Today I am thinking it is time to write. It’s been a while since I did, almost 3 years. But, what has happened in those years almost defies imagination, at least my imagination was too impoverished to imagine a porn star president, a republican party that has gone overboard to expose their racism, vicious capitalism, favoring the rich to the disadvantage of the poor, cutting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, trying to privatize what could only be fairly adjudicated by the public government sector. Add to that the fairly clear racism of the criminal in the Whitehouse which many of his cronies in the private sector refuse to admit, even trying to shame those who are affected by it, blaming the victims. The implicit violence of the rhetoric surrounding this president’s language is a deep shame to most citizens in the United States. Add to that the benign response of most of the Republicans in Congress as well as outright defense of policies that are both inhumane and a shock to the moral compass that should drive leadership, and I am just about speechless.

Finally the dehumanization of our fellow citizens becomes clear. First, education has been under attack by the mostly republican administrations in the nation and states of the past 30 years. This doesn’t mean that educators are blameless, but that they have often been the recipients of decisions that they cannot control, decisions made by those who have no investment in education or science, and make educators out to be the enemy of the people. Second, the disparagement and lies that “capitalists” have used to reduce and eliminate unions, undercutting their bargaining power, and reducing the lives of workers to the status of proletariat, living on wages that ensure their continued dependence on the company and a persistent poverty. Irrespective of the theories that have come to the defense of a person’s right to work without being saddled by union dues, the writing is on the wall. These people defending these theories are giving more wealth and power to the companies against the worker. Third, complaints about how bad medical coverage is provided by insurance companies is coming to a head. These companies support giving multimillions of dollars to executives, while carrying on policies that deny coverage to people who have fairly paid their premiums. The red tape required to administer healthcare is outrageous requiring the employment of a whole industry of people to both understand and distribute services. And those costs and services are still impossible to predict, and the variety of health plans makes insurance payments problematic in the extreme.

Capitalism in its pure form is an unstable social system. In fact, capitalism is not a social system at all. Under the constraints of ethical realism, capitalism would be forced to provide living wages and benefits, close the loopholes that create a dependent and impoverished workforce, and reign in the salaries of executives and management, provide real and substantial healthcare for its workforce that didn’t force individuals to go bankrupt to pay their hospital bills. If it is to operate, it requires an equitable social system, not a government that just gives corporations what they want without constraints. Further, the corporations that are profiting from the broad freedoms afforded within our republic should be becoming responsible for the maintenance of the stability of our society, not the rapacious scalping of its citizens for profit.

The recent cries about socialism really have nothing to do with any useful version of socialism, which also requires an ethical realism to administer. But rather, these are thinly veiled accusations of communism. This is rhetoric without logos, or ethos, rhetoric that expects and preys upon the ignorance of people, not on their best well-governed sensibilities. It uses the sinister pathos of the mob, trading on the worst instincts of a threatened people. It is an attempt to govern by threats of impending doom using fear of the other, and fear of losing. There is little trade with truth, or facts, or indeed with the real world. The free press, supposedly, and in its best lights, is there to guarantee a critical eye is cast over those who claim to govern in our name. But it has now been accused of being the enemy of the people by the very people who are under suspicion. Yes, yes, yes, the press is not blameless, but the people who are swallowing the bad faith arguments about the press being the enemy of the people are buying into the machinery of tyranny under a false notion of freedom.

So, what do we do about all this. I am unsure. I know what I would desire, realism in government and industry, fairness in the distribution of goods and services, and get the dirty money out of government itself.

Predictions? Universal health care in 10 years, maybe.