Colorful opinions

My sister Sherry sent me an article last summer on race relations and after thanking her for the article, which I wish I could link to here because it would give the thoughts below better context but which I have long since tossed, I wrote her this, well, much of it anyway. I've added a few thoughts, acknowledging that any time someone talks about racism, the first thing that needs to be done is to define our terms:

1 - Pretty much all of us of any color/race/background are racists. 

2 - That doesn't mean that all of us discriminate or treat people worse based on their race.

3 - But it does mean we treat them, or at least see them, differently.

4 - There is no such thing as reverse racism. There's only racism.

5 - Doesn't matter who is or isn't racist, or who does or doesn't discriminate, as long as the system is racist, which it clearly is.

6 - The single best way to address racism is improved educational opportunity for minority students...or better - equal educational opportunity for all students. 

7 - The most overlooked aspect of racism is that there is also a strong class component to it. Low income neighborhoods of any color will generally stay that way until their education opportunity (read: funding and infrastructure) improves. 

8 - That is the form that reparations should take - making sure people living in school districts with the least funding receive more than the schools currently receiving the most, until grades and SAT scores and the metrics even out, and then they should all be equalized.

Some provocative thoughts that might upset folks, but I would so love to talk with anyone of color who disagrees. I have so much more I need to learn about this.

Evolution by Elimination

In my radical view of the future, or the normal view in current day Jamie World, two evolutions will take place - the elimination of Identity Politics and of US military bases or military involvement in any country outside of ours.

I cringe when I hear my left-wing friends say, or when I read political views that say the Dems need to work harder to get the ______ (Insert identity here: Black, Latino, Gay, Native American, Southern, Gay, Transgender) vote. 

How about policies that just help everyone who has been denied equal opportunity? Discrimination against any of us should be an affront to all of us. And policies to address such inequities should be sweeping. For too long, policies that help the privileged/highest earners have been excused by saying "a rising tide lifts all boats." Well, instead of adding water to help the yachts, how about we focus on the dinghies and rowboats, especially if they need to be bailed out to begin with?

That said, I have no problem giving priority to appointing/hiring people from the disadvantaged classes where all else is relatively equal ahead of those of us in the more privileged classes, even though that approach has negatively impacted me personally in the past.

As far as the military is concerned, I used to have a friend Mike - the producer of Flyers' telecasts - who would say when talk would turn to our foreign military entanglements, "Let me know when they land on the Jersey Shore." And more and more, that is my feeling too. I hope is that someday, there is a major Presidential candidate who espouses the view that all our troops should come home to defend our country from here and return most of them to civilian status. Far right conservatives would have a knee-jerk group head explosion, but the way to appease/convince them would be to point out that it would balance the budget in about a year and a half. And I think many of them who already have a libertarian streak would approve regardless.

Now, would that make us weaker? No, the military would then take on a role in addition to protecting our shorelines. When world crises hit, we would be there to help. Famine, earthquakes, tsunamis, plagues - at the invitation of any foreign government, we would make available whatever resources in funds and personnel to do our best to help them. Not by giving them monies, which might fall in the wrong hands. Well, actually, we do know it would - to the pockets of the powerful. So we would bring our people in to work with them, even paying their workers directly, to rebuild or provide and distribute aid also directly, on our conditions.

If you had a neighbor who was doing things to help neighbors of yours who were impacting you negatively, wouldn't you resent that neighbor as much or more than the one they were helping? And wouldn't one be far more likely to try to exact revenge on them in some way? But if your only approach was to be helpful to everyone in your neighborhood, do you think people would treat you better or worse? Sure, there are still bad people in the world, and likely in your neighborhood. But we're talking about odds here. Are people more likely to attack the USA if all we do is help people or if we get militarily involved to help other countries' enemies?

I know how naïve it sounds, and at times it would be. But it couldn't be any worse than the current policies that have cost us tens of thousands of lives and trillions and trillions of dollars, with no end in sight.

Who will be the first to have the courage to embrace such a concept? And how many decades from now?

More and more I find myself understanding the appeal of Donald Trump primarily to those who feel most powerless in this country. If I might generalize, I believe The Powerless have lost all faith in the politicians we keep electing and re-electing. It isn't just a matter of Throw the Bums Out. If the proposed solutions involve politicians, they just won't believe it’s possible. "They're all crooks." Blanket dismissal without any need to consider their victim. And no one is really going to help them feel any sense of power in their lives unless it is someone they see as willing and able to redefine what it is to be a politician, and first and foremost that means a candidate that talks like them. Not like what you hear 24/7 from politicians invited to blather with the cable provocateurs of your...and their choice. The policies aren’t even important. It’s the messenger. Not the message but the way the message is conveyed.

I’ve said for 20 years that the most successful politician will be the one who talks like a human – my examples were always John McCain, Ed Rendell and Joe Biden. Sadly, John McCain stopped doing that when he ran for President the first time and, as he admitted later, didn’t have the courage to call for the removal of the confederate flag over South Carolina’s Capitol Building. He had thus jumped off his Straight Talk Express and try as he might to jump back on, the best he could do was to bring on Sarah Palin to play the role for him. And to occasionally tweak President Trump up to his final days.

Even more sadly, like his pal Ed Rendell who now has Parkinson’s, Joe Biden has lost the ability to talk like a human for a different reason. To be blunt, he’s practically lost the ability to speak at all, God love him (as he likes to say.)

So who are we left with to talk like us…and by us, I sure don’t mean like anyone I would want to hang out with…but Donald J. Trump. For all he does so so wrong, he gets it. He knows he can say anything he wants, the more outrageous the better. Hell, he can call dead war veterans suckers and losers. It’s oh-so appealing to his Powerless People. It doesn’t matter what his policies are – people don’t even know what he stands for besides being against abortion, for guns and apparently for Bibles best displayed, so appropriately and symbolically, upside down.

And other than what a truly awful human being he is, the worst American I’ve ever known of, what bothers me most? That we Dems didn’t bring forth the same kind of person. Not the person who personally bankrupts blue collar workers with his shady business practices. Not the person who makes fun of the disabled or who separates kids from their parents and puts them in cages.

No, my fantasy Dem candidate is kind to small animals and works and plays well with others. S/He’s not snooty and highbrow like Barack and Hillary. S/He’s an intellectual but you would never know it by the way s/he converses with us.

And he or she is the kind of person who gets blue collar voters to think that he is one of them. And actually is.