Pain: The Remedy for Middle-class Sleepwalkers?

Today, we began a discussion on Facebook about what progressives must do next to prevent a further slide to the right.


Robin Van Ausdall began the discussion with this statement:

"The very wealthy and Wall Street elites continually complain that they are subjected to an unfair and unwarranted degree of malice by the working class...my question--"What'd you THINK was gonna happen?"

I cracked that if they thought this was an assault on their class, they should read up on Russia in 1917. Most of the remarks that followed were humorous, following my vein. 


I then said:

"And yet we keep voting for them (the Dems who turn their backs on progressive causes). I have one question for that. Why?"

Andrea Merida, a member of the Denver Public Schools board, answered:

"Because we don't have pipeline and base builders in the state party seats. And we still don't have any in the running."

See, to me this is always the issue with Democrats. We always seek somebody "out there" to begin building the coalition.  


So, I wrote the following reply.

Andrea, it sounds like we're hoping for someone to save us. Wouldn't it be something if that someone was us?

Look, the pendulum is swinging as far to the right as it has since the 1930s. That means we have to keep agitating from the left. That's how dialectical materialism works. The question is, what message should we be arguing with.

It seems to me we need to reintroduce the notion of social responsibility, that the rich (and everyone else) has a duty to strengthen American society and the nation. That means strengthening all rungs of society and working to restore the economy. 

Of course, there is Jerry Brown's way, too: pain. He believes the enablers of the wealthy right now come from the ever dwindling middle class. Why? Because of their sheer numbers, the middle class has the power to move policy. For the most part, the middle class feels comfortable. If a member of that class has a job, he/she really doesn't care about someone who doesn't, at least not enough to do something politically about it. That, and the middle class keeps demanding more services, often through the initiative process, without paying for them. 

Brown feels it's time for the middle class to grow a sense of responsibility, meaning to either stop demanding services or start paying for them. If they do neither, they must suffer the consequences: the cut-off of those services. To do that, it appears he will devolve many programs formerly paid for and administered by the state to city, county, and municipal levels. And in some cases, we are talking counties with populations bigger than the whole state of Colorado. 

The bottom line is if the middle class wants to benefit from programs, it has to put up the money or shut up. That's no longer a political issue. That's a moral, common-sense issue. 

Back in 2000, I was talking with Ed Perlmutter, the then state senate minority leader, at a Jeffco Second Saturday breakfast. He was explaining the then new (now perennial) budget problems, wondering how the Democrats could help the Republican leaders balance the budget and take care of all service needs.

I looked at Ed and asked, "Why the hell are you trying to help them succeed? It's a house of cards, Ed. Let it fall. But, have your ducks in a row, so you can blame the responsible parties. That just might put us in power in a few election cycles."

He said, "By golly (and yes he talks like that), Bob, that's it! We'll do it!" And they did. And in a few election cycles, we held both the senate and house. Then, we forgot who we were, got personally ambitious, and lost the house last year. Ahh, well. As Nietzsche suggested, pain is the best teacher, even for Democrats. 

It's up to us on the left to begin stressing social responsibility as part of a citizen's moral responsibility. We have to stress that either we pay for programs or don't have them. Maybe the day has come when the only thing that will get through to the middle class is profound economic pain? Maybe we need to take the attitude that we either pay for services, Medicaid for example, or kill those services? Maybe we need to resurrect Gov. Lamm's idea that if we don't pay for these services, then everybody, including the baby boomers now graduating to SS and Medicare, have a "duty to die." Maybe the baby boomers' mothers and/or fathers in nursing homes need to come home and be cared for by their senior children? Maybe the baby boomers need to change a few of their parents' diapers for a change or pay out of their pockets for the nursing homes? How long do you think that would last? 

Andrea won't like this, but maybe the real solution to the education crisis is to close the public schools? Pay for them as a society or close them. Period. That will seriously hurt the middle class, which is a good thing. It will be like smelling salts: a pungent thing that wakes up the sleepwalkers. 

I think a new take-it-or-leave-it attitude by the left may just force the middle class to becoming reasonable. At first, they'll leave it. Then, they'll start suffering. Then, they'll take it at any cost-- just like their grandparents did in the 30s.

--- What was the original American Aurora? The Aurora was a newspaper published by Benjamin Franklin Bache , a grandson of Benjamin Franklin. The Aurora was published in Philadelphia, our nation's capitol at the time.


The Aurora was highly critical of what Bache felt was the tyrannous Federalist governments of presidents Washington and Adams.

The result? Adams imprisoned Bache for sedition, where he languished, awaiting trial, until his death from yellow fever at age 29.

A Commentary on Community in Jerry Brown's Inaugural Speech

In his third gubernatorial speech, made today, Jerry Brown said something profound:

"Many of these issues have confronted the State of California for decades, at least back to Governor Earl Warren. And, it's sobering and enlightening to read through the inaugural addresses of past governors..."

"They each start on a high note of grandeur and then focus on the same reoccurring issues: education, crime, budgets, water. I've thought a lot about this, and it strikes me that we face together, as Californians, are not so much problems, but, rather, conditions, life's inherent difficulties."

"A problem can be solved or forgotten, but a condition always remains. It remains to elicit the best from each of us, to show us how we depend on one another, and how we have to work together."

Now, that's a hell of a point. In making it, Gov. Brown introduces a fairly-well ignored concept in contemporary politics: Communitarianism. This is not Communism. Rather, it seeks to balance personal rights with communal responsibilities.

Communitarianism was a very hot topic in political science back in the 1990s. Sadly, many of the warnings delivered by its theorists, like Amatai Etzioni and Susan Tolchin, have come to pass because we ignored our responsibilities, our loyalties to community.

We seem to be on a tipping point, in which concerns for personal rights are so tremendous that they seem to be breeding almost, if not in fact, a desire for anarchy.

Strangely, in what seems to be a new, third leg of politics, the Tea Party insists on rights for plutocrats and responsibilities, loyalties really, to the plutocrats' agenda, rather than to the community's welfare. Their attitude seems to be, "Ask not what our plutocrats can do for you; ask what you can do for our plutocrats!"

And, herein lies our tipping point.

What is the risk?

I think historian Will Durant put it best when he wrote, "Every form of government seems to perish by excess of its basic principle."

By ignoring responsibility and favoring anarchy or plutocracy, are we to perish next?


--- What was the original American Aurora? The Aurora was a newspaper published by Benjamin Franklin Bache , a grandson of Benjamin Franklin. The Aurora was published in Philadelphia, our nation's capitol at the time.

The Aurora was highly critical of what Bache felt was the tyrannous Federalist governments of presidents Washington and Adams.

The result? Adams imprisoned Bache for sedition, where he languished, awaiting trial, until his death from yellow fever at age 29.