Protesting Madness

There are two meanings of the word “mad.” It could mean crazy or it could mean angry. It seems that we are going through both variations.

We can understand why people are mad in the Middle East and North Africa. We have seen the people in Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, Egypt, Syria, Gaza and Egypt again rise up and riot in the streets. People screaming, cursing, shouting - mad. These people have been oppressed by their rulers for decades and have finally had enough. The problem in most of these cases is that there are so many rival factions and they are all mad. A cartoon picture that offends them will cause riots with many injured and killed. If a holy book is damaged this too will cause vicious riots. These people are mad. The region has groups like Al Qaeda, Taliban, Houthi, Hamas, Hezbollah and ISIS (or ISIL or IS or soon ISN’T) terrorizing the people and wanting a world where women are completely subjugated, treated worse than dogs which they are not allowed to have because the dogs are deemed too unclean.

In sub Sahara Africa, populations are terrorized by groups like Boko Harem and Al-Shabaab, groups that no doubt look up to their fellow monsters to the north. The people are faced with poverty, violence, corruption and disease. It’s enough to drive a people mad.

We see it in the former communist countries where corruption is rampant and freedom is limited. We can understand what would drive these people mad as they are in the Ukraine and soon will be elsewhere in Eastern Europe as the former/ future Evil Empire tries to gain a foothold in the world. Some experts on the region that was, for a terrible while, known as the USSR, say that the only thing that keeps these people unified at all is the massive corruption. No wonder the people are mad and are going mad as well.

We see the tremendous poverty, corruption and violence in Latin America from Mexico to Haiti to Colombia and Argentina. We can understand why many of their people are mad. This region suffers a 29% poverty rate with 165 million people living on less than $1,000 a year. The people suffer at the hands of violent drug dealers and corrupt police officers. Non-whites, though in the majority, and women are treated like second or third class citizens.

But why are Americans mad? We see the signs everywhere.

After a playoff football game, the defensive player who was able to block a pass that could have won the game, was interviewed. He had been able to go to one of the best colleges in the country on a football scholarship. He was earning millions of dollars a year, and had just saved his team’s victory. He was furious. He was yelling and cursing and looking like a very angry and crazy man. Why was he so mad?

A young high school dropout and a hero wannabe, got a federal job under false premises, broke contractual agreements and vows of confidentiality to expose a government program that he felt might be wrong. His leaks had the potential of damaging national security. But instead of being universally vilified as a narcissistic traitor, some took up his cause claiming that their privacy had been somehow violated. Some were mad at the government that was trying to protect them from terrorist threats and took the traitor’s side. Are they crazy or just mad?

A young high school football player is asked about his presence in a gated and secured housing complex. He reacts violently and tries to kill the community volunteer asking the question. The volunteer kills his violent assailant in self defense. We want justice for the dead assailant. Even after a jury including six mothers found the shooter innocent and after the U.S. Attorney General reviewed every aspect of the case hoping for a federal conviction also ruled the killing self defense, we want the volunteer to suffer, forever. We are mad as hell. Are we mad?

An old, senile, rich and jealous man is taped in the privacy of his home saying bad things about a group of his girlfriend’s friends. We are offended, not that his privacy actually was violated, but that he could have said anything bad about any group of people. We wanted him banned from the team that he owned and forced him to sell it. He got us mad.

This madness has spread to show solidarity for an oppressed people and all oppressed people. Protect the underdog against the mean top dogs of the world symbolized by the police. Riot and display disobedience and lawlessness to show compassion for the underprivileged.

But now we have a left wing politician with presidential hopes coming out against the mean top 1%. He is upset that people in the top 1% have a lot more money and assets than do other 99% of the population. He believes that if one person owns five homes and 10 cars while another rents an apartment and takes public transportation, that the latter is a victim of the former and should be entitled to have almost as much capital.

What he fails to see is that capital does not make people happy in proportion to its size. A billionaire is not any more likely to be happy than is a person who make $80,000 a year and owns no capital asset like a home or business enterprise. Has he gone mad or is just mad that he does not own more?

We are now seeing madness on our college campuses. Students are protesting and demanding that professors and administrators be fired for not doing more to protect the delicate sensibilities of their minority students. Did some students wear the wrong Halloween costumes? Did a professor write an email that did not show enough empathy for the offended underdogs? Did the former president of the university and past liberal President of the United States have the wrong idea about a certain group of people more than 100 years ago? His name should be removed from wherever it is on campus. Did an invited speaker say anything that could offend any interest group? He should be booed if he is allowed to speak at all. Have our college campuses become centers for mob madness instead of havens for higher learning?

And what should we do about all this madness?

As the Jefferson Airplane advised Alice in “White Rabbit,” “keep your head!” and use it.   

The Revolt of the American Underdogs - The Working Class and Poor

The twin political surprises of the year have been the success of businessman and entertainer, Donald Trump against 16 professional politicians and of Bernie Sanders, a socialist Independent against the person already chosen to represent her party and our country. How could these two people seemingly on opposite ends of the political spectrum, be doing so well against impossible odds? What could they possibly have in common?

The revolt of the American underdogs - working class and the poor.

The working class is also known as the blue collar or the lower-middle class. They, along with the poor or lower class, make up the bottom half of U.S. household income earners. Most do not earn enough to pay any federal income tax with tens of millions of them getting federal transfer benefits like the Earned Income Credit, food stamps and Medicaid. Most have no more than a high school diploma.

These two presidential hopefuls have several things in common that appeal to both of these groups of Americans.

Both Bernie and Trump seem genuine. They seem to be saying what they think and showing how they feel. Most professional politicians are too well conditioned to say what they really feel or think for fear of alienating part of their constituency. It seems that Bernie and Donald talk like working class people do. They are not inhibited by attempts at being politically correct, something that regular folk can’t stand already. But that means that they might say something that might offend some defensive group.

Neither has  been using a super-PAC or depending on corporate donations. (Trump might begin having a super PAC.)

Both are against illegal immigration while only Trump has promised to try to end it. Bernie, like past farm labor leader Cesar Chavez, believes that illegal immigration hurts the working class and the poor, while Americans with college education and good paying careers have no problem with illegal immigration. Undocumented workers provide services that the middle class needs and enjoys including housecleaning, child care, gardening, food service, construction, farming, and furniture moving at very reasonable rates. Those here uninvited will not be competition for any white collar job. They will not be competing to be partners in a law firm or for residency in a hospital. They will not be teachers or politicians, nurses or social workers. So what is their problem with people coming to our country to seek a better life for themselves and their loved ones?

But if you are a person without a college education, you might be competing with people here illegally who would be willing to work for less.

Both Bernie and the Donald are against many of our foreign trade treaties like NAFTA and the current one, the Trans Pacific Trade Pact. Both are against outsourcing American manufacturing jobs to Mexico and Far East countries like China and Vietnam. People in the working class are directly affected by these job losses while those in the middle and upper classes enjoy lower costs and a greater variety of offerings from this globalization.

But the irony is that minority voters who are most likely to be in the bottom two socio-economic classes (lower and lower middle) and are therefore most impacted by these two major policy issues, prefer Hillary to both candidates.

Blacks and Latino Americans are disproportionately less educated and more in need of entry level jobs from which they can promote. Hillary claims to be for open borders; has promised people living here illegally that she would let them stay so as not to break up families and that she would expedite their path to citizenship. These moves would only bring more people here without invitation making the lives of those in our lowest two socio-economic classes even worse.

While we suffered high unemployment rates during our recent recession, the groups impacted most severely were those without college educations and especially those who did not complete high school. While the U.S. population as a whole reached a high of 10% unemployment, black and Latino youth were seeing rates as high as 30%. It is these groups who must compete with foreign workers abroad as well as illegal immigrants at home.

If Bernie and the Donald can make this point clear, they could win over more minority voters and defeat Hillary who would offer more transfer payments instead of jobs for these impacted American workers and needy poor.

Both Mr. Sanders and Mr. Trump were against our invasion of Iraq and our involvement in the overthrow of several Middle East dictators. Both are against our nation’s past efforts at nation building. The two also agree that we are spending too much defending our allies, especially in NATO. Trump says that we are being taken advantage of in NATO with the U.S.paying the lion’s share. The NATO defenders say that America is paying in proportion to its GNP and so pays more than any other country or 22% of all related costs. The problem is we are paying to defend our allies, not the U.S. Both candidates seem to feel that the host countries should pay for their own defense. Hillary seems content to let us have more than 700 military bases on foreign lands protecting only the host countries and their friendly neighbors.

This also affects people in the working and poor classes. They are most likely to be the ones fighting for our country to protect another. They were in Iraq protecting Iraqis from Iraqis. They were in Afghanistan protecting Afghans from the Taliban. They are now in Syria, Iraq and Libya protecting the innocent from the violent terrorist groups that seem to be metastasizing across the region.  

Both candidates have said that the hundreds of billions we are squandering abroad being the world’s 911 could be better spent on our infrastructure - physical and intellectual. We could be fixing our highways, bridges, schools, and healthcare centers. Most Americans won’t be involved in armed conflicts, mainly just people who have few other opportunities. As Shakespeare’s Falstaff said, “the poor die as well as the rich.”

Some Democrats are saying that Bernie Sanders is not really a Democrat. He isn’t. He’s an Independent and a socialist. But Democratic and Independent voters, especially the young and the socio-economic underdogs, love him.

Some GOP leaders say the Trump is not a real conservative or even a real Republican. That is probably also true. But maybe the voters are tired of the traditional political alternatives  They want someone different.

I think that we are in for a very interesting six months. Keep your eyes on the underdogs - the working class and poor in revolt.