The Perverse Inverse: How To Heal America

 

The Perverse Inverse:  How To Heal America

 

As America stumbles, the odds increase that we will be ruled by Trump or someone in his vein.  A Tucker Carlson, Ted Cruz or Josh Hawley.  Dictatorship becomes more probable in times of political unrest and pernicious corruption.

Trump himself did a lot to advance our decline.  He upped the graft, wrecked alliances, and cemented international opinion that the US has gone bonkers. His goal, after all, is still maximum adulation.  He craves the spotlight himself, rather than a competent US on the international stage.

How do we save democracy?  We should ask how Trump came to power in the first place.  A big part of it is racism, a virulent fulcrum used by the Republicans at least since the Southern Strategy.   But what other evil effect heightened the hate, added more leverage, and tipped the scales to fascist Trump?  

The answer is the utter misery of the people, accompanied by continued fleecing. It’s hard to choose an epitome.  But how about Big Pharma reaping profit off heroin-strength opioids.   People suffered.  Loved ones died.  The rich battened their coffers.

This is the crux of it: the economic system is stuck in a perverse inverse proportion.  Benefit to the wealthy means suffering to the majority.  During the pandemic, the stock market sailed upward. 

In contrast, when wages rise, the stock market suffers, due to worries of inflation.  The perverse-inverse has been entrenching for a long time.  Now many people are ready to accept a monarch who promises to ‘shake things up’.

The misery of the people has awesome political clout.  Republicans are able to get praise by promoting any sort of a job, even the most mindless, meaningless, benefit-less, and temporary.  This in the wealthiest country in the world. 

What needs to happen, to inoculate against the takeover by a Trump, Carlson or Cruz?  It’s simple.  Get rid of the perverse-inverse, the parasitic economics.  Try to imagine a healthy system, the sort advanced by Adam Smith, where benefit to business also benefits the people.  How shocking.

As it stands, healthy economics is going to require careful recalibration.  It will have to be enacted slow, and probably with some short-term compensations.  We can’t immediately get rid of the casino stock market initiated by Reaganomics.

But change needs to happen, and proceed steadily.  The jacking up of Game Stop does nothing to help the general public.  Or improve the company.  Indeed, why strive to be a competent company when you exist to gamble with your shares?

A lot of wealthy people want to be taxed more.  They even ask for it, some of them in op-eds.  Change, to a large degree, is about culture.  It is about ethics.  It is about seeing yourself as a member of a country-sized family, at least as much as a competitor for cash. 

History tells us that the elites can and will tilt toward dictatorship.  Jackbooted tactics enforce the ‘law & order’ needed for happy oligarchs and suffering masses.

By continuing the skewed status quo, we advance the pitiable decline.  Or we can become reasonable and sane.

Right now--this moment--this is democracy’s last stand.  We can fall into the spiral of dark history.  The decline of the American empire.  Or we can buck the trend.  Reverse the slide.  Show that we are an adaptable republic.  A truly great nation. 

Anyone calculating their own best interest should step back from the perverse-inverse, and embrace mutual benefit instead.  Why?  For the simple reason that dictators not only accelerate chaos and decline, they also foment war. 

Let us revisit the words of someone who had the insight of proximity to ultimate destructive force:  I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

 

 

 

=