The Meaning of America

Part One 

 It’s hardly been subtle. But it is increasing at an exponential rate. The meaning of America. And it’s getting meaner every day.

No longer are we our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers. Americans today shout “Let them die” at town meetings rather than let them allocate another tax payer dollar for adequate health insurance for all. Legislators obligingly cut the safety net provided by Medicare and Social Security even though it is so porous that huge segments of the population fall through to oblivion. Children are easy prey as school breakfast and lunch programs are sacrificed to squeeze out a few dollars more to provide tax cuts to the wealthy. They will still sleep soundly burying the knowledge that hunger reigns in the lives of so many innocents. After all, it is their own fault. They have no one to blame but themselves (and being born to poor parents). They do not pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, no matter that they have no boots. Their children suffer. Why did they have children they obviously knew they could not afford to feed? Oh. Yes. We deprived them of birth control and made a woman’s choice in the matter a sin. Collateral damage. Reversing the clock does not occur without a price. And that clock has been running backwards since the presidential years of Ronald Reagan.

Ronald Reagan. The myth builder. The dispenser of faux truth. The one who painted portraits of the poor as masters of deception, driving Cadillacs to pick up welfare checks. “Liberating” the mentally ill so that they could live free lives pushing grocery carts laden with their worldly possessions. Reagan gave birth to the first “Bag lady” with that onerous budget cut. He suffered no labor pains, although his budgetary “offspring” have been suffering ever since. It’s good to be greedy. It’s good to be callous. Jesus would have wanted it that way. Ronald Reagan’s “let them eat cake” moment came in the form of “ketchup is a vegetable” and “if you’ve seen one tree, you’ve seen them all”. Although never seen as a bully, he was a master of the bullying ways. Mockery. Disdain for a person’s station in life if it was lower than his. Show no compassion. All of it conveyed and instantiated in the minds of upper class America via the bootstraps.  Not give to the poor, but give to the wealthy and they will throw a few crumbs to the poor. “Trickle down” economics is the appropriate moniker. But after a while, Americans realized that the “trickle” was a drip. The drip became an occasional drop. And during Bush’s presidency, the leak was sealed.

FDR’s vision of the government was benevolent; that vision fostered by the programs he created. The government was there to “promote the general welfare”, to help and care for the least among us. We are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers. Reagan turned that vision of a government committed to the health, happiness and well-being of its citizenry upside down with his famous “Nine most terrifying words…I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” The government is to be feared. The government is the enemy. The government can do no good. Translation: we don’t need government. We don’t need to financially support the government. The government must be diminished. The Small government ideal enabled Reagan to decrease taxes on the wealthiest from 50% to 28% (although the bottom rate was raised from 11% to 15%).