Democracy in Chains - Study Notes

Thoughts/Questions for discussion - 8.28.17

Study Group: "Democracy in Chains," by Nancy MacLean

1. Most Americans, I suppose, take for granted the on-going existence of the nation, Constitution and all … but MacLean suggests otherwise; her claims seem incredible, but could the Koch Boys, given their libertarian history and John Birch Society background, with their enormous wealth, be sufficient to bring about a right-wing revolution?
2. Part of the plan is to discredit all forms of government influence (Reagan: Government is the problem), from public education to social security to medicare and so on … suggesting to the people that these programs simply can’t work any longer, they’re in state of failure and will not long exist, so let’s get out while we can, and if anyone is looking for an alternative, we have it - privatized everything. 
3. To this point in time, people have not been willing to consider the termination of these large and successful programs, but the libertarians are not dissuaded. They remain committed to undoing FDR’s America, an America envisioned by Eisenhower (despised by the far right), expanded by LBJ and Nixon … and, of course, Obama. The libertarians rightly understand that a frontal attack on these programs will fail. In time, however, convinced that these program are failing, people will vote against their own interests.
4. Critical to these libertarian efforts is the delegitimizing of anything pertaining to environmental matters, because the Koch Boys see the people engaged in environmental studies as the single most dangerous threat to their interests.
5. At the heart of the libertarian effort is white supremacy - the need to severely limit who can vote, to insure the original model - only white landowners can vote, and to return Senate elections to state houses and not the people. Hence, the progressive onslaught of the libertarians to win state houses and governorships, most notably in Wisconsin and Michigan, states with a traditional progressive lean now fully in the lands of the libertarian program. Make America Great AGAIN … it’s the “again” that’s critical, as they harken back to the ante-bellum time of the Southern States, and across the nation in the early part of the 20th Century, when Jim Crow laws were in effect.**
6. They love the distinction between “takers” and “makers.” 
7. They’re convinced that the takers have taken advantage of American Democracy by pooling their efforts to move government to help all Americans, which is a tremendous loss of liberty, not only for the chief tax payers (the wealthy who deserve to keep more of their taxes) but also to those who are helped, because the very help received destroys their character, their initiative and their freedom to plan for their own retirement and the education of their children. If they have failed to do so, they must no longer count on the government to bail them out; they’re on their own, and tough luck if they fail. All of this will create a stronger nation and greater liberties for all.
8. Crucial to all of this: destroy public education: 1) slash its funding, 2) destroy its unions, 3) discredit teachers. Voila Betsy DeVos. When people realize that “public education” is failing, promote charter schools, home schooling and private schools; use vouchers, and tell people constantly that this now gives them “real choice.”
9. Along with this libertarian move, we have evangelicals signing on, condemning the poor for being lazy … evangelicalism, at its heart, is self-centered because of its 1) fear of hell, 2) its focus on the believer who made the right decision to accept Christ. All of these theological moves put the person at the center, with god more or less a bystander, offering some help, but no more than that, because it’s up to the “believer” to come forward (Billy Graham crusade) and receive Christ. And, as Joel Osteen would have it, if you do right by god, god will do right by you and give you wealth.
10. For both the evangelical of late, and the libertarian, wealth is everything! For the evangelical, wealth proves the blessing of god; for the libertarian, wealth proves the wisdom and courage and fortitude of the wealthy.
11. Along with this, the NRA and its need for chaos to promote guns.
12. White Supremacists and their need for power - “the Jews will not replace us.”
13. The angry and the alienated and their need to attack something.
14. For me, it’s first class mess … and I’m grateful to MacLean for her work.

**the following piece, from a bio on Walter Cronkite, by Douglas Brinkley … unnerving for me to read this, it’s so brutal … Houston, 1927 …

As a liberal Jayhawker who considered John Brown a hero of the Civil War era, not a terrorist, Dr. Cronkite professionally refused to adhere to Jim Crow, taking black as well as white patients. As his son later told Ron Powers of Playboy, this ethic was reflected in a wrenching episode on one of their first nights in Houston. Dr. Finis Hight, president of the Texas Dental School, had asked the Cronkite family to dinner at his River Oaks home. After the steak-and-potatoes meal, the group moved to the porch to savor the breeze and await the delivery of homemade ice cream from a nearby drugstore. In those days, there was no air-conditioning and residential refrigeration options were limited. The Jim Crow “rules” of Houston said that African Americans could not approach the home of a Caucasian from the front. Years later, Cronkite recalled what happened next: “The black delivery boy drove up on his motorcycle and looked with his flashlight, clearly for some way to go to the back of the house.” Not finding a driveway or alleyway to deliver the ice cream, the young man started up the sidewalk. When he hit the first step to the porch, Dr. Hight, in Cronkite’s words, “jumped out of his chair like a cat, and hit him right in the middle of his face, wham!—knocked him back into the grass, ice cream cart spilling—and he said, ‘That’ll teach you, nigger, to put your foot on a white man’s front porch!’ My father said, ‘Helen, Walter, we’re leaving.’ ” 

The three Cronkites marched out of Dr. Hight’s house. When the embarrassed host tried to coax them into staying, Dr. Cronkite said “get lost” and kept walking. After that incident, Dr. Hight had the long knives out for Dr. Cronkite because of his “pro-Negro” sympathies. “I was horrified about the incident,” Cronkite recalled. “Terrified by the walk through the oak trees with their long Spanish moss dripping in them. It looked like a Walt Disney forest that I would expect all the animals jumping at us. We finally got a ride from somebody on a street corner. Got back to our hotel. But from that moment on I was wholly aware of the racial bigotry, prejudice, and treatment of blacks in that part of the world.”

Brinkley, Douglas. Cronkite (Kindle Locations 425-441). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition. 

Diminishing Kindness in America

I see one of our nation’s greatest attributes diminishing - kindness.

We’re known around the world for kindness, but I see this quality of character taking quite a beating under the onslaught of t-party values and right-wing crabbiness, with far too many Christians either ignoring the progressive loss of kindness or, worse, cheering it on in some kind of an upside-down misconstrual of the gospel.

And this worries me.

As it did Jeremiah, as he watched his beloved nation slide further and further into a very dark hole, wherein the wealthy were privileged and living in pleasure and three representative categories of people were slipping deeper into distress.

Jeremiah identifies three groups who are the victims of his nation’s greed - aliens, widows and orphans. People who ordinarily have no social voice or economic clout. Only a nation with compassion and kindness will address their needs. But as Judah slipped further away from God, all the while claiming to be righteous (“The temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD” - Jeremiah 7), compassion died on the vine before a harvest.

Jesus quotes Jeremiah in the context of his condemnation of the temple, and his instructive warning to beware of the scribes, or legal experts, who devour widows’ homes and then say long prayers. When Jesus sits by the treasury to watch people depositing their money, nothing how easily the wealthy drop in large sums, while noting a widow who puts in her last two copper coins, he notes her situation, not as an example of giving, nor does he lift up her virtue as a giver, but she’s a victim of a heartless system that would willingly take “all she has on which to live,” and put into a treasury that can only benefit the already-wealthy. Indeed, she’s a singular example of those widows whose homes are being devoured by the legal experts for the sake of the wealthy.

All of this dressed up in religion: the use of religion to bless business, and the transformation of business into religion.

We have taken the very people Jeremiah identifies as vulnerable, and the victimized widow of Mark, and turned them into “bad people” who are parasites on the system, lazy and irresponsible, depriving the upper-crust of their self-proclaimed share of the pie.

That some should feel this way is a contradiction of our better angels, so to speak, a denial of something vital to America’s identity. But what truly disappoints me is the failure of Christians to identify this decline and lament it’s loss in the American character.

Sadly, a lot of Christians have bought the story of the t-party as if it were the gospel, and it makes no sense whatsoever, for nothing could be further from the gospel than the bitterness and crabbiness of the t-party and right-wing ranters. Their childish complaints about government and their idolization of the wealthy as “job-providers” doesn’t square at all with history, nor does it reflect anything of the Gospel.

Furthermore, it’s a message being proclaimed in many pulpit, but then, many a pulpit has become nothing more than a message-chair to ease the pains of the life and give us a good night’s sleep. Preachers go on and on about marriage, children, success and self-esteem, while Jesus slips further into the shadows of our forgetfulness.

Yes, this disturbs me deeply.

But my greatest distress is the failure of so many Christians to do anything about it.