America as a Beacon of Decency: Can You Imagine?
As you look at the words at left, can you imagine?
I can’t, though I can imagine Biden’s winning, thus putting an end to this attempt to convert the United States into an authoritarian regime. What America is likely to look like three months hence will likely be a lot like what it looked like before Trump took office. In fact, the most probable state of affairs is as follows:
The rest of the world sighs in relief that this period of traitorous insanity is over, and, like they did when Nixon resigned in disgrace, it gives us another thumbs up for having the inner strength to fight off evil and stupidity.
We rejoin the Paris accord, re-establish the EPA, and restore the 100+ laws that formerly protected our skies, waterways, and forests. We fumble along with Big Oil as it gradually loses strength, due mainly to more countries’ joining in and banning the sale of new gas and diesel-powered automobiles.
We deploy science to deal with COVID-19, while realizing that it’s going to be very hard to put the genie back in the bottle with 7 million infected Americans.
We cease to defame the press, because there is no force driving the idea that organizations like the 170-year-old New York Times are making stories up out of thin air to denigrate the president with “fake news.” There is no reason to praise the mainstream media, however. It’s a for-profit entity, selling its infotainment services to Americans whose attention spans are shorter than those of goldfish.
Our economy goes back to what it was before Trump. Yes, the tax breaks for billionaires and the other atrocities go away, put there is no mechanism to keep big money out of politics, so we’re really just trading one form of corruption for another.
We do not “end racism,” as that’s completely impossible. Racism derives from ignorance, and ignorance derives from a low-quality education system, which, if it’s fixed at all, will require a huge commitment of resources and generations of time. What does happen to racism is that it goes back under the rock it crawled out from. Most of us come to accept that black lives actually do matter, where they hadn’t for 350 years, and people who can’t get that are ostracized from polite society once again.
Optimistically:
Biden is replaced in four years and we have no more centrist, business-as-usual politicians at high levels of the federal government. We elect progressives, and the United States starts to look more like the social democracies of Europe and Scandinavia than the feudal system of 500 years ago. No one is uninsured, uneducated, destitute, or homeless. Americans agree that having a more compassionate nation is well worth the price of paying slightly higher taxes, and our country shines like a beacon of justice and decency.
We implement something along the line of the “Green New Deal,” generating millions of stimulating, high-paying jobs and creating environmental solutions that can be deployed all around the globe.
Human civilization gradually reverses the course of hate, ignorance, and tribalism that it’s recently fallen into, and a global community begins to form. War is phased out in favor of diplomacy. As a world society, we slow come to see that no one is free and at peace until we all are.
