FAIRLY RADICAL FOR A GENERATION

What FDR saw was necessary in his time, we should see as necessary in ours

The people who blow me away are those who say we just need some tweaking here and there because “things are basically okay"

Things are not basically okay.

From the 30 million Americans who lack health care, to out-of-control costs of higher education, to guns flooding our streets and menacing our neighborhoods, to a suppression of voting rights, to the catastrophic prospects of climate change, to rampant police violence, to politicos seriously strategizing to steal the presidency in 2024, to a racially biased criminal justice system, to a minimum wage so low that at full time employment it won’t be enough for a one bedroom apartment in any state in America, to our government obscenely corrupted by undue corporate influence, to a mental health crisis and high teen suicide rates, to white supremacists acting like brown shirts in towns across America - no, things are not basically okay.

In fact, things are radically wrong. And the only solution to things being radically wrong is to make them radically right.

The word “radical” is scary to those who seem to think incremental changes are always the reasonable and sophisticated way of handling our collective problems. At this point, however, incremental political change is like trying to put out a house fire with a measuring cup. A drip, drip, drip of a few ounces of water here and a few ounces of water there will not put out a multiple-alarm fire.

What is radical, if anything, is our failure to take radical measures to put out the fire. The word “radical” means getting to the core, to the root, to the fundamental nature of a problem. In the midst of the Great Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt said it had become clear to him that the country must “become fairly radical for a generation.” By electing Roosevelt, the country had voted for someone who would not just address people’s immediate pain, but produce the kind of fundamental economic reforms that would keep that pain from returning on a regular basis. Roosevelt was no wild-eyed extremist; he was a realist who knew a country in trouble when he saw one.

A Protestant theologian once put an interesting spin on the story of the Good Samaritan. He said the Good Samaritan would see a beggar and give him or her alms, then see another beggar and give him or her alms, then see another beggar and give him or her alms, then see another beggar and give him or her alms.

Finally the Good Samaritan asked himself, “Why are there so many beggars?”

That is where America is today. It’s not just that so many people are hurting; it’s that the system which produced all that pain is rotten. And why people like myself, who have spent decades helping people in despair, finally realize there’s no point continuing to help the broken-hearted if our system is going to just keep spewing them out.

Trickle down economics has not lifted all boats, in fact it has left millions without even a life vest. For over forty years we’ve allowed short term corporate profit maximization to replace democracy as our fundamental governing principle, making the suffering of masses of people inevitable. It has created a massive transfer of wealth, leaving masses of people without opportunity or hope. And our Congress has become little more than a system of legalized bribery. Many of our political leaders are mere puppets that express the talking points of their corporate donors, overwhelming and outnumbering voices of conscience and ethics and service to the people without which our democracy cannot survive.

That’s not just a little bit of a problem, and it hasn’t just produced a little bit of suffering. It’s a huge problem, a radical problem, and we the people must match it with our willingness to rout it out.

Roosevelt said that we wouldn’t have to worry about a fascist takeover in America as long as democracy delivered on its promises. That is as true today as it was when he said it. His point is analogous to saying that we don’t have to worry about certain diseases of the body as long as our immune system remains functioning. A democracy that functions well is the societal immune system that keeps fascism and dictatorship at bay.

But for more than forty years American democracy has not been delivering on its promises; it has not been functioning well for the vast majority of Americans, but basically only for a few. This has compromised our societal immune system and opened the door to the prospect of our political suicide.

Make no mistake: it is our own government thad did this to us. We went from having a healthy middle class to a decimated middle class; from a time when the average worker could afford a home, a car, a yearly vacation and to send their kids to college, to a time when such luxuries are the easy purview of an ever-diminishing few. And none of that occurred by accident. These unfortunate facts are the results of a mendacious, predatory, anti-democratic corporatist takeover that has successfully put our government in a chokehold, giving precedence to the quest for corporate profits over our democracy, our people and our planet.

So here we are.

America is now like a ship listing so far to one side that the minimum measures necessary to right it are seen by some as “radical.” Then so be it. Let them see it that way. Enough with the incremental changes. America’s house is burning and we should not just stand here watching.

It’s time for America to awaken to the emergency in our midst. We need to overthrow our cynicism and complacency, and show up at this critical hour to save our democracy before it’s too late. We need to stop pretending the situation will take care of itself. We need to do an intervention on ourselves before it’s too late. Wherever we can break the pattern of a soulless status quo, we must. We need universal health care now. We should cancel the college loan debt now. We need a warp speed transition from fossil fuel extraction to clean energy now. We need a just transition from a war economy to a peace economy now. We need a spiritual revival and an Economic Bill of Rights.

If that sounds fairly radical, then let’s be fairly radical. As Roosevelt said, “for a generation.” The same “forces of greed” and those with “lust for power” who hounded him are hounding and will continue to hound us. The “economic royalists” who couldn’t stand Roosevelt cannot stand us. But he said “I welcome their hatred.” So too, perhaps, should we.

His policies lifted millions of people out of hunger, hopelessness and despair, establishing a social contract between the American people and its government that led this country into an era of extraordinary post-war success. Our winning streak was broken only by America’s neoliberal establishment - now in total control of the Republican party, and far too influential within the Democratic party - with its gradual transfer from democratic to oligarchic rule. To continue to give them the power to govern us is to continue to give them the power to destroy us - our lives, our liberty, and our pursuit of happiness.

What the forces of greed set out to destroy, let us now set out to revive. You’re only fooled until you know you were fooled. And once you know, you are a fool no more.