There is a pitched battle going on in America, but it is not being fought with guns and tanks and planes. Instead it’s being waged with words, political policies, tax breaks, non-discretionary spending, and most importantly the hearts and minds of everyday Americans.
On one side is the Democratic Party, whose most progressive wing is represented by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination for President. Sanders bills himself as a “Democratic Socialist,” but what he really is is a Social Democrat, European style. He doesn’t want to nationalize the means of production, a la Karl Marx. And he doesn’t want a one-party state a la V.I. Lenin. Thus the “Democratic” in “Democratic Socialism.”
What Sanders does want to do is make all public colleges and universities tuition-free. He also wants to guarantee healthcare as a human right. A $15 minimum wage. A “Green New Deal” to transform the American economy away from fossil fuels and, to a lesser extent, away from animal agriculture, and towards a carbon neutral state that will save our planet before it’s too late.
Sanders also wants racial, social, and economic justice for all. Why is this important? Well on the one hand America has a huge underclass of African-Americans and Latinos who are struggling to get by day-to-day.
You might be surprised to learn how stark the wealth divide is between minorities and whites. The average African-American household has total net assets of $8,000. For Latinos it’s $11,000. And for whites? $110,000. Yup, you read that right. The gap is that yawning. It surely gives the lie to those who say there is no need for affirmative action, or social programs to help minorities advance economically.
But it’s not just minorities who are struggling. There is a huge white underclass as well, and this is where it gets interesting. Bernie Sanders is fond of pointing out that just three members of the Walton family, heirs to the Walmart fortune, control more wealth than the bottom 20% of Americans, or nearly 70 million people. And the top 1% of Americans own 40% of the nation’s wealth. Not only is that grotesque, it’s an inequality gap that threatens to tear apart the social fabric of America. Some would say it already has.
While the inequality gap may be most acute in America, it’s also prevalent around the world. A 2017, Oxfam study found that eight rich people, six of them Americans, own as much combined wealth as half the human race. Chew on that.
Ultimately, what we have in America is what’s known as an oligarchy. An oligarchy is when a very small group of people have an inordinate amount of political and economic power, and they use this power to control the government and society for their benefit. You may have heard the term used for the Russian gangsters who plundered the Russian state’s assets after the breakup of the Soviet Union. But it’s no less relevant in America.
Since 2016, the entrenched American oligarchy has found their champion in President Donald J. Trump. Trump has passed multi-trillion dollar tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the very wealthy, he’s slashed environmental and corporate regulations that hinder corporate profits, and he’s generally made it easier than it’s ever been for the ultra-rich to get richer and for everyone else to get poorer.
But Trump and the Republican Party are not the only political standard-bearers and proponents of our current extreme concentration of wealth. The current slate of Democratic candidates for President includes those such as Michael Bloomberg, net worth $50 billion, who was notoriously anti-union when he ran his company, has been caught on tape advocating racist policing policies when he was mayor of New York, and is generally so wealthy that he wouldn’t know what a grocery list looks like or how to ride a city bus. It’s hard to imagine how someone like this could ever relate to the struggles of an average American as they try to pay the bills each month.
Other Democratic candidates that are quasi-friends of the oligarchs include Amy Klobuchar and Pete Butigieg, both of whom present themselves as “moderates.” What that means in practice is, let’s not raise the minimum wage all at once, let’s allow “some” fracking, and let’s give just a few crumbs to the poor. They are essentially Hillary Clinton 2.0.
And then there’s Joe Biden, who also presents himself as a moderate and a “steady hand” in the race. Yet we all know he was notoriously opposed to racial integration of public schools in the 1970’s via school busing, he authored the heinously punitive and racially biased 1994 Crime Bill, and he’s been a friend of Wall Street for 40 years. He’s no radical, that Joe Biden.
Which brings us back to the current President of the United States, Donald J. Trump. Because if Biden, Butigieg, Klobuchar, and others are friends of Wall Street, and perhaps “somewhat racist,” President Trump is a straight-up white supremacist. Which is despicable. Through his words, Tweets, and actions, Trump has made clear that he despises black and brown people. I mean really despises them. There’s no need to go into all his racial invective, we’ve all seen it on TV and the Internet.
Why this is so problematic, however, is because America is undergoing a vast demographic shift that demographers refer to as “The Browning of America.”
The African-American population of the US has remained relatively steady for decades, at 12-13%.
But as we all know, the Hispanic and in particular Mexican population is booming. In the 2000 Census, Hispanics in America made up roughly 14% of the population, just a tick above African-Americans. By 2010 they had reached 16%. In 2018 their numbers were estimated at 18%. And by 2050 it’s estimated that Hispanics will make up 30% of the US population.
That’s right, 30%, or nearly ⅓ of America’s total population. And that has a lot of white folks scared. Like, really scared. Thus the emergence of a Donald Trump, Demagogue-in-Chief.
So what does this all mean for the future of America? First, we must, and I repeat must, elect Bernie Sanders as President. He is the only Democratic candidate who has been consistently advocating for wage and income equality, environmental protection, and social justice for over forty years now.
If we are to have any chance of breaking up the oligarchy that is increasingly pressing its foot on working Americans’ throats, Bernie must be elected President.
Second, we have to figure out a way to successfully and humanely integrate the vast numbers of Hispanics that will continue to stream into America, and to reassure economically vulnerable whites that they will not lose their jobs, and that we can in fact all live together.
America and Mexico share a 2,000 mile border, and our fates have been intertwined for centuries. Let’s start treating the Mexicans who arrive here as what they are, our brothers and sisters, and work together collectively to make the country better.
And finally, let’s not kid ourselves. The American oligarchy is powerful, and they will fight back against any infringement on their privileges. So we must be prepared for a long fight if we are to take back the country from the Waltons, the Bloombergs, and the Trumps of the world.
We must also recognize that a certain proportion of White America are just straight-up, dedicated racists who will never accept the Hispanic influx. All we can do is work to marginalize the racists, and educate them, and hope that their children and their children’s children will be more accepting of those who look differently than them.
If we do all these things, we may have a chance to save this great country. But make no mistake, if we fail, or if Trump or Bloomberg is elected in 2020, we will continue down the path of inequality and racism to the point where we’re all serfs in a quasi-feudal state. And no one wants that.
So let’s go Bernie, and let’s go America. The stakes are too great for us to fail.
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