I want to keep this essay as succinct as possible, and so discussion of the various topics chosen will not be as in-depth as they would be if I were writing on only a single topic. Therefore, in keeping with the air of brevity that will surround the body of the essay, let me begin with this: The 2020 election will come down to the difference between people who care, and people who don’t. I hate to simplify things to that extent, but it really does frame the 2020 general election in its proper context. I should, however, be just a little more specific in this, and so I shall revise that opening statement on the election to: The 2020 election will come down to the difference between people who care for the world beyond their immediate reach, and people who don’t.
When I say ‘care,’ I mean, specifically, the difference between people who see only their basic, immediate, financial, or cultural needs and desires, and people who take a broader, more holistic look further into the future. Those who look further into this future see and act upon not only their own needs and desires, but those of the planet and all of its peoples as well.
Allow me to be specific regarding four of the issues which will direct this campaign:
Fiscal Policy and Taxation
I am not exactly certain why this is an issue I need to discuss, but it is. It is, because there is no area of American political life in which fear and untruths are used more rampantly, than taxation. Conservatives have long used the spectre of the “tax and spend democrat” to keep its party afloat. They have had to do this, because, really, they haven’t had much else to use in order to bring a sufficient number of middle-class voters to the polls to vote for them. This ploy worked for several decades, but now the truth is coming out, and the neo-conservatives who have taken control of the republican party are being shown for what they are. Their ‘philosophy,’ for lack of a better term, is not ‘tax and spend,’ it is just ‘spend.’
The results of such policies are inevitable; higher deficits, cuts to social programs designed to help those in poverty climb out and into a condition of self-sustainability in a rapidly evolving social economy, and fewer and fewer dollars available to spend on education for our children in order to insure that they are able to compete in the inter-connected global economy. This, combined with an unabated growth in military spending, can lead to only two things; economic disaster and war. Regarding war in this context, we could ask: “Why is there still war in the world, with all of the death and destruction it has caused throughout history?” The answer is simple; there is still war, because two things persist in human culture. First, there is organized religion. Second, there is always a very small segment of every society that makes very large sums of money off of war.
The difference in the 2020 election will, in this sphere of activity, come down to the difference between those who are still susceptible to the republican party’s efforts to protect the wealth of a small segment of society by raising, once again, the ghoul of ‘tax and spend,’ and those who are tired of watching the vast wealth generated by more than a hundred million American citizens and immigrants flow into the hands of a smaller and smaller cabal of the ultra-wealthy. People who, thanks to republican taxation policy, pay less in taxes than a middle-class family living pay-check to pay-check.
Environmental Policy
There is no more stark division between the two groups of voters who will come forward in the 2020 election than how people look at environmental policy. This includes not only our policies regarding how we treat our rivers, forests, and other environmentally vulnerable aspects of life on earth at the local level, but also the broader issues surrounding the deleterious effects of our species on the changing climate of the world. It is, in many respects, the same as the difference between people who voted for Barak Obama and people who voted for John McCain in 2008.
By 2008, the country had endured eight years of the Bush Administration’s attempts to remove science from governmental policy in scientific matters in favor of religious superstition. Senator Obama was very forceful in stating that he intended to return science to its rightful place in several areas of policy which George W. Bush had handed over to the lords of superstition and their “it’s in the bible” (and, for lack of a better term) bullshit. John McCain and his running mate, the crazy Sarah Palin, in opposition to science, were happy to leave these vital areas of scientific and medical research in the hands of right wing evangelical power brokers.
I have often wondered why someone would argue against doing all we can to protect this planet and its resources, and so I have posed a question to numerous people who either completely deny the scientific data on human influence on the planet’s continuous warming, or who grant that human activity may have a negligible effect upon climate change, but not enough to warrant any sort of change in energy policy and/or means by which we feed the electrical grid.
The question I pose is quite simple, and is: “Why do you think these things?” After enduring a few minutes of being berated as a tree-hugging liberal, I continue to pursue an intelligible answer. Without fail, the issue, for them, comes down to money. Specifically, they declare that various corporate interests in the fossil fuel and related industries wouldn’t be able to make money hand over fist if we start to regulate their activities, legislate real and consequential protections for this planet, and move purposefully toward a sustainable energy grid based upon clean and renewable energy sources.
INSERT: –> An open letter to the fossil fuel industry:
Dear Fossil fuel industry: Thanks! No, really, thanks. You have, over the last one hundred seventy-five years, been one of the great motor forces that have allowed innumerable, beneficial advances in humanity’s drunken stagger through history. Yes, you also powered the “German War Machine” of World War II, and continue to fuel the imperial war machine of the United States, but I’m not here to bring up the bad things you’ve done. I’m here to say “thank you” and “good bye.”
Good bye, fossil fuel industry and all of your associated lobbyists. You’ve had a good run, but your time is up. Unfortunately, you have become a nasty, belligerent relic of another time; another century. Go to sleep, go on a permanent vacation, go anywhere, but just go. You’re done, so do us all a favor and go quietly into the night. Fade away. Seriously, if you don’t, the people of this world will eventually have to shoot you in the back of your head, and no one wants to have to clean that up, especially you. So just go. See ya, wouldn’t want to be ya! Bye.
That was fun, but back to our story. So, in 2020, when people go to the polls, they will vote either for a candidate who vows to protect this planet from the excesses of modern, corporate, vulture capitalism, or they will vote to allow vulture capitalism to not only eat them whole, but continue to defile and destroy our planet in the process.
Foreign Policy
First of all, I have to state a rather unsavory fact; most Americans are completely unaware of the complex nature and intricate patterns of relationships that make up the whole of US foreign policy. This “environment of nuance,” as I shall label it, has been a target of the contemporary conservative movement for more that thirty years. Their unrelenting attacks on elitists, a.k.a. people with high levels of education, experience, and expertise, who know both what they’re doing and the subjects about which they talk, have resulted in a national view that American foreign policy should be conducted in the manner that pecking orders among boys are established on an elementary school playground: through firepower.
The conservatives of yesteryear, as hawkish as they were, had an understanding of, and appreciation for, this environment of nuance. The rank and file conservatives of today do not, and this has led them to create the term “Deep State.” In the views of today’s social and racial conservatives, anyone with the education, expertise, and experience mentioned above, are operatives of the deep state.
This has led to the marginalization of complex and effective diplomacy and the intellectually elevated people who carry it out in favor of military adventurism. Generals, after all, can never be members of the deep state, they are, after all, generals. I, personally, cannot even imagine the logic behind that statement, but some, apparently, can. In order to conduct a comprehensive and effective foreign policy, your country’s diplomats must be everywhere that they can be, and the worst facet of America’s simplistic ‘diplomacy through firepower’ efforts means that our military must be everywhere.
In terms of foreign policy, the difference in the 2020 election will come down to two differing viewpoints. First, it will be between those people who care how America pursue its interests, and those who don’t. Will we pursue our interests in a diplomatic environment of nuance, or will we pursue these interests through the playground logic of diplomacy through the barrel of a gun?
Second, and most importantly, the difference in the 2020 election will also come down to those who care exactly what interests America pursues. Will we, as a nation-state pursue the interests of the wealthy and their money; embracing the saying that “The business of America is business,” or will we pursue the global interests of freedom, equality, and peace?
This second option is the interest imagined not only by the founders of this American experiment, but also, if we are to believe the conservative christians who tell us that God has a hand in what America does, of God itself. The first option, is the interest of the world’s enemy.
The Constitution
Here we have the real, core issue facing this country as we move forward. This is the heart of the matter; the “crux of the biscuit” as it were.
I maintain that the people or territories of any nation-state can be attacked from without by an almost innumerable set of forces, but their constitution can only be attacked from within. It is only by nefarious, internal means that a constitution — the legal protections, rights, liberties, and responsibilities therein bestowed upon the citizens and others who live under its umbrella — can be undermined.
The Constitution of the United States of America is under attack today as never before, and really, when you think about it, that is the saddest and most troubling political statement any person could write. It is sad and troubling, but given the manner in which the political climate of this country has evolved over the last forty years, not unexpected.
Those who know me know that I am a big fan of Thomas Jefferson, and I quote him more frequently than any other person who played a role in the founding of this country. Today shall be no different, for Mr. Jefferson said the following: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is natural manure” Any democracy must occasionally pass through such a painful renaissance; for time, institutional processes, and the day to day burden of knowing that it is up to each of us to keep the republic, can drain the individual of their enthusiasm for living in a democratic state.
I used to think that it would require approximately a decade of the American people being subjected to life under the jackboot of a fascist dictatorship for them to finally realize what they had and lost in this great American experiment. I was wrong. The mid-term elections of 2018 and the continuing elections of 2019 have shown, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that all it took was two years of a man like donald trump in the White House. His presence there, and the previously unseen level of corruption and outright contempt for the principles of this republic he brought to this revered office, raised the alarm within the American electorate that their republic, and all for which it should stand in the world, was in jeopardy.
So, regarding the issue of this country’s constitution, the 2020 election will come down to the difference between those understand that policy will always flow between the interests of the left and the right, and in so doing, we, as a nation, will move inexorably forward toward “a more perfect union,” and those who are prepared to discard such a sacred document in reverence for the persona of an individual who has somehow captured their spirit.
Our constitution must remain intact, and this means several things, Primarily, for my purposes here, it means that its provisions for punishment of those who abuse the power vested in them for their own personal and political gain must be enforced without deference.
Closing
I realize that this essay is written with a very broad brush, and that an ‘environment of nuance’ exists within each of the four sections above. I also realize that there are numerous aspects of this country’s future that will impact people’s voting behavior in the next presidential election that I did not discuss; immigration, and racial justice are just two of the subjects about which I could have written. I chose the four divisions above because they are some of the most contentious and important items we must consider when November 3rd, 2020 dawns.
My dear readers, this country is at a crossroads like never before, and we must watch our legislators carefully to see how they handle the solemn duty that will soon be laid before them. The evidence against this president is mounting quickly and shows no signs of diminishing its pace. If anything, I believe we can expect it to accelerate. This means that the United States Senate will almost definitely hold a trial to decide if this president shall be removed from office. We must watch to see if they make their decision based upon the evidence, or some lower teir considerations.
I wish each and every one of you peace,
Christoph Niemand