We get hung up on powerful interests being in our way, not realizing we could just walk around them
There is a clear, quick way to bypass most of the impediments to making the economy be about the people. A way that, if carried out by Democratic or progressive groups, would get voters behind them again.
What are the odds of that happening? I won’t address that, but here is the basic guideline.
Trump has demonstrated, in a counter-productive way, how much can be changed if the people are prompted to demand a set of changes, and a leader becomes the vehicle for them to get that change.
Of course what Trump promises versus what he’ll do are different but the point here is, a leader said, “I’ll provide radical change” of a kind many voters found appealing, they gave him the vote, and as a result radical change is possible.
The lesson for the left is they often get focused on trying to undo the grip of powerful self-interests. The patron founder of DCReport, David Cay Johnston, has spent a career writing about that grip in hopes that exposing it would weaken it. The slogan of this site is, “We report what they do, not what they say.” Robert Reich has spent much of his career focused similarly. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders rant about it and have had occasional bits of success fighting it (e.g creating the CFPB). Fighting that grip involves battles like undoing the Supreme Court’s allowing corporations to spend enormously on elections, vastly expanded action to break up monopolies and near monopolies, returning taxes to being much more progressive, undoing thousands of laws and regulations shaped by wealthy interests.
All of that effort is necessary, but it can also be a hang-up that distracts from seeing that it’s possible to not bother to stop and fight it, but simply push past it. We stop and fight because we don’t realize we could push past. We don’t know we could because we are struck by the size of that powerful influence, dazzled by it, sort of brain washed into not realizing the people have the real power, and that those self-interests are, by comparison, not as insurmountable as they seem.
Trump has demonstrated this by rallying the people around a bundle of radical proposals, winning their votes, and starting to radically change how government is run. In his case it’s done without either truthfulness or the best goals, but the point is he’s done it. It could alternatively be done by a different movement with better goals and with genuineness. It’s an option that has been ignored for decades and the resulting vacuum has enabled counter-productive people with the wrong goals. The result is now leading to change of the wrong kind.
Yes, Trump had much support from rich interests, and much of what he’ll do will favor the rich, but he rallied the people with promises favorable to the people. And note how many of the rich had to change direction to hitch themselves to the winning group. The tech titans that were against him are now for him. Note the Koch brothers network of rich conservatives that had been so central but has faded and are no longer in the inner circle. The Republican party had to radically change itself to align with him. Yes, the rich and the powerful are there, but rather than directing what happens, they’ve had to adapt to join.
What better set of goals could be championed? See my earlier piece, There is No Political Party for the People. They wouldn’t solve all the problems. They don’t address many social issues. But if our citizenry were living in a country that clearly prioritized the people, if they felt certain they and theirs could always earn a decent living and have a government that favors them, there would be less of the desperate looking for scapegoats. There would be less fertile ground for demagogues to foster trouble.
The people have the power. The key leader is just the catalyst. We’ve done it before, in this country, within living memory of some citizens, when FDR was elected and radically changed the economy to focus on the people.
This is not a revelation that Trump brings about. It’s been in plane sight. I described a version of it in my book “US: Everything is Done By US, We Can Make it For US” in 2020. As noted, there are people alive who could still remember how FDR did it.
Don’t stop exposing selfish interests, but don’t stop to waste time on them either, when, clearly, they can just be pushed aside. Change can be grabbed much more directly. That grab has been needed all along, was needed recently, and now is needed even more.
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