Here in the U.S., we face catastrophes on so many fronts, it’s often difficult to even name the problems, let alone get on with the business of solving them.
Healthcare, Social Security and Energy come to mind. As does the perilously insecure and crippled election system throughout the nation — and our collective crumbled confidence in it.
Racism, homophobia and a burgeoning theocratic movement threaten not only the gradual erosion of social progress made in this country, but the terrifyingly swift disparagement of the guiding light on the road to progress: the Constitution.
Our foreign policy, such as it is, crafted by a ruthless and seemingly unstoppable (to say nothing of unindictable) cabal of so-called “neoconservatives” in the highest reaches of power, has consigned us as a nation to a level of international disapproval and resentment heretofore unknown to any but the most villainous nations in history.
Arguably valuable as it might have been, our status as a “Super Power” resides largely in our access to (and proven willingness to continue seeking) nuclear weaponry. Our armed forces, stretched to their limits in an unwinnable war, losing strength in their dwindling numbers of new recruits, can no longer be said to be capable of defending this nation from an actual threat.
Our prisons, growing in number by the day, sit full to bursting with an incredible percentage of our total population; a great many of whom reside in said prisons because of a failed “war on drugs” whose very existence appears to be driven by graft, misuse of authority and, perhaps, a myopic dedication to the eradication of an uneradicable human desire.
These are but a few of the problems confronting us as a society and as a species.
So I ask you — what needs fixing, and how do we fix it?
We have a world to save.
heh, glad to see you’re using the quote I came up with…
I dunno where MsO’C got it, but I saw it — or something very close to it — in a comic book, years ago.
Well, I used it in a thread where MSOC was talking about some people complaining about her ranting. And I had just been reminded of the Emma Goldman quote and combined the two. Someone else will probably come up with it in a few years.
Heh. Well, to be perfectly frank, I didn’t “get it” from anywhere. It’s a common enough phrase, and I am fond of adding “people” to my frequent exhortations…
But I did notice your use of it, after I’d already posted this…
budget for the war on drugs and start dealing with the demand. Treatment is far more cost effective than prisons and it cost 60% less to administer.
NPR had an interview with Gonzalez and two others can’t come up with their names right now, while they were in Nashville at a Drug Court. The Judge made it clear that what they are doing is working and if they don’t keep getting funding from the feds it will stop working.
Doesn’t matter, our drug czar is cutting treatment by 30%.
If treatment were provided, we could release more than 60% of all imprisoned felons to alleivate our over crowded prisons.
As a person in recovery, I know that treatment can work, you just have to movitate them to want to try it and see if it will work for them.
You can’t force someone into recovery, but you can open some doors that might make it more difficult to keep using.
Decriminalizing the so-called “victimless crimes” is a great place to start. There are, of course, “victims” in these crimes, but incarceration shouldn’t even be an alternative. Nothing like a stint in prison to harden a casual (or even habitual) drug user into a violent individual.
Especially since drugs are often still obtainable even in prison. I mean, face it, if you can’t keep drugs out of a facility surrounded by walls, razorwire, and armed guards, there’s no fuckin’ way you can keep them out of the country at large.
If we switched to a harm reduction approach (and away from a sound-bite production approach), it’d be better for everybody.
Well, almost everybody. It’d be worse for the dealers, the people getting payoffs, and the politicians who benefit from the sound-bites and/or the effect that class-biased and race-biased drug-law enforcement has on voting patterns.
Harm reduction sounds alot more reasonable. Your point is well taken, and you’re preaching to the choir here. Why do we try so hard here in America to eradicate things that you can’t eradicate? Things that a large portion of the population either take part in or don’t see as huge problem? Legalize and regulate. Tax the profits made. Is it really all that different, smoking a joint or getting Prozac prescribed? Is it really that different, paying to get laid or paying for multiple date to accomplish the same thing? Casual drug use and casual sex are both problematic, but insisting on the continued “war” approach–what does it gain? Unwinnable, and ill advised. Educate people, start very young, give them knowledge and let them make informed choices. Encourage accountability, reinforce it. Take the money, power, and corruption out of these “illicit” trades and make a difference in the way people view these things. And the benefits–reductions in the spread of STD’s, reductions in the damage done by use of uncontrolled and dangerously altered recreational drugs, huge reductions in the prison population, the list goes on and on.
Should be the first priority. We’ve already lost the supreme court, our only path to protecting civil liberties will now be congress and we need to make sure that the people elected are the people that get in.
Is corruption and corporate interests that dictate the paths our governments takes.
This alone usually thwarts my best, most pragmatic approach to come up with policy that will solve any of the peripheral issues.
For example, take immigration. Regardless of how open one thinks the borders should be (I happen to think that they should be pretty damn open, but that’s besides the point), we will never have a realistic immigration policy until the government cracks down on companies and corporations that are interested in cheap labor. And they get cheap labor by paying illegal immigrants who can’t be employed elsewhere because of their illegal alien status. But the government isn’t willing to go after them, because so much of our infrastructure and economy is currently running off of this near-slave labor.
As another example, take health care. We won’t have a realistic way of approaching universal health care until costs go down, especially with regards to the pharmaceuticals industry. But too many politicians (on both sides of the aisle, I daresay) are having their coffers filled with the spoils of picking the pockets of the sick and elderly.
So I think it all starts there, reform in Washington. Which, it could be argued, starts with reforming the electoral system, but that may require reform in Washington first. And therein lies the circular nature of that problem.
Our dependance on fossil fuels, and the fact that our government is run by men (and women) who made (make) their living selling fossil fuels.
How do we fix it? Renewable energy sources, energy conservation, political revolution (oops, I’m a pot-bellied middle-aged, middle-class guy; I don’t believe in revolution any more. Heh!).
Yes, fossil fuels are killing us, in every way. Require the automakers to change things? Sure, but their motivation will never be what it needs to be to make a big change. My hope in this area actually lies in the price hikes we continue to see–conservation, and research into renewable energy sources, is going to become profitable. The dwindling supply of other fuel sources is going to make it happen. I actually wish I had some money to invest and investment know-how, because the people who are going to make a lot in the market are those who invest in the companies pioneering/marketing renewable energy sources. Its a matter of time.
It’s the lack of individual, everyday courage and compassion that leads us to where we are. Fear and inertia have become the socially acceptable default. “Do it to Julia!” along with the pathetic, “I’d sure like to do X, but my schedule’s a bitch.”
Guess what? We all have the same 24 hours in a day. We can choose to excuse, we can bluster our good intentions, or we can muster the courage and the compassion to make a difference every day.
Death, torture, indefinite incarceration all good by you? No? Then by God don’t pull a gee dubya “I’ve got to get on with my life.” Compassion and courage every day, make a small difference in every life that touches yours. No more excuses, your life, my life depends on it.
Eliminating the corporate stranglehold on our media should be somewhere near the top of this priority list. If you can’t get your message out, you can’t gather people together and nothing will get fixed
everything else we usually cite are effects of our systems of government–America’s, certainly–being founded on countless presumptions that no longer or that we’ve outgrown.
The American system in particular seems to me to presume that the people own much of the economy, that the economy is simple and very slow-moving, and that there is a large empty frontier (no Natives need apply) with so much excess resources and opportunity that the people can still profit if we let the most successful and powerful people and businesses take all they can.
I’m no student of government so I’m not in position to lay out a detailed vision. But to me it seems reasonable to specifiy a few points:
It seems to me that if government restores the people’s basic ability to speak and debate, if it represents everyone, and if it limits the extremes of power from bottom to top, we’ve got more than enough talent to work out the details fairly.
Well that list is at least worth what you paid for it, which is more than we can say for Bush’s.
I’m working on building a list of such things. Here are some off the top of my head that are on the list:
Secrecy – by governments (national security excuse) and corporations. I don’t think corps should be able to hide any of their information. And the government should be much more accountable for state secrets.
Worldwide Minimum/Living Wage – based upon local costs of living.
Drop the Debt – quit raping the third world for debt payments when most of the money never helped the general populace in the first place. Most Western foreign aid goes to paying off old debts, meaning the aid just goes back to US and Western financial operations. This is closely related to the idea of letting people control what is done with the material wealth of their local region (IE giving control of the oil in Nigeria to the Ogoni).
Alternative Fuels NOW!
Spread True Freedom – We need to spread secular humanism, to the US as much as to the Mideast. Unless a religion allows others their own beliefs (and IN PUBLIC), I don’t see it as anything other than a system of oppression.
Sorry, this is sort of slapdash and I wish I could remember more right now, but I should probably get back to that work thing (the scourge of my existence).
I am tempted to say it’s our minds that need fixing, but the evidence of history suggests nothing can penetrate our thick collective skulls when ignorance, greed, fear and tribalism are on the ascendant.
The overarching threat today, from which many of our other ills flow, is the fossil fuel economy–as remarked above. Our entire civilization is predicated on access to a disappearing resource, and that’s not a good place to be.
Our burning of fossil fuels has ignited global warming, which is a planetary threat that dwarfs all others, even famine and pandemic.
Our quest for fossil fuels has embroiled us in wars and alliances in which we have no business other than protecting access to the oil prize. If we continue this behavior, we’ll be faced with even hungrier and more dangerous competitors.
Fossil fuel politics have distorted our global relations and the very shape of our domestic political arrangements. It has fueled the housing bubble which in turn is a malignant economic anomaly poised to burst and spread ills throughout the land.
What should be done? A good dose of honesty and straight talk from our “leaders” would help, but I’m not counting on that.
Individually, we must all make what arrangements we can to meet the coming trials.
As a nation, we could elect wise leaders who recognize the mortal peril we are in and act immediately to pull back from Iraq and every other global dry hole. In turn, they would reinvest in a massive push for alternative energy solutions. That means serious investment in human intellectual capital, research and development, and partnering globally in the search for remedies. The added bonus to such action would be the creation of 21st-century jobs.
It means thinking differently about what we can’t live without, how we structure our living and working arrangements. It means immediately cutting off all subsidies for wasting energy (e.g., tax breaks for SUVs) and the imposition of stiff penalties for extravagant energy usage.
Ultimately, it means understanding and accepting a healthy dose of reality, which brings me back to my first sentence.
Reality will intrude on our reveries sooner or later. I think it’s encumbant upon those who see past the next shopping trip for a new SUV to do what they can to get the word out, because the sooner we get started, the better.
By the by, MSOC, I love the pic from Pink Floyd. Nice touch.
I wonder if the first thing we need to fix is the attitude that we need to pick one thing — or a few things, prioritized — to start with. (Yeah, the irony is intentional.)
Trying to pick THE big thing just gets in our way. Pick your thing, then go do it. There’s a few billion of us, I think we can pay attention to a whole bunch of things at the same time. Particularly if some of us also keep our eyes open for connections and common denominators.
I forgot an important one.
6. Reject all electronic voting machines and return to paper or punchcard ballots entirely. Along with this, prevent the (reactionary rightwing) Urosevich brothers from having anything at all to do with the vote count.
Awesome comments. How to add to all of this? The most important element that has needed fixing for me is the belief that we can do this. I’m sure most of us have dealt with depression and despair over these most important issues regarding our survival as a species.
I have recently come to the conclusion that more people care about this planet, then don’t . I believe we outnumber those who exploit the world for their profit. We need to find a way to raise our voices louder than their’s.
We can win this. We want the world and we want it now.
How? There are other contributing and important issues that thousands of people are working on at the local and state levels. There are broader issues, that require a change in conceptual framework that all of us can help with, like awareness of corporate control of the political process as well as unfair power over our lives (cf. usuorious credit card rates and practices.)
There are critical problems that need to be solved at the federal level, like reinstituting the fairness doctrine or some other mechanism to recover the airwaves for the people and the information we need, but these can also be worked on by Dems and others with money who invest in non-rightwing talk radio and TV, i.e. Air America and the Gore TV experiment.
But the three priorities outlined above need LEADERSHIP. They are issues to run on, and then to govern on. Leadership can shift attitudes, by targeting perception, by giving people permission to believe what they secretly believe but contradicts conventional wisdom created by rightists and corporatists.
Leadership: CLARITY, COURAGE, HUMANITY. A subtext to this leadership style: INTELLIGENCE and pragmatic idealism are cool again, because they are in service to HEART and SOUL.
Aid to the third world. The U.S. has a long record of pathetic performance in this area.
Other people have asked this question, and, as one example, here’s what the Copenhagen Consensus came up with. (Many caveats apply.)
http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com
Very Good Project Rating
1 Diseases Control of HIV/AIDS
2 Malnutrition Providing micro nutrients
3 Subsidies and Trade Trade liberalisation
4 Diseases Control of malaria
Good
5 Malnutrition Development of new agricultural technologies
6 Sanitation & Water Small-scale water technology for livelihoods
7 Sanitation & Water Community-managed water supply and sanitation
8 Sanitation & Water Research on water productivity in food production
9 Government Lowering the cost of starting a new business
Fair
10 Migration Lowering barriers to migration for skilled workers
11 Malnutrition Improving infant and child nutrition
12 Malnutrition Reducing the prevalence of low birth weight
13 Diseases Scaled-up basic health services
Bad
14 Migration Guest worker programmes for the unskilled
15 Climate Optimal carbon tax
16 Climate The Kyoto Protocol
17 Climate Value-at-risk carbon tax
Sorry in advance for nitpicking, but one thing we can do without is gratuitous frames around text.
Just trying to help…
Wow, MSO, taking on the universe, as usual. I’d rather have you do this than taking on Ann Coulter – although having just read Harry Potter the latest, I’d happily give you a want to disaparate that harpy to a desert island somewhere!
Time for only one thing:
Education. We need to be growing up more people who can and do 1) care about what needs fixing and 2) have the will and skills to do the fixing, rather than 3) living on bread and circuses to gratify their own needs exclusively while the world goes to hell in a handbasket.
We are losing kids, and young adults.
How to fix?
Start early. Home visits by trained counselor/health professionals during first two months post-partum. Oh, did I say free prenatal care & accessible clinics for pregnant parents and for children?
Give priority to early education and intervention. Fully fund HeadStart. Full day, full year kindergarten nation-wide. Full day, full year preschool (year before Kindergarten) (not mandatory) for children at risk but not meeting criteria for HeadStart.
We have clear evidence that the earlier the intervention, the greater the long-term payoff. But we should not necessarily expect short-term payoffs!
Teach the public – not just parents and potential parents, about warning signs of difficulties in young children. Teach them also about how to foster good preparation for schooling in young children. (Key: reduce TV drastically, and talk to kids. Anyone – just talk to little kids, they don’t have to be yours! You are helping them develop vocabulary and pre-reading skills. TV will not do this! Computer time will not do this!). In short, we need a public affairs campaign much like the seat belts and no drinking if pregnant campaign. In large part, we’ve got to make people understand that education helps all of the citizens, not just parents. I’m continually distressed to see otherwise progressive people say that people without children should not have any of their taxes pay for public education. These folks have been brain-washed by the Right, and they don’t even know it!
Oh,I have to sleep! One more thing: Restore education for all those young persons (and old ones, too.) in prison. Works better than any other program to end recidivism. Prison should not just be about punishment, if we want our society to progress.
#$@!! This is frustrating. . .the soapbox calleth, but so does sleep.
Thanks, MSO, I appreciate your fiery, thought-provoking stuff!
This is a big subject Maryscott.
So, I’d like to offer what I see as some starting points for a new administration.
1, Level with the public. Tell the public point-blank just how bad things really are, and also point out the good areas if there are any.
2, Break the back of the White House press corps. It behooves the new President to break away from the system that has been abused since Reagan and often looks out of control in terms of self-importance, and supposed privilege and access. The President has direct access to NPR and PBS, plus C-Span, and I would suggest that he use it, going to the other networks only in time of national emergency. The reason for this sharp departure is Clinton. I watched this excellent President get smeared by the White House Press Corps, and the commercial media often unfairly and frequently with made-up rubbish. There should be a price paid for this, and that price should be fearsome indeed. The media tolerance for the lies of Bush is mere reinforcement for what I stated above. The media decided not to just “report,” it chose sides, and until this partisanship is stopped dead in its tracks, the general, badged, White House Press corps should be sent packing. No automatic press pass renewals! The credo should be, “You want to find out what’s going on? You come as a reporter, not as a pundit. You want to be a pundit? Join an editorial page. You want to be in on the information? Be a reporter. BUT! You won’t be both in here!” Further, be very, very stingy with press passes, especially day passes.
2, Reorganization and professionalizing of Homeland Security into a smaller, leaner, greatly streamlined information clearing house incorporating a great deal of the NSC type work for the administration. This quaint, awkward sounding “Homeland Security” name should be more like “National Security Office.” What’s more, this organization should have teeth enough to get the reporting of CIA, FBI, NSA, DIA, NRO and the other less known intel wings into one cohesive report for the administration and Congress. Under the current “spoils system” administration for DHS, partisan and personal loyalty to the administration is glaring. The concern should be for America! Not some political gas bag like Bush lost in some goofy “Etat, C’est moi,” illusion and delusion.
3, A breakaway from endless testing cycles and the re-energizing of our national public schools, on a nationwide basis, carried out as if in a state of emergency. This is going to hurt, and will require lots of money!!! It is our only hope to keep America in the running for the new century and beyond. Leave education to educators, not political pontificators! Our school system is crumbling, from lack of funds and plainly poor long term thinking and planning. this must be turned around.
4, Verifiable voting, on a uniform national level. Please note that mechanical turnkey machines are highly reliable, easy to keep in good order, easily inspected for tampering, easy to rebuild and being mechanical; the complete machine can be “seen” and thus readily understood. Help should be given to states to move away from unverifiable voting machines, and unless the purveyors of black box voting can prove beyond ANY doubt that they can produce a machine as easy to repair, and keep in accurate condition, and as inspectable and verifiable as the mechanical turnkey, the idea of electronic “black box” voting should be scrapped and rendered illegal until it can be demonstrated that such machines are completely tamper-proof, leave a completely verifiable trail for recount as a printout, can issue a receipt, and are not subject to hacking whatsoever. A far higher, much more stringent standard should and must be put on black box voting machines due to the many avenues by which electronics can be tampered with by hacking, outside magnetic devices, microwave and MASER disruption of normal current flow and switching, and deliberate or accidental improper electronic adjustment. You can see the cause of double counting and how magnets interfere with turnkey machines, you cannot see this with black box voting “slot machines” posing as fair voting devices.
5, Realization that the neo-con vision of national defense has been a failure in practice but an incredible Klondike bonanza for defense contractors. It is time to return to a realistic Defense Policy that keeps the military strong and ready while insuring control of staggering costs associated with maintaining a military are brought to heel. New thinking is needed, and this means adding some new people, not just a rehash of the same old people into different situations.
6, End the Iraq War. The easiest way to end the Iraq war is to leave. Our meddling will start a civil war, and we had better realize this. We should have left when the Iraqis asked us to. Yes, Iraq would have gone the route of Lebanon, and that is a sad fact. But, our staying has not made it any better. We poured our efforts into the wrong country, for the wrong reasons. Containment worked. But containment wasn’t politically “sexy,” war was, at that time. While Bush entertained delusions of “winning Vietnam by way of Iraq” and topping his father, what actually happened was a completely unnecessary war that is also a veritable Klondike for military and war profiteers. I don’t think the dread associated with the realization that Iraq was a war to enrich a segment of the economy, but that is the dread we must face. Iraq was a war for financial gain, at the expense of America, and at the expense of American and Iraqi lives. We haven’t brought much freedom, but we have brought in lots of money for some powerful interests, and frankly, I think heads should roll because of this enormity.
7, Address the deficit as a national emergency. This could result in sharply higher taxes for several years, and the attendant political problems this will entail. We either address the issue truthfully, or we continue down the tubes. It is time to be pro-America here, and think a bit beyond ourselves, idealistic as that sounds.
8, Promote the reindustrialization of America, and stop any program or any corporation that interferes with this re-industrialization. Until we can get back on our feet we are vulnerable to the ravages of a rapacious market, and ferocious market control schemes including the “Wal-Mart business model.” America needs to be employed in meaningful labor again. I realize this will spark strong disagreement in some circles, but you can’t have a free market if you tolerate brutal and ferocious market control gimmicks like Wal-Mart. You either have a free market, or you don’t. It is time to stop playing “blind in one eye” and see the Wal-Mart model for the very “Un Adam Smith-like” gimmick that it is. I am not talking about Wal-Mart the store, I am talking about the business model that on one hand destroys American business and industry and creates unemployment in the very same breath. You are either pro-American or you are not. It is time to put America back to work, Wal-Mart or no Wal-Mart.
9, Promote a Canadian style national health network that could possibly become continental, one system usable in any of the three countries of North America. The Canadian system is by no means perfect, but it is a hell of a lot better than the anarchy we have now.
10, A massive and complete review top to bottom of the Federal code, and elimination of “blue laws” and grossly overlapping and unnecessary laws. What I want to see is a huge reaffirmation of LIBERTY for all this talk of freedom I hear is just that, talk. Freedom without liberty is not freedom at all. How this would be done I have to leave to legal minds, but liberty must be restored, protected and made safe from ruthless exploiters like Bush and his grisly gang.
This is the way I see it, sorry for the book.