By Edwin Cooney
Fifty or so years ago when I was in college, there were three types of majors in my student teaching class. There were history majors, sociology types, and political science theorists. History for me was the ticket as it was about chronological cause and effect. I always enjoyed sociological questions and issues, but I insisted that the problem too many sociologists had was that they didn't know enough about history. I also thought that sociology gurus were too theoretical and impractical. As for political science analysts, they seemed to me to be all about merging theory and law.
Now that my younger son is approaching 40, he's generally interested in understanding how he and his fellow citizens and voters can begin to make things work in 21st Century America.
In our tense discussions a couple of weeks ago, he made the following things plain: He doesn't care what Washington, Jefferson, or Madison did about slaves or even if they had slaves. He doesn't want to read about the Revolutionary War or Civil War or which war came first. He considers both political parties a waste of time and energy and he wants new and more representative parties. Additionally, both parties have behavioral rules. In order to be a good Republican, you've got to be a good Christian or Jew, but you damned well better not be an agnostic, atheist, or even worse, a Muslim. If you're a “good” Democrat, you may play with socialism or even Marxism, but you are suspect if you are too much of a capitalist. In short, both Republicans and Democrats have so totally sold out to money interests that they lack the capacity even to tackle the issues on which they agree.
He'd like to see multiple political party presidential candidates running against each other in a popular vote election unencumbered by an electoral college. Like many others, my younger lad is more interested in government than he is in politics.
The devil of all this is in the details. A few years ago, I was with two of my closest friends who kept insisting that it was long past time for a new Constitutional Convention. What they weren't aware of was that the first Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia over that summer of 1787 was a secret matter. The Annapolis convention that brought about that Constitutional Convention insisted that all debates and resulting conclusions be private. General Washington, the Convention's elected president, was responsible for keeping the proceedings within the walls of the Convention. Each night, Washington collected every delegate’s working papers in order to prevent leaks to a hungry press. Additionally, during the daytime, the windows of the hall were closed to prevent audible disclosure of the ongoing debates despite the intense summer heat. If that stipulation for a 2023, 2024 or 2030 convention were proposed, someone would take the stipulation to federal court on the basis that some political entity was seeking secrecy to advance its own agenda. Of course, there are dozens of issues on the table that no one knows how to solve. Climate change, homelessness, affordable medical care, our role in a continuously changing sociological, political, and economic shifting worldwide situation all exist on a scale of intensity that has never before existed. In short, most Americans know whom to blame for numerous dilemmas, but no one knows whom to trust to alleviate them.
Suppose, for example, that we were to eliminate the electoral college in the selection of our national leadership as so many have insisted. The popular election of a president doesn't eliminate the possibility of “hanky-panky” which the Donald Trump forces and other Republicans insist occurred in 2020 resulting in "the steal" that brought about the January 6th 2021 attack on Congress. Nor would the inclusion of more political parties streamline and make good government more likely.
The essence of ongoing good government is strategically arranged political coalition within a body politic. Parliamentary governments such as those that exist in Canada, Great Britain, Israel and throughout Europe are more suitable to coalitions than the federalist type of government which we have had since 1789.
Ninety years ago, we — the richest, freest people in the whole world — were suffering through a terrible depression. Along came Franklin Delano Roosevelt with a set of plans that would widen our political, legal and social functions and enable working men and women to increase the value of their working capacity along with their purchasing power to break loose from the economic and social authority of traditional capitalistic industry and mercantilism. FDR broke what he called "the unjustified terror that converts retreat into advance.” He was able to do this primarily because no one had a better idea and something just had to happen if the system wasn't to implode.
As I understand my younger son's perspective, he doesn't care how Christopher Columbus treated native Americans or whether the Confederates were guilty of treason. He doesn’t much care about Richard Nixon's insecurities or sins which brought about Watergate or sustained the Vietnam War. As he sees it, these are all distractions. What matters to him is the future of his really and truly beautiful daughter who is my really and truly beautiful granddaughter. (Note: I have two other really and truly beautiful granddaughters as well!) Social issues, with the exception of women's prerogatives (after all, his little one will one day be a gorgeous lady), and other issues have little significance to him.
My younger son is a conscientious and generous family man who generally carries an old fashioned strain of GOP orientation just as his father once did.
I know what it will take for us to get beyond our current socio and political snarls, but I'm damned if I know how to unsnarl our current set of — okay, I'll say it — “malaise” as Roosevelt did some 90 years ago!
My younger son is right in his sense of urgency about the present and the future. Where he's lacking is his sense of how important people's feelings are.
Remember Maya Angelou's observation that people may forgive you for what you did to them, but they will never forget how you made them feel.
Whatever strategy we employ to break the present combination of doubts and suspicions must be a strategy deliberately designed to encourage the hopes, dreams, and positive ambitions of all types of people.
After all, as my younger son insists, the future ultimately matters more than the past.
Goodness, am I really biting my own nails? Wow, son!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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