By Edwin Cooney
TRUTHS, PRINCIPLES, OBSERVATIONS AND A WARNING!
As we approach the 2020 presidential election, we face a challenge that is even greater than any personal grievance we might have with President Donald Trump. Thus, I begin by offering the following set of truths:
Truth number one is a basic truth of human history. From the beginning of time, every society, whatever its political, social, ideological or even religious structure, has been ultimately controlled by the rich. Our history records that only three Twentieth Century presidents, Truman, Coolidge, and Ford, reached 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with less than seven-figure bank accounts, and all three of these gentlemen became president on the death or resignation of the sitting president. As for the rich, most men and women become rich by inheritance or by earning their wealth, whether the establishment is agrarian (as it was from Washington through Andrew Johnson) or increasingly industrial (Grant through Reagan). Since approximately the 1980s, we’ve gone from the Industrial Age to the Services or Information Age.
Hence, I offer the second truth: except in rare instances where their greed invariably gets the better of their creative genius, the rich really and truly control the United States of America! They can hardly do otherwise — after all, someone’s got to control it! When the greed of the rich reaches the saturation point, that is, when the rich stop realizing that in order to continue prospering, they should invest in their employees and their customers, it is from amongst their number that their sins are ultimately identified and corrected. That’s why we celebrate Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin Delano Roosevelt as among our greatest presidents.
Next, we come to our third truth. Only when the rich really and truly lose their sense of direction, can the generally disorganized majority of the people successfully master the art of government as they did between 1933 and 1969. Remember, there were five depressions between the 1830s and the 1930s which was well before either liberalism or socialism had any influence whatsoever in Washington. Those depressions occurred in 1819, 1837, 1857, 1873, and again in 1893. Usually, the cause for those depressions was bad investments by big business.
The fourth truth is that the American people, up to this point in time, have been successfully manipulated to ignore some of the main objectives of the Constitution of the United States. The Constitution was not established for the protection or the destruction of capitalism, but for the establishment and protection of American liberty. While it can be legitimately argued that capitalism has been vastly successful in insuring our historical prosperity, there are no references to capitalism or of socialism in our constitution.
The fifth truth: it has been perfectly legitimate to advance the prosperity of the rich because, after all, if the rich become poor, the poor themselves become even poorer!
Truth number 6 is the most dangerous truth. Throughout our history, the profit motive has been advanced as the only legitimate moral strategy for our prosperity. In other words, it is both immoral as well as illegitimate to consider any changes in society that might control or regulate the body politic. Too many people still believe that the ownership of property (rather than human rights) constitutes the bedrock of our society. Socialism, too many people insist, is antisocial. That is the greatest danger we face from the Trump administration. Sadly, however, or perhaps ironically, naughty Donnie Johnny Trump may fall from grace because he is nasty rather than dangerous and because he is economically, environmentally, internationally and humanistically incompetent. Thus, even if the White House changes hands in 2021, too many Americans will still fail to realize that democratic socialism is a vitally important social stratagem so long as it is regulated, as every stratagem ought to be. The Constitution was not established to delegitimize a specific economic structure whether it be capitalistic or socialistic. Here are the five stated purposes for establishing the Constitution:
1) “to form a more perfect union…” — That refers to the functional structure of our union.
2) “to establish justice” — That points to the purpose of our legal system.
3) “insure domestic tranquility” — that addresses the need to keep peace among the various elements of the people.
4) “provide for the common defense” — which refers to our right to protect ourselves from foreign aggression, and
5) “Promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity…” — which denies the right of the establishment of a dictatorship. Nowhere in those five stated reasons for establishing this Constitution and Union is an economic strategy or a political ideology recommended or outlawed. While no president up to President Trump has been fabulously wealthy, most of them could be ranked as being upper middle class during their presidential service. The two Roosevelts, Herbert Hoover, John Kennedy, and perhaps the two Bush’s were outstandingly rich. As for the rest, most of them primarily served the agendas of the rich. This includes Presidents Taft, Harding, Coolidge, Eisenhower, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Reagan.
If Democracy is, as historians often observe, the most inefficient form of government, the reason for that is that a free people, uninhibited by rigid principles, are a vulnerable people whom men and women of all types, missions, and resources continually manipulate for profit and electoral triumph. Remember, every politician, regardless of his or her ideology, needs to be needed by a constituency. What it comes down to is that our rights and priorities have become the property of corporate and political entities.
It has traditionally been the fear of many Americans that we are on a “steady, deadly drift to the left.” However, consider the following possibility that Michael Bloomberg, Charles Schultz, and President Donald Trump, all billionaires, could constitute our choice for president in 2020. If that isn’t national corporatism or plutocracy, someone will have to explain what it is to me!
The bottom line is that it’s up to you and me to be interested enough in the fate of our country to ascertain what it all means. Many Americans reasonably blame the character of Hillary Clinton for the Democratic loss to Trump in 2016. However, unless Democrats make it a priority to suspend their doubts and their negative preconceptions about the ultimate nominee, Donald John Trump could well ride to a victory more historic than we can possibly imagine.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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