Weekend thoughts

Even though I put aside Hannah Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism for the moment because it was just too depressing, I do still think about the ongoing destruction of the United States from within.

Over the weekend I realized that one way the billionaire class have approached their accelerating theft of our collective wealth is to attack the base of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. By undermining the lowest two levels, physiological needs and safety needs, they render entire communities unable even to address the higher needs that the modern Democratic Party tends to worry about.

This makes it even more of an imperative for our party to present an actual plan for how we're going to make sure people have homes, food, health care, and physical security. This shouldn't be hard. Until we do, people won't have any space in their minds for long-term infrastructure project let alone social justice.

The Republican Party, in service of their billionaire donors, have bombed the US Government back to the 18th Century. We've go a lot of work to do before we can campaign on DEI or UBI. I don't for a second want us to stop doing those things; but FFS, we need to talk about much simpler issues until people feel secure enough to listen.

It's no accident that the most prosperous period in the most prosperous country in world history coincided with a strong middle class, highly progressive taxes, and strong labor unions. Only then did people have the mental energy to worry about civil rights for people they'd never meet. And the Republican Party has spent the last 70 years trying to prevent and then undo those gains.

Everything we're seeing is about corruption: taking money from us and giving it to billionaires instead of investing it in the country. It won't stop until we make it stop by winning back power and taxing the shit out of them.