I don’t know how old I was when my dear late mom told me about her understanding of the whole meaning and purpose of history; that the story of evolution and progress of humans is the story of the distribution of power from the very few at the top who, through most of human history, have always held the lion’s share, down to the rest of us.
I was just a kid at the time, and I’m sure that her phrasing was much more eloquent and succinct than that, but the crux of it lives with me more than a half-century later. It is truly the principle that defines human civilization, or what aspires to merit the term ‘civilization’.
This idea of the redistribution of power from the King or other potentate ruling over the ‘common people’ is built into our language; the term ‘progressive’ , as in progress, is defined by the idea of this redistribution of power and authority, just as the term ‘regressive’ is defined as its opposite.
My beloved mom, who observed the British dictum of, “stay calm and carry on” all through the years of the WWII blitzkrieg in London, was a proud and independent young lady then, a feminist before there was such a term in English language. She met my G.I. dad there during the war. Older than most of his fellow soldiers, he had closed a successful shirt making business in New York and volunteered to help us beat back the scourge of fascism, a movement which embodied the term ‘regressive’; demanding that its followers submit joyfully to the superior wisdom of Hitler and his high command; the many giving up their power to the ‘great leader’ at the top.
What a heartbreaking thing it is today to see the glorious victory over that mass transnational hysteria, which gave the whole world the chance to start anew, tossed aside by an apparent majority of the American voters (or at least those who were permitted to vote), in what I can only understand as an angry reaction to the dire straits that both parties have put the common American working man or woman in ever since the advent of ‘free trade’.
Remember Ross Perot, way back when they were first proposing NAFTA and the other free trade agreements? He spoke of the ‘giant sucking sound’ that we would all hear as all the American jobs would be whisked off to other countries. Well of course it happened, just as one might have expected if one took the time to look into the details of the agreements. There were even tax incentives for closing US plants and moving them to Mexico or China!
So, the perfectly predictable results of that fateful move were several; first, and most importantly for politicians hoping to get rich contributions from those with all the money, was a massive increase in the profitability of many companies, as they close US factories and move production to other countries where the workers are often much less well paid. Another totally foreseeable result has been the flooding of US stores with Chinese or other imported goods, often sold at prices well below what they would be with domestic production. Who doesn’t like the Walmart ‘rollback’ pricing!?
Many of those who made the likely national catastrophic misjudgment of voting for Orange Jesus because he said that he would tame inflation and bring back yesteryear’s prices are likely going to be very disappointed; his idiotic notion of, “Tariffs!, The most beautiful word in the English language” will do nothing but cause massive inflation for the consumer, as well as prompting the targeted countries to go tit for tat. China has many options for retaliation; besides causing price increases in American manufacturing goods (just about everything manufactured here depends on parts imported from China, etc.), China also has made a point of cornering the worldwide market on certain rare-earth minerals that are essential for the manufacture of all kinds high-tech devices. They could also cause havoc in the enormous agricultural export markets if they respond with tariffs against our grains etc. During the last disastrous Trump administration, retaliatory tariffs from China (maintained since then), have just about killed what was once a thriving trade of California wine to China.
The whole Trump movement seems to be a nostalgia-based delusion that we are still the colossus of the world that we were after World War II. Not so anymore; more and more the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) have surpassed the Western ‘G7’ countries that have long dominated in terms of total GDP, and the more irrationally we behave in the world the more we cement their alliance to avoid the sometimes capricious moves of the US, such as seizing the enormous assets of this country or that, which they thought were safely invested in New York financial products, based on our own arbitrary standards, not the UN’s. It should have more authority worldwide, except for being constantly undermined by US disregard. We are one of only a very few countries to not sign on to the International Criminal Court of the UN, so we can blithely blow off its judgment that Netanyahu should be arrested and taken to the Hague for genocide and war crimes. We need a new UN without the US and Israel, if it’s ever to have any kind of real authority.
It seems like our nation’s foreign policy, whether it is led by an R or a D, seldom changes significantly; Biden deserves credit for about the best economic performance, post pandemic, of any first world country, but he has carried on the time-honored, ongoing national disgrace that characterizes our slavish obeisance to Israel, no matter how horrifying its genocide against the Palestinians becomes.
While we squander our Nation’s wealth on 2 billion dollar B-2 bombers that don’t work and the bottomless pork barrel of lethality for Israel and Ukraine, including, I just learned, the inherently war criminal landmines for Ukraine. These things should be strictly prohibited worldwide! They kill for generations after the conflict!
Contrast this with Pres. Xi going to Peru the other day to open this unbelievably huge container ship port that they built. It will improve the lives of everyone and South America. Sounds to me like a lot better use of a nation’s wealth.
For this and other columns,go to inarationalworld2.blogspot.com/2024/12/progress.html
John Arteaga is a Ukiah resident.
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