When I started blogging a week and a half ago, I wasn’t thinking in terms of doing political commentary. I imagined writing mostly bits of whimsy, like how flummoxed I sometimes get about when to use a comma, or how my wife can somehow makes friends with a toll collector in the time it takes to make change.
And then George Floyd was killed and all hell broke loose, and now it seems as if it would be tone-deaf to post light-hearted musings on a blog.
The challenge is figuring out what there is to say that other commentators aren’t already saying better than I could — about a country erupting in outrage after 400 years of systemic racial discrimination, about a would-be autocrat deploying the U.S. military against law-abiding protestors in the country’s capital.
I am an ardent admirer of Martin Luther King, Jr., and a firm believer in the power of non-violence. I also am convinced that peacefully taking to the streets in large numbers is often the only way to force change when political leaders resist the will of the people. So I’m heartened that the peaceful protests of the last several days seem to be gaining strength — that the protestors are unabashed by the violence and criminality of a few, and uncowed by the threats from President Trump.
I am not optimistic, however, about our prospects. Two deeply entrenched aspects of American society conspire to perpetuate injustice. One is our “original sin” of systemic racism. The other is an economic system increasingly characterized by an extractive, corporatist version of capitalism, in which ordinary people, their communities, and their environment are ever more exploited to make the wealthiest more wealthy.
I know that sounds like the beginnings of socialist screed. But I am not a socialist, at least not in the classic sense of the term. I really get it about the benefits of Adam Smith’s “invisible hand.” I have no illusion that a state take-over of the means of production would make the world a better place. But I do believe that the version of market economics practiced today, in which large corporations beholden only to their shareholders dominate the economy, and are free to spend billions of dollars to influence political decision-making, has become counter-productive.
One of the most pernicious outgrowths of that system is ever-increasing economic inequality, and that can only lead to increasing injustice and instability. Combine that with the fact that the people who disproportionately suffer the effects of that inequality and injustice are those whose skin happens not to be white, and mix in the fact that a large portion of our country’s population is still invested to some degree in a vision of white supremacy, and we have a socio-political powder keg.
The question is, is our country resilient enough to withstand the current levels of inequality, injustice, divisiveness, and sheer outrage — especially when a man like Donald Trump is president. Can we come back from this, or could the country be irretrievably broken? While my faith in American exceptionalism has been severely tested over the last few decades, I choose to believe that we can get to the other side of this and become a stronger, more just society. Maybe the only reason to believe that is that the alternative is complete despair, but that may be reason enough. Despair is a self-fulfilling prophesy. Achieving an improbable outcome always requires taking a stand that the outcome is at least possible, regardless of how difficult it may seem.