.  Tonight, however, we saw a frighteningly close race for the office of the President of the United States.  So there’s a collective sigh of relief.  And no pic.  She was dependably adorable today, but I’ve been  distracted.  Now that it’s a lock, I’m watching Fox News.  They don’t even try to be impartial over there, do they.  That is a room full of defeat.  And the reams of excuses!  Shouldn’t there be a law forcing them to call it news entertainment, like the Daily Show and Colbert?  Wait – that’s a grossly unfair comparison.  Jon and Stephen use facts for comedy.  Fox passes comedy off as fact.

The popular vote is uncomfortably close.  What this says to me is that the general populace is frustrated at what they perceive as a lack of momentum in economic recovery.  That says to me not enough people are aware of where that inertia is coming from.  Punching right through the fog, you realize that right there is why the Republican party still exists at all.  It’s a rich boys club devoted to staying that way, and enough people are out there willing to believe in things like trickle down theory and voting the same way daddy did.

I mean, I get it, not everybody believes that a nation should provide for its people, or that if everybody invests in everybody, everybody gets more.  Some people really do believe that the best way is every man for himself, and if I get crushed, well, I wasn’t trying hard enough.  I firmly believe, and always will, that thinking that way is pathetically short-sighted.  Doomed to failure in the face of deeper thinking and farther reaching strategy.  Here’s a confusing illustration: if you can get to the top just by keeping everybody else down, then you never have to be any better than just better than them.  You are intensely vulnerable to someone from an environment where everybody worked together to raise the bar overall.  You can be certain that his qualifications will exceed yours, because he had to work harder to rise above his competition.  A society where only the chosen few can succeed, and do so at the expense of the majority, can’t hope to compete with a society that promotes a stronger collective.

So the insidious part, of which the old suits of the Republican party are perfectly aware, is that they no longer need to climb the backs of lesser men.  Business has grown past borders.  The American middle class is irrelevant to the American elite.  The nation’s economy might depend on middle class spending, but the profits of the corporations owned by the 1% do not depend on the nation’s economy.  All they need the middle class for now is electing favorable politicians, so that nobody fucks with the laws that keep them rich.

But wait, you argue, if the middle class isn’t spending money, the corporations will have no profits.  Yeah, duh, I know.  This is my entire point.

So how do you keep the middle class spending money?  It’s not by giving them tax breaks.  Both Dems and the GOP keep screwing that up.  That’s just election bait.  You keep them spending money by creating an environment of stability and security.  People spend more when they know there’s more coming.  Simple fact.  So tax them fairly, tax everyone fairly.  And use that money to create stable infrastructure.  Universal health care.  The highest standards of public education.  Social programs that promote ability.  Free post secondary education.

Man, read those words again.  You just know that that place, wherever it is, is a happy place where people spend money.  Low crime and a very healthy economy.  And lots of extremely competitive professionals, globally speaking.

Or you can deregulate the financial sector, promote cronyism, and reward backstabbing.  High crime, prisons beyond capacity with the poor and uneducated, a ludicrously top-heavy economy, and a public education system that barely passes muster as a babysitting program.  Never mind the military spending that could, in one year, put every child in the country through school from kindergarten through a doctorate of their choice.

Anyway, rant rant.  I can accept conservatism insofar as it keeps liberals from spending too freely.  Money should not be burned.  That said, I cannot accept the majority of what seems to me a political stance with woefully short-sighted thinking.  That, of course, only has legs if you believe in your country.  If you don’t care what happens to your country, then by all means, vote to slash public programs and close schools.  Make teaching a minimum wage job.

Oh dear, I am going on at length.  And it’s not like I’m going to change the mind of any conservative who happens to be reading this.  Like any conservatives read this.  So moving on!  Four more years!  Let’s see some Change!  Optimism Prime!

In other news much closer to the heart, while I was playing with Little Peppermint today, she grabbed my fingers and looked right at her tiny fist.  Twice!  Cause and effect!  Connected dots!  Geeenyus!  Then the moment passed and she forgot she had hands.  But it was a fantastic moment.  Twice!  She’s very smart.  And only seven weeks old.  She’ll be transcribing Greek literature by Christmas.