In 2004, twelve long years ago, an Illinois State Senator with a unique name gave a speech at the Democratic National Convention which made the entire Party and most of the American Media, too, sit up and take notice.
This speeech:
x YouTube VideoIn this speech, Barack Obama spoke of the promise of America to people around the world, rekindling the notion of that “shining city on a hill” which was the symbol of an America open to accepting the “huddled masses striving to breathe free” who longed for a chance to become another chapter in the story of The American Dream.
He called out for our people to remember that we were not merely a collection of red states and blue states, but the United States of America.
His message was a strong one. Strong enough to raise him up, not only to the U.S. Senate seat for which he was running at the time he gave this speech, but four short years later, to the Office of the Presidency.
He took office in a national moment of dire distress.
Mired in two Wars in the Middle East and untold skirmishes across the globe. Just weeks before the election the nation underwent a financial disaster of a degree not seen in nearly 80 years. Over the next 3 years, six million Americans lost their homes, millions more lost their jobs and up to 40% or more of their 401(k) retirement. The Stock Market plunged so deep, so quickly, the Secretary of the Treasury went to then President Bush and Congress and told them a massive infusion of hundreds of millions of dollars to the huge Wall Street banks was the only thing which could fend off nothing less than the utter destruction and collapse of the America economy and possibly the economy of the whole world.
With the echoes of this remarkable speech ringing in their ears still, four years and counting, Barack Obama did something remarkable. Like Franken Delano Roosevelt 80 years before him, he lead the Nation to recovery. The stock market stabilized and then rose and rose and rose. The jobless recovery became a decline in the jobless rate to a remarkable 5% (at least for most people who weren’t over 50 or members of the Rust Belt). Business picked up and trade increased.
But something untoward also happened as a response to his call for The Audacity of Hope. Because he was not a white man, in a time when the Media continued to make great note of the changing face of America, warning that the first 240 years of the nation had been a history of White Americans, for the most part — but that beginning in around 2040-2045 that reality will have ended permanently.
A great backlash began, shaded at first as only the rejection of his liberal policies. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell held a meeting on Inauguration Day, in which the Republican Caucus in the Congress decided as a whole that their entire purpose for the next four years would not be the good of the nation, the good of The People — but to stymie and block every action of this president, to make him appear unsuited to the job they believed he should not have, and to ensure that he remained a One Term President.
They failed in that mission. But in their failure, they succeeded at something else, something much worse and much more dangerous.
They not only revived the amorphous split of the nation into Red States and Blue States, but they began actions to try and roll back every liberal and progressive legislative victory of the past 60 years. They publicly stated that their goals were to repeal the new president’s healthcare insurance reform. To privatize Medicare (something president George W Bush had attempted and lost all ability to advance any other legislation during his term after, the objections and rejection of the plan was so strong). To reduce and lessen the benefits of Social Security and to increase the age at which one might draw benefits from that New Deal program.
The State of the Nation after these past eight years?
It surely appears that the obstreptrous conservatives have accomplished what the Southern States desired and sought 150 years ago… they have Untied in large part, the bonds which have held the Republic together these past two and a half centuries.
The election of Donald Trump is proof of it. His choices for advisors and Cabinet members is blatant proof of it — they are the largest group of people so utterly unsuited to the positions to which he is raising them in my entire lifetime.
There have already been reports of what the incoming Republican Majority in the U.S. Congress has plans to accomplish in their opening days and weeks. Nothing less than a total rejection of everything liberals and progressives have fought and bled and died for since my own grandparents generation from World War II.
They intend to make abortion illegal once again. They intend to end federal dollars going to programs which ended dire poverty and lack of medical care for the oldest and most vulnerable among us. They intend to privatize every single thing on which they can lay their hands, from public schools to Social Security to Medicare.
They intend to remake America into what it was in the last era in which a conservative corporate cabal rose to power — a paradise for capitalism run wild. The years after World War I leading up to the Great Depression.
Donld Trump intends to lower the top marginal tax rate to 25%. The last time that happened? During the five years leading up to Black Tuesday in October of 1929.
In light of these facts (and they are facts, not opinions, each one of these claims can be seen as factual by opening newspapers, magazines and online versions of national press outlets of a variety of types) can there be any doubt that These United States have become the Untied States of America?
There is a wave of talk about the possibility of the splintering of the Republic into various new configurations of regional Nations, like Cascadia (Oregon, Washington re-aligning with Canada) or Pacifica (California, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii) on the west coast alone.
Just eight short years ago, anyone who heard these ideas would have laughed until their sides hurt. Today? You open a conversation about this idea and the person is most likely to ask, “You think that could really happen?” and not in an increduous tone meant to dismiss the idea as ludicrous — but in a hopeful tone, meant to acknowledge that the idea is not only acceptable, but desired.
Following the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Ben Franklin is said to have been stopped by a Mrs. Powell of Philadelphia, outside of Independence Hall, to ask him, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”
Franklin is said to have replied, “A Republic, Madame, if you can keep it.”
After 229 years, it seems that we may have finally lost that fight.