Replacing Current ABNORMAL With an IMPROVED NORMAL

What Kind of “Normal” Do You Hope for Beyond 2020? What we had at some point in the past, or something even more inclusive?

We had a more equal NORMAL

A the government that has as it’s primary moral goal, to equally protect and empower ALL citizens to maximize their freedoms while at the same time limiting the freedoms of those few who abuse their freedoms, creates the ideal Normal. (1)

We came close to this ideal NORMAL of government, of, by, and for most of we the People, after the Great Depression and it continued for about 30 years. My mother and I, as white Americans, benefitted most from this NORMAL, but it wasn’t as broad-based as it could have been due to compromises with southern, racist, politicians. Soon after President Johnson passed the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, which added salt to the segregationist’s wound inflected by SCOTUS in the 1954 Brown v Board of Education, the end of this less-than-perfect NORMAL started. This NORMAL’s last vestige of legislation for the people were the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts passed under Richard Nixon. Since then, our government has not passed any far-reaching people-over-profits legislation into law.

ABNORMAL Has Grown for Decades

What we live in today, the new ABNORMAL, is about maximizing INEQUALITY by protecting and empowering only those with wealth and power so they can maximize their wealth, power, and freedoms, which economically, socially, racially, and environmentally abuse and impoverish the rest of us, especially minorities. (1)

The rise of this ABNORMAL started with Richard Nixon and his War On Drugs to suppress/imprison anti-war hippies and blacks. Ronald Reagan boosted ABNORMAL with union busting, lies about imaginary “Welfare Queens,” and the end of the Fairness Doctrine for our public airwaves. Bill Clinton aided ABNORMAL with neoliberal economic policies while working and authoritarian Newt Gingrich by ending “welfare as we know it,” replacing Glass-Steagall with financial speculation leading to the Great Recession of 2008, and unleashing the corporate media to create media monopolies and “profitable news” like Fox, the conservative Sinclair Broadcast Group, and right-wing hate radio. The Destroyer-In-Chief, DJT, for over three years, has exacerbated ABNORMAL by appointing corporate lobbyists to run federal citizen-protective agencies, by mismanaging a pandemic, and by enriching the wealthy as ten of thousands of Americans suffer premature death from COVID-19.

Can it get any worse? It could. Can we the people move us into a even more perfect NORMAL? YES!

Over recent decades our authoritarian economic system has created this ABNORMAL by remaking our political systems in its own image. This ABNORMAL protects, empowers and elects almost exclusively the wealthy.

It’s Time for a BETTER NORMAL

America needs a new and BETTER NORMAL that not only re-establishes all we’ve lost since the mid twentieth century, but includes FDR’s Second Bill of Rights and more.

America needs to disempower the billionaire corporate profit takers by democratizing our authoritarian economic system and putting the workers in charge. We must defund the profit takers so they can no longer buy politicians. With worker owned coops, the worker/owners won’t send their jobs overseas. The worker/owners won’t pollute their own neighborhoods. All worker/owners will decide how to invest profits in themselves, their community, and their businesses.  (2)

We also need massive action on the climate crisis by repurposing dirty energy to clean energy. Congress needs to re-instate the section of the Civil Rights Act that was nullified by SCOTUS. We need to redistribute defense and policing budgets to programs that equally protect and empower all citizens – not property. The Justice Dempartment needs to use anti-trust laws to break up media and banking monopolies. We need to repeal the anti-union Taft-Hartley Act and endable employee run coops. Congress needs to repeal and replace our property-over-people policing system. We need to make voting a right, election day a holiday, and institute automatic voter registration. Congress needs to institute a universal draft for all to serve their nation for a minimum of two years. We need to remake/modernize a new Glass-Steagall Act. Congress needs to end corporate personhood and money is speech.

Relative to a more broadly based, more equal, improved NORMAL (3) as a national moral goal, we need a female VP who best represents the ideals of Frances Perkins, the first female member of a president’s cabinet. FDR selected Frances for his Secretary of Labor in1933. She wrote much of the New Deal legislation, and created Social Security.

We need lots of new lawmakers and legislation to equally protect and empower all citizens and create an IMPROVED NORMAL. The 2018 elections and recent 2020 primaries show we the people can beat the oligarchs.

References:

1.) Congress passed laws that enabled the old, less than perfect, NORMAL and the new abusive ABNORMAL.

2.) Will America Recover From the Right-Wing Billionaire’s War Against Us?

3.) 150+ Civil Society Groups Issue Global Call for ‘New—and Improved—Normal‘ for Post-Pandemic World