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President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Bill, 1964, as Martin Luther King Jr. looks on. (Image provided at PickPik). America turned then and now too many want it to turn back, on this and many other achievements.
If Trump wins, the presidency will no longer be the “Bully Pulpit” envisioned by Theodore Roosevelt, but the pulpit for a bully. Like the American Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden the Trump campaign echoed, disdain for others that powers the feeling of superiority is on shameful display. Everyone knows it masks insecurity. The concept of equality in the evolution of human history, which can reduce the friction and drag of competitive existence, has apparently not yet been effectively embedded.
In democracy and ecological thinking, life is a network and not a pyramid. When mutual respect is discarded as the Republican party has done, casting opponents as evil, disparaging whole countries and categories of people, it ironically reveals a lack of self-respect. If you see that, the desire to admire the powerful dissipates. But you have to see past the bluster with bullies, and it seems that the old primitive impulses, the impatience that convinces people they should empower an individual over the rest of us together, the fears that make people want to see only people like them, may be more powerful than the considerations of mature adults who are not frightened by clownish aggression.
If you are the owner of a major newspaper like the Washington Post, or the leader of a major financial power like JP Morgan, and you are withholding criticism because you want to be able to work with the administration if Trump is elected,[i] you do not see that your gambling has already caused huge and irreparable losses. This is the shortsightedness that happens when you believe that the business of America is business, not people: the evolution of humanity, essential to saving democracy and the environment, is badly hobbled. To take a line from Barack Obama: Don’t boo these businessmen – vote – vote against the candidates they are helping so they can continue to work their deals in a dictatorship – and if you have shares in their companies vote them out – and vote with your dollars. But most importantly, do so much more than just vote. Voting alone cannot carry the weight of all that needs to be done. Some people are voting against Harris because she doesn’t meet their expectations, and they want to use their vote to express their dissatisfaction. That is too much to expect of the vote right now, because any vote not for Harris will help the man who will undo American democracy. Speak out and volunteer and care about having an America that rejects the cold money dominance[ii] and invests in us and our future instead.
The fate of the concept of working together constructively is at stake. This was a great step forward in human social organization, the only thing that can deliver us from the downward spiral of competition not subsumed under cooperation, to a world that can survive and have the chance to learn how to thrive. What can an environmental citizen do, here, at the potential ending of the effort to govern ourselves with respectful democratic deliberation, if we still have faith in it?
If you have faith in democracy, then you know that even if its processes are slow, they are the only way to determine how society should act so that it is most mindful of everyone. If you don’t see this and don’t vote for democracy, then you are allowing the conflicts to continue in which some people are trying to gain without sufficient consideration of others. You side with allowing the selfish interests to dominate. This creates destructive tendencies, towards our planet and its life forms, and towards other people, when in the pursuit of human potential one damages others and takes no or too little notice.
In democracy and ecological thinking, life is a network and not a pyramid. When mutual respect is discarded as the Republican party has done, casting opponents as evil, disparaging whole countries and categories of people, it ironically reveals a lack of self-respect. If you see that, the desire to admire the powerful dissipates. But you have to see past the bluster with bullies, and it seems that the old primitive impulses, the impatience that convinces people they should empower an individual over the rest of us together, the fears that make people want to see only people like them, may be more powerful than the considerations of mature adults who are not frightened by clownish aggression.
If you are the owner of a major newspaper like the Washington Post, or the leader of a major financial power like JP Morgan, and you are withholding criticism because you want to be able to work with the administration if Trump is elected,[i] you do not see that your gambling has already caused huge and irreparable losses. This is the shortsightedness that happens when you believe that the business of America is business, not people: the evolution of humanity, essential to saving democracy and the environment, is badly hobbled. To take a line from Barack Obama: Don’t boo these businessmen – vote – vote against the candidates they are helping so they can continue to work their deals in a dictatorship – and if you have shares in their companies vote them out – and vote with your dollars. But most importantly, do so much more than just vote. Voting alone cannot carry the weight of all that needs to be done. Some people are voting against Harris because she doesn’t meet their expectations, and they want to use their vote to express their dissatisfaction. That is too much to expect of the vote right now, because any vote not for Harris will help the man who will undo American democracy. Speak out and volunteer and care about having an America that rejects the cold money dominance[ii] and invests in us and our future instead.
The fate of the concept of working together constructively is at stake. This was a great step forward in human social organization, the only thing that can deliver us from the downward spiral of competition not subsumed under cooperation, to a world that can survive and have the chance to learn how to thrive. What can an environmental citizen do, here, at the potential ending of the effort to govern ourselves with respectful democratic deliberation, if we still have faith in it?
If you have faith in democracy, then you know that even if its processes are slow, they are the only way to determine how society should act so that it is most mindful of everyone. If you don’t see this and don’t vote for democracy, then you are allowing the conflicts to continue in which some people are trying to gain without sufficient consideration of others. You side with allowing the selfish interests to dominate. This creates destructive tendencies, towards our planet and its life forms, and towards other people, when in the pursuit of human potential one damages others and takes no or too little notice.
Gambling on the potential to make money in the future causes many to disregard effects on people and the planet now, and that is a root cause of our problems that can only be addressed by having faith in democracy and its concepts of mutual rights of existence. If you think it is inefficient then get involved in helping it to evolve more efficient means of deciding and doing things. But humanity undeniably needs to learn to cooperate with its contexts of the environment and the needs of people for just relationships. The Republican’s expression of hate, Trump’s billionaire and biased backers, the rejection of truth, and now the abandonment to them of our principles by powerful business leaders, these spell more than the demise of the hopes of “liberals” (not enemies) in the United States.
Even if in response the rest of the world rises up to reassert democratic principles, a Trump win would delay our response to climate change, the filling up of the world with plastics and toxics like PFASs, the continuing degradation of our water, the burning of forests, the loss of species, the loss of soil, the degradation of food supplies, the uglification of the world, and we cannot afford to lose a moment. Other environmental citizens have said to me that if he wins we will have to again put aside all the important things we are working on, so we can attend to defending the institutions he will seek, again, to dismantle. We need them. Businesses really only can afford to care about themselves in the end, because if they don’t make money they can’t even exist. The Trump style of business doesn't care about the customer from the start, and only that irrational faith in business can explain its success. We exist even without money, so we need our agencies, and to work together to have ones we feel we can depend on. There is no other way.
We have to do it ourselves, businesses won’t do it for us, and that also means we can’t afford to hate anyone.
Faith in Democracy means two things. One is understanding that those who have particular faiths must be expected to have their beliefs in context with those who have other beliefs. That principle is embodied in the First Amendment. No one in America can tell anyone else what they have to believe. This principle has been violated by the Dobbs decision, which is based on religious concepts that are being imposed on women.[iii] What is little discussed is the fact that the belief in the primacy of money – that billionaires should be permitted to buy their way into government as Elon Musk is trying to do, and tax cuts and other benefits should go to them and powerful companies such as the fossil fuel industry, as in the first Trump Administration and as promised by Trump to contributing supporters now – is based on a religious belief – the faith in laissez faire – the faith in businesses – this is not a rational belief, and it should be regarded as the same as any other religious belief that must not be imposed on the rest of us.
Faith in Democracy also means having faith in the ability of people to work things out together. That faith is difficult to have when we have people in the House who work just to prevent anything from happening, because in their professed views, the Democrats are evil and should not be able to take credit for anything good happening – it’s worth preventing anything good from happening so that people will think cooperative government cannot work and will give up on it. That then leaves the only choice of electing people who say they represent them against others, since you can’t expect to get along as a big group, and one can only care about one’s group.
But of course, that is an illusion. The idea that those who look like you are your group is superficial. Faith in democracy includes having faith in people. While it is harder to see that we all belong to that same group, it is actually much simpler to live this way.
This is really the same faith the religions speak of – that we are all children of the Creator – it just means the particulars of how that is interpreted cannot be monopolized. That’s what the American Declaration of Independence says. It was an expression of faith that we can apply by working for the continuation of our democratic experiment, not its ending. Those who are considering throwing their vote away without realizing the great responsibility to protect the American experiment in democracy, must be helped to relieve themselves of this temptation.
[i] Both stories covered in the New York Times and elsewhere.
[ii] Front page, NY Times, October 28, 2024, “Trump Offering Promises As He Woos Big Business”, just the lastest example.
[iii] As explained by Lawrence Tribe in the November 7 issue of the New York Review of Books, in “Where Freedom Ends”. He quotes Justice Blackmun’s dissent in the 1986 Bowers v Hardwick, which upheld the criminalization homosexual behavior: “That certain, but by no means all, religious groups condemn the behavior at issue gives the Stqte no license to impose their judgments on the entire citizenry. The legitimacy of secular legislation depends instead on whether the State can advance some justification for its law beyond its conformity to religious doctrine.” The 2003 Lawrence v. Texas held 6-3 that Bowers was incorrect.
Even if in response the rest of the world rises up to reassert democratic principles, a Trump win would delay our response to climate change, the filling up of the world with plastics and toxics like PFASs, the continuing degradation of our water, the burning of forests, the loss of species, the loss of soil, the degradation of food supplies, the uglification of the world, and we cannot afford to lose a moment. Other environmental citizens have said to me that if he wins we will have to again put aside all the important things we are working on, so we can attend to defending the institutions he will seek, again, to dismantle. We need them. Businesses really only can afford to care about themselves in the end, because if they don’t make money they can’t even exist. The Trump style of business doesn't care about the customer from the start, and only that irrational faith in business can explain its success. We exist even without money, so we need our agencies, and to work together to have ones we feel we can depend on. There is no other way.
We have to do it ourselves, businesses won’t do it for us, and that also means we can’t afford to hate anyone.
Faith in Democracy means two things. One is understanding that those who have particular faiths must be expected to have their beliefs in context with those who have other beliefs. That principle is embodied in the First Amendment. No one in America can tell anyone else what they have to believe. This principle has been violated by the Dobbs decision, which is based on religious concepts that are being imposed on women.[iii] What is little discussed is the fact that the belief in the primacy of money – that billionaires should be permitted to buy their way into government as Elon Musk is trying to do, and tax cuts and other benefits should go to them and powerful companies such as the fossil fuel industry, as in the first Trump Administration and as promised by Trump to contributing supporters now – is based on a religious belief – the faith in laissez faire – the faith in businesses – this is not a rational belief, and it should be regarded as the same as any other religious belief that must not be imposed on the rest of us.
Faith in Democracy also means having faith in the ability of people to work things out together. That faith is difficult to have when we have people in the House who work just to prevent anything from happening, because in their professed views, the Democrats are evil and should not be able to take credit for anything good happening – it’s worth preventing anything good from happening so that people will think cooperative government cannot work and will give up on it. That then leaves the only choice of electing people who say they represent them against others, since you can’t expect to get along as a big group, and one can only care about one’s group.
But of course, that is an illusion. The idea that those who look like you are your group is superficial. Faith in democracy includes having faith in people. While it is harder to see that we all belong to that same group, it is actually much simpler to live this way.
This is really the same faith the religions speak of – that we are all children of the Creator – it just means the particulars of how that is interpreted cannot be monopolized. That’s what the American Declaration of Independence says. It was an expression of faith that we can apply by working for the continuation of our democratic experiment, not its ending. Those who are considering throwing their vote away without realizing the great responsibility to protect the American experiment in democracy, must be helped to relieve themselves of this temptation.
[i] Both stories covered in the New York Times and elsewhere.
[ii] Front page, NY Times, October 28, 2024, “Trump Offering Promises As He Woos Big Business”, just the lastest example.
[iii] As explained by Lawrence Tribe in the November 7 issue of the New York Review of Books, in “Where Freedom Ends”. He quotes Justice Blackmun’s dissent in the 1986 Bowers v Hardwick, which upheld the criminalization homosexual behavior: “That certain, but by no means all, religious groups condemn the behavior at issue gives the Stqte no license to impose their judgments on the entire citizenry. The legitimacy of secular legislation depends instead on whether the State can advance some justification for its law beyond its conformity to religious doctrine.” The 2003 Lawrence v. Texas held 6-3 that Bowers was incorrect.
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