SO! WHAT WOULD YOU RATHER BELIEVE?

By Edwin Cooney

Perhaps the most discouraging aspect of 2019's socio and political experience is the realization that someone out there somewhere with your approximate intelligence and knowledge strongly disagrees with your personal assessment regarding religion, racism, economics, politics, responsibilities of parenting, and even the value of your patriotism. How, you may often wonder, can that be? Of course, central to any set of opinions or conclusions you may hold is your personal set of fundamental beliefs. It's even possible that you may believe something without realizing it.

Twenty-three years ago, I was in a conversation with two people. One was a sweetheart of mine, the other one is still a friend. My then-sweetheart asked the two of us: do you believe that human beings are fundamentally good or evil? I took the affirmative and my friend took the negative position. My affirmative position was based on what I wanted to believe. His position was based, as I remember it, on the biblical teaching that we are all sinners. What disconcerted me about his belief was that he believed (because he was required to believe) that people are fundamentally evil because they are “sinners.” It's tempting to me at this point to enlarge on this topic by defending my belief while confronting his belief. However, I’m not going to do that because I'm inviting you to consider the question: how much do we believe based on requirement rather than on conclusion?

Only a short time ago, I realized for the first time in my life that I believed something out of requirement rather than conclusion. I believed that "Almighty God” believes in and loves America over every other people. How could God not feel that way, I used to wonder.  After all, aren't we the freest, richest, and most successful people in the world? Then one day I had an epiphany. If God created the world (and I choose to believe that God did just that!), how could God love some people more than others? How often are we charged as parents with loving one child more than we do the other? I'm comfortable believing that everyone we love, we love differently. This belief comes through my lifelong experience rather than from a native or instinctual conclusion.

Another epiphany I've experienced is the realization that moral behavior is far from the exclusive property of the spiritual. To put it differently, there are some agnostics I'd trust my money or my life with more than I'd trust many religious persons. (Note: remember Judas who accepted the silver and Peter who denied Jesus Christ?)

I'd rather believe that all humanity is good all of the time, but obviously that's absurd!

So, I repeat the question: what would you rather believe but are unable to due to some empirical reason or experience? Here are a few of mine.

I would like to believe that we will soon come to a consensus as to the status of today's climate, but I'm not sure that we are capable of doing so. It seems to me that presently we lack either the leadership or the will to form such a consensus.

I'd rather believe that someone somewhere in the Republican Party is willing to challenge President Trump for the party's 2020 presidential nomination. So far, however, I've seen neither hide nor hair of anyone!

I'd rather believe that people are more inspired by good news than by bad news, but experience tells me that excitement is invariably more powerful than gratification.

Finally, I'd rather believe that the culture wars through which we've been passing will die when the next two or three generations take firm control of our body politic.

My era will be ending in the next 25 to 30 years. The future will inevitably be someone else's business not mine.

It's my experience that most of us, as we get older, invariably convince ourselves that our time was the best time of them all. Not too long ago, newsman Tom Brokaw wrote a book titled "The Greatest Generation.” He made a good case which was that his generation successfully overcame economic privation and the savages of World War II. Hence, Mr. Brokaw's generation became the “greatest” because it overcame the worst of times, a time that sent millions of innocent people to both the poorhouse and to the death house. Thus, Tom Brokaw obviously believes that good people overcame a pretty bad time!

I say, believe what you'd rather believe so long as it's wholesome!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

DO THESE TIMES TRY YOUR SOUL — OR MERELY YOUR PATIENCE?

By Edwin Cooney

Okay, before getting started, I'd better straighten out the mess I've caused already. To my friend in extreme northwest Pennsylvania, I understand that you don't believe you have a soul — as for your patience, that's, of course, conditional! To another very fine friend of mine in extreme southwest Michigan who is not only sure he possesses a soul but relies on it, I wonder when his soul is going to kick in to protest the values of a president whose morals are clearly on a par of the president he once insisted ought to be impeached on moral grounds if nothing else. As for what I mean by "times," I understand that times can either be limitless or definable from a specific historic occasion.

About 1776, an extremely disgruntled Scotsman named Thomas Paine, who had just recently emigrated to the colonies, began the first volume of a series of pamphlets on "The American Crisis" with the following assertion: "These are the times that try men's souls."

Of course, today that first statement, rather than immortalizing him, would have landed him on a talk show on which he'd be roasted probably by the newly elected “Squad" of angry Democratic congresswomen. Be that as it may, Thomas Paine's observations were such as to create a generation of men we have called, since the days of President Warren Harding, our "Founding Fathers."

However outrageous and immoral the British government under George the Third and Lord North may have been, the sins of both Presidents Clinton and Trump would pale in comparison to the sins of those mighty British personages. Somehow "taxation without representation” (to which the British population itself was also a victim at the time) was never meant to be a slight aimed at the liberties of the colonies. Today, presidents encourage such legislation including enhancing criminal laws for the sake of the politically powerful rather than for the sake of either liberty or justice (circa the late 1990s), manipulating the country into a war for a reason that didn't exist (circa 2003), and slurring the values and worthiness of people based on their ethnicity and religious faith (2018).

The truth is that in order for anything to be sinful it must be recognized as such by you and me.

Today we live in an age that forces into our awareness attitudes and events that are invariably overlapping in their cause and effect. At one time, it could be said that, for the most part, difficult issues generally land on the desk of the President of the United States and nowhere else. Under traditional national expectations, that has been true. However, "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” is very different.

Our national fate clearly challenges us to discern fact from what President Woodrow Wilson once called "political make believe.” (That’s good advice although President Wilson didn't always practice it, such as when, in the fall of 1918, he urged the election of Democrats as the only way we could win World War I!) That bit of partisanship cost President Wilson when he lost his dream of America leading a successful League of Nations to a GOP-led Senate in 1919.

These are indeed the times that try all our souls and our patience. Some of our national confusion is legitimate and some of it is self-created. Painful as it is sometimes to draw vital distinctions between right and wrong or true and false, that’s the precise task we’ve assigned ourselves.  

In 2020, it’s my turn and your turn to be Tom Paine.  

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

SAYS A DISTINGUISHED PROFESSOR, ”THE SQUAD IS THE FUTURE OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY!” — REALLY AND TRULY?

By Edwin Cooney

One of my finest friends in all of California asked me the other day to read a column in the New York Times by Barbara Ransby, a professor of African American studies and Gender and Women's Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. So, I did just that and discovered that she's convinced that The Squad, consisting of course of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna S. Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib, "is the future of the Democratic Party." My really fine friend and the learned professor may well be right, but the bald truth is that the current Democratic Party has some pretty heavy lifting to do well before The Squad reaches sufficient growth to run the party of Jefferson, Madison, Jackson, Wilson, FDR, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, and Obama. This heavy lifting includes the following bulky pieces of social, political, and safety-securing projects:

First, a consensus has to be reached on the most effective way to protect people in theaters and shopping centers as well as our children in school classrooms against armed gunmen. Second, our domestic economic condition has to be broadened to increase the purchasing power of the middle and poorest classes of American society. (Note: $15 an hour is a good start!) Third, the immigration “hurricane" out of Central America needs to be quelled and, at the same time, Donald John Trump must be packed off to permanent political oblivion to either Trump Tower or to his Florida paradise, Mar-a-Lago.

What kind of a political instrument the Democratic party will be by year 2024, ’28, ’32, ’36 or even by ’40 has little relevance to the current state of our economic or environmental conditions. However, Dr. Ransby is right when she predicts that "The Squad" may well serve as a vehicle by which to break the almost traditional political logjam in Washington. Dr. Ransby goes on to describe an attitude of this burgeoning movement that in no way suffers fools gladly. The Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, Pressley, Tlaib squad will show no tolerance to anyone insufficiently courageous or progressive to meet their standards or that of their legislative backers. Under their transformative notion of progressivism, it won't be enough to be poor, hungry, deprived of sufficient health care, environmentally poisoned,  or "of color” unless you share The Squad's priorities and activism. Therein, as I see it, lies the long-term flaw in the potential workability of Barbara Ransby's description of The Squad’s successful future.

The longer I study history and observe the present, the less captivated I am with anyone's doctrine. The point most people miss, as I see it, is that doctrines of both the right and the left have the fatal flaw embedded in them of circumstantial applicability. That's why Franklin Roosevelt, our most successful president when it came especially to domestic affairs, insisted that when in a crisis, it's best to try anything and everything that might work rather than merely following anyone's political or social doctrine. Accurate assessments of people’s living conditions, not political doctrines, are what effectively changes America's state of well-being.

About the time Andrew Jackson, our eighth president, was in his second term of office in the mid-1830s, our society began to shift from an agricultural to an industrial society. This shift had nothing to do whatsoever with Andrew Jackson's administration. In order to successfully function, we needed to perfect forces sufficient to meet our national benefit. (Note: not even capitalism was introduced as a doctrine. It was a natural process of societal function that most steadily and successfully met our national domestic needs. Growing markets rather than the increasingly outdated shopkeepers' milieu began to serve a growing nation's demands. Look as hard as you will and you'll find no reference to capitalism or any other political “ism” in the Constitution of the United States. Capitalism grew out of the inventiveness of 19th Century men and women and it will have staying power beyond whatever results from the activities of "The Squad."

There is another aspect of this that is important to mention. Willful hatred of or opposition to The Squad is not likely to kill its force or spirit. The Squad's antecedents, such as the members of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, the participants in the successful 2008 and 2012 Obama presidential campaigns, and the crusaders of the "Black Lives Matter” movement responded to people's needs and demands rather than bending to the conclusions and guidelines of academic think-tanks.

As stated above, political doctrine is limited in its capacity to alter history on the sheer strength of its logic. Let's take for instance the three greatest goals enunciated by Ronald Reagan back in 1980. They were as follows:

1) A balanced budget by 1984. (Note: When Mr. Reagan left office, his national debt was three times that of Jimmy Carter’s!)

2) "God would be back in the classroom," as prayer would be restored to the public schools. (Note: since that really couldn't happen, conservative doctrinaires substituted the voucher program. It was an idea they surely would have resisted back in 1960, with all their fundamental Protestant might, had John F. Kennedy suggested such a program to fund Catholic schools.)

3) There was the vital need for military superiority over the Soviet Union. (Note: Conservative columnist Bret Stephens writing in the Times just today says that Jimmy Carter's 1979 tough decision to send missiles to Europe had more to do with winning the Cold War than Ronald Reagan's much lauded decision to withdraw those missiles in 1987.)

As I see it, political doctrines constitute little more than a lazy person's effort to grasp multifaceted political and social complexities.

As for "The Squad," I'm guessing it will have more than its fifteen minutes of national fame, but by the time the best aspects of it finally become law, Barbara Ransby won't recognize much of its original form!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

THE MIX THAT SEEKS TO FIX!

By Edwin Cooney

Since the time I began to be interested in history and public affairs, I've been warned, and I'm sure you have also, to stay away from three topics: race, religion and politics. Of course, to both my entertainment and even at times to my delight, I've avoided that advice, because politics in particular has always appeared to me to be the ultimate pathway toward bridging the social, political and economic gaps that too often create religious, socio/economic and racial societal barriers. Since I've come to believe that societal barrier bridging has always been at the center of progressive politics and government, I've longed to be a "fixer" as my psychologically-oriented friends would put it.

Listening to the recent Democratic presidential debates as I have been, all of the candidates, whatever their policy differences may be, sincerely believe that President Trump, who insists that he hasn't a racist bone in his body, far more than being a patriot is a racist. Since they insist he is and he insists he isn't, the question is obvious: where do we go from here?

Since the passage in the 1960s of civil rights legislation and the fall of Jim Crow throughout the old Confederate South, racist practices in the public domain have been illegal in the same way as lying is illegal while under oath.

Conservatives are forever insisting that government can't and shouldn't legislate morality that is racist behavior, that is, the Liberals’ version of immorality. Their version of morality, anti-abortion laws for instance, must be legislated affirmatively!  The fact of the matter is that all of us, in one way or another, seek to legislate human morality. That's why Conservative State judges so frequently emphasize the Ten Commandments. Morality is invariably the whole basis for the legitimacy of government.

As for the regulation of lying, that is a situational regulation such as when one iS under oath or when one is selling a product or service to the public. Most people lie at some point in their lives to avoid embarrassment or exposure. So, since both lying and racism are illegal and generally condemned by society, what protects them from permanent extinction? The answer is threefold. First, lies are highly circumstantial in their commission and in their effect. Second, they protect both the racist and the liar from their greatest enemy — fear of possible consequences of their behavior. Third, their person-to-person convenience is well protected by the right of privacy. (Note: as often stated in popular songs, one can't go to jail for what one is thinking!) Lies are especially useful as national institutions, largely due to their convenience. We even categorize lies, partly to justify them and partly out of our own sense of amusement. We have “barefaced lies,"  "damned lies," “lily-livered lies," "circumstantial lies" that sometimes save people from unnecessary stress, and, of course, the lies that almost all of us often defend: "little white lies.” Beware, however, that “black lies” (nothing to do with racism, you understand!) are the awfullest lies of them all!! (No, I haven't forgotten the “cute" little innocent fib!)

Racism, or the identification of a person's race above his or her individual value, is unfortunately deeply ingrained in both our culture and in our psyches. Think of it, most of us know a person's race before we know their name! Remember, 85 percent of all our knowledge comes through our eyes and thus our first impression of people follows the same path. (As for the "sightless," our senses are as well attuned to preconceived social and cultural prejudices as are the eyes of our familial and social contemporaries.)

The sin of the lie is that it is deliberate deception. The sin of racism is individual human devaluation. It seems that these two sins, so long as they're privately practiced, are exactly nobody's business — especially the government's business.

I'm encouraged that finally, following decades of covert practice, racism is an issue in a presidential campaign. Historically, all of us to some degree have depended on racist  scenarios for everything from entertainment to explanation of societal injustices. We have even developed a defense against criticism of our racist behavior. It's called "political correctness." To too great an extent we resist those who would admonish us for insensitivity.

What's saddest about our denial of institutional racism is that we lack the sensitivity to realize the real damage racism does. It hurts people’s feelings. A deliberate intent to hurt people’s self-esteem is not only anti-social, and unpatriotic, it is evil! The evilest aspect of it is that it is so easily concealable and deniable!

The only path we can effectively utilize to overcome racism is to politicize it. We must render racism so heinous and unpopular that it becomes universally impotent!

President Trump is openly banking on the possibility that you and I will be so fearful of those of color, of unfamiliar religious faiths, of immigrants, and especially of the demands of  the poor, as to justify, legitimatize and institutionalize retaliation against them. That's a political challenge that can be best countered via the ballot.   

Yes, President Donald John Trump is, beyond a doubt, a racist. The question is, "so what?"

The answer to "so what?" should and must become our national business come the election season of 2020!

Mix racism with politics. That’s where we go from here!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY