Underneath all the dramatic hyperventilation and righteous indignation
and spin and distortions and virtue posturing and character assassination that
passes for serious political discourse these days from both liberals and conservatives
in the media and Congress there are some pragmatic questions about the future
of our nation that someone ought to be attending to. These include:
1. How to craft workable political policies that embrace the
concerns of both the well-off urban secular liberals and the less-well-off
rural and small-town religious conservatives. After all, what Ben Franklin said
at the founding of our nation still applies today: “We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”
Creating “us vs them”
situations, as identity politics has been doing, is destructive to the nation
and a long-term threat to America. We
need politicians, and political messages, that will unite us, not divide us.
2. How to get big money – personal and corporate and special
interest – out of our political process. Both parties are now thoroughly
beholden to wealthy donors, corporations and unions, all of whom expect to buy
favorable legislation with their donations.
This is a thoroughly corrupt system, and will sink the nation eventually
if it isn’t stopped.
3. How to force the federal government – meaning Congress - to
live within its means, either by reducing expenditures, increasing taxes, or
both. Running a half trillion dollar a year deficit simply can’t continue indefinitely,
unless the government allows inflation to skyrocket so as to cut the actual value
of the debt – but that destroys everyone’s savings.
4. How to address the structural changes in the workforce
being created largely by automation. Capitalism depends on healthy markets, and
healthy markets depend on consumers with incomes to spend. Putting large
numbers of people out of work with automation (and to a much less extent, outsourcing
to other nations) is an existential threat to the whole capitalist system that
has brought prosperity to the nation over the past 200 years. Someone needs to be thinking about this problem
and attending to it – neither party is doing so now.
5. How to build and maintain a credible and effective military,
including alliances, capable of defending the nation, deterring war, and maintaining
the freedom of the seas on which so much of our trade depends, without driving the
nation deeper into debt.
These are hard problems, which is probably why politicians avoid talking about them, but they are crucial pragmatic questions that bear directly on the future of our nation – far, far more important questions than the trendy social and cultural issues that seem to consume the media and our current politicians.
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