Crazy - no TV, it's just after 10:00 AM, and I'm actually sitting here typing! Just like a real writer! Well, perhaps not, but I can dream.
It's kind of nice to be just here, sitting, blissfully ignorant of the world around me - just a small, sunny back yard in view, and a post-election haze settling about town. Most political races have been decided, although several close races are still being counted, but the overwhelming message is "Republicans in, Democrats out". However, my take is this has more to do with nothing getting done in Congress, rather than a new ideological bent in the country. So, what do Republicans stand for (in my mind)? Well, at least since the time of Ronnie, "less government", except if that means less control over the morals of the populace. I guess "less government" for conservative means less social programs, things like no more Welfare, no Medicare, no Social Security, no Food Stamps, no WIC monies, no Drug Treatment Programs (other than long term incarceration), no subsidized education (especially higher education), no more Unemployment Insurance, no more free entrance to Federally Held Commodities (like National Forests, National Parks, The Smithsonian, etc.). But it seems to mean LOTS of money to additional boarder patrol personnel, construction of massive (and expensive) fences at the Mexican Boarder, money to fight "the War on Drugs", money to protect the unborn from abortion and potential birth control interfering with sex always meaning pregnancy, money for prisons for all those reprobates who stole stuff because their Welfare and Food Stamps were revoked after not being able to afford school in order to move into a new social strata via education. Money for police, and the military and TSA to keep our planes from being used as weapons against us.
And then there is the question of infrastructure: the Interstate Highway System, Air Traffic Control System, Rail Lines: I'm not sure where conservatives stand on these issues - each definitely costs money, but is it better to maintain them, or to allow them to slowly disintegrate into disrepair, drastically reducing the population's mobility? I just drove out here from Pennsylvania, and I can say that currently the Interstate Highway System really rocks - I love it! But perhaps this should not be a public endeavor, and all roads should be toll roads, and the Air Traffic Control System should be privatized, along with the NTSB, FDA, EPA - all those federal insurgencies which "protect" us from something - massive piles of radioactive waste sitting in vacant lots, burning one's trash to keep warm in the winter fouling the air with toxic chemicals, massive drug "experiments" where new drugs are just sold at corner stores and the side effect and drug effectivity data are collected anecdotally as people show up at emergency rooms; perhaps that is a better way to go.
I guess the liberal argument is, if we give poor people some level of support, not only is that a "kind" thing to do (widely disputed by conservatives, I know), but it should, in the long term, reduce costs for prisons and drug treatment programs. And having free higher education would allow those disadvantaged peoples who wished to attempt to change their lot in life via education to actually go for it, possibly becoming contributing members of society. But the fundamental disagreement seems to be around the work ethic: is it possible to help people by giving them things (free education, free food, free places to live), or does the giving of things wreck them as human beings? Is it that lack of having to struggle, tooth and claw, for every scrap of food or stitch of clothing, what makes people "lay-abouts" or "reprobates"? You know, I honestly don't know. I do know that sitting on my ass is easier than getting up and going for "it" whatever "it" is. But doing that for my whole life? I don't actually want to do that. I wonder if other people do. And if they do, is that really a problem? I see a lot of anger among people who do work for a living towards those who they see "not working for what they get": those on welfare or food stamps or whatever. But if a society is rich enough that some portion of the population doesn't have to work, is it really necessary to try to make them work? Perhaps it is. Maybe idle hands are the Devils play things. How the hell do you find out? I grew up in a time when higher education was essentially free in this country ($200 a year for full tuition at a State University): and yet, in those days (1970's), there was still tons of crime, squalor, homelessness, inequity. And despite aggressive affirmative action programs, many of those who lived with the crime and squalor were those same groups who traditionally have been disadvantaged in this country (i.e., not highly educated white folk), just like now: when an education means a lifetime of debt. So, apparently, free education (a liberal concept, to be sure) was not the be-all and end-all of bringing the traditionally disadvantaged into the upper middle class. Then what is the correct course? Remove all social safety nets? Institute all social safety nets? Create a system of "Basic Income" whereby every man, woman and child receives an annual payment from the government, just for being a citizen, in order to offset the massive job losses that are now on the horizon as robotics and artificial intelligence take over most "unskilled" jobs? Or just practice massive "population culling", reducing the world human population back to a manageable 200 to 300 million? Of course, culling probably won't be up to us to decide, a single comet or virus could easily manage it - so for the things that we are willing to do (assuming that elimination of 95% of the population is NOT one of those) - which path is going to work? Or is there anything we can do besides steel ourselves from the inevitable fall of civilization (such as it is)? This and more, in future blogs...