Memorial Day 2020

Here we are at the cusp of Memorial Day and there the coincidence of lots of things for us. There’s the day itself and the honoring of the sacrifice made by so many that we might live together in a free society. I’m grateful for it and the importance of that. More on that in a bit. There’s our current ordeal with Covid 19 and the incredible toll it is taking on the people of our nation – both in lives lost – almost 99,000 people, and in economic hardship, especially for the poor, the self-employed .and the small business person. The illness has similarly affected the rest of the world, with over 300,000 deaths so far and economic hardship of varied levels depending on the responsiveness of their governments. 

On a personal note, my late father’s birthday was last Tuesday. He would have been 84. It’s been 21 years since he passed and I miss him very much. He is on my shoulder as I think about what’s happening.

As we celebrate the lives of those who sacrificed them in defense of our Democracy, I want to reflect on who that sacrifice was for and why it is important.

As a people, we are involved in a divide in what a free country means. We are living in a time when our self-categorizing pushes us to choose labels and is amplified by a system that can be manipulated by those with self-serving agendas they wish to push upon all of us – willing or not.

There are some that interpret this as the right to do anything they want – but that’s not a democracy. That would be Anarchy if applied to everyone equally and oppression for some if applied unevenly.

The Declaration of Independence says “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”

If all men (people) are created equal that means we have Freedom up to the point in which our exercise for that freedom infringes on the rights of others. That means;

• We have freedom to create and practice religion freely. That does not mean we get to subject others to our religious belief, unless they are in mutual agreement.
• We have freedom of speech. But not to the detriment of others – it is why fraud, liable and slander are part of our legal system.
• We can pursue livelihood and make our own decisions, unless they infringe on the rights of others. It’s inherently why we make it illegal to drive recklessly, it’s why we make it illegal to produce poisonous food, it’s why we prosecute for theft and murder. It is why civil liberties are protected (even though these are still not applied universally). These laws are protecting us from some of the harm we do to others.

In all of this, we have the right to challenge laws that we believe infringe on our rights – but we do not have the right to disobey them until we go through due process. 

The test of our democracy now is to see if we can survive the misinformation that’s provided to push those that would act in their own self-interest to take actions that harm others. Clearly, we’re struggling with this. 

We are acting in ways that endanger others and put our own interests first. We are blaming the sick and those who are pushing us to do the right thing for economic suffering, which should be offset by our safeguards – unemployment benefits, safety practices in food and drug processing, – but the radicalized “conservative” agenda has worn at and dissolved many of these and prohibited advances, like healthcare for everyone, so we are left with suffering, when we could be taking care of each other.

The whispering that these groups are pushing – that we couldn’t possibly afford to take care of each other, is counter to the actual facts. The money that was looted from the public till in 2007/2008/2009, in the tax breaks given early in this administration and in the multi-trillion amounts that have been pushed to the already ultra-wealthy tells us the money is there – it is collected from us but not being spent on us.
You can continue to believe that Democratic Capitalism means that there are a few winners and many losers or you can understand that our democracy is being looted and there could be a better balance, even while we preserve our Democracy and our Capitalist economy.

We will have to make it so. We need to insist on better protections. We need to insist on insurance of personal and small business continuity when a pause is needed, when we’re in crisis. We need to insist on a healthcare system that can take care of the poor in addition to the median and the wealthy.
We need Republicans to get back to an un-radicalized agenda (it is radical, conspiracy based, pushing religious special interests and is primarily focused on the wealthy now) of conservancy and responsibility. I cannot tell you how many Republicans I know that were disenfranchised when the party started to pander to millionaires and people that wanted to exploit our resources in the name of profit. Even more of them jumped the tracks during the last election. 

We need Democrats to focus on social reform (safety net and civil rights), ecological and economic renewal and protections. We need both to walk away from the money from special interests.We need investment in technological research that can be used for public and private good, in medicine, in energy, in the next generation of work and production.

Freedom for us needs to be about living free and responsibly with each other. It needs to be about building each other up, not tearing each other down. We need to get where we are going by helping others get where they’re going. 

That has to be what we fight for. Fighting for an agenda that kills or oppresses someone else is not what our predecessors were fighting for. They were fighting for the equality of all people. The prosperity of all people. The right of everyone to live, to worship (or not), to learn, to pursue happiness in ways that are important to them and don’t step on the rights of others. That’s noble and an ideal, but we can move closer to the ideal rather than further from it. 

We just have to start ignoring the spin. We need a responsible dialogue on our differences. We need to recognize that laws need to work for the best interest of people, of society. We have to demand accountability from our elected officials and make sure we are given the authority to enforce it. Now and this November and going forward. Please vote and support others right to vote. Please vote to change the current state to one that will allow a broad national conversation between our many viewpoints.