We are at a crucial fork in the road
One of Yogi Berra’s classic comically wise sayings was “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” America is at a crucial fork in the road.
It is very important that President Biden lead us down a path that reduces the level of divisiveness and incendiary rhetoric that is severely fraying the “mystic cords of affection” that Lincoln talked about that binds us together as a nation.
In retrospect, we should not have been surprised that President Trump called the Secretary of State of Georgia and demanded that he overturn the results of the election by coming up with 11,780 fraudulent votes. Nor should we have been shocked that he would attempt to incite his MAGA supporters to attempt to shut down Congress and prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s electoral win. As noted historian Michael Beschloss wrote in the aftermath of the invasion of the Capitol, “This day has been foreshadowed by every hour of the [Trump] Presidency.”
In a Associated Press story by Calvin Woodward and Deb Riechmann entitled, “No surprise: Trump left many clues he wouldn’t go quietly,” made the same point: “Over the arc of his presidency and his life, by his own words and actions, Trump hated losing and wouldn’t own up to it when it happened. He spun bankruptcies into successes, setbacks in office into glowing achievements, the stain of impeachment into martyrdom.”
There is no question that Donald Trump deserved to be formally punished for his reprehensible actions that Oren Segal of the Anti-Defamation League labeled the “logical conclusion to extremism and hate going unchecked.” What he did at the very end of his term in office – intimidating the Secretary of State of Georgia and inciting mob violence on our nation’s Capitol building are beyond the pale. Some sort of formal action was totally justified.
In addition, those who partook in the siege on the Capitol need to be fully prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. The Capitol is a symbol of our Republic and we cannot allow individuals, no matter how angry or frustrated they are, to destroy it. Among the items desecrated was a statue that sits in the Capitol rotunda. It was erected to honor the memory of the heroes of Flight 93, which was hijacked on September 11, 2001. By bringing down the airplanes these American patriots saved countless lives and may have saved the Capitol from destruction.
We must send a clear and unequivocal message to those who participated in the siege on the Capitol that the antidemocratic behavior they displayed will not be tolerated and that it was an attack on all of us. Let the word go forth to the Proud Boys and everyday zealots on the both the right and the left that while America cherishes freedom of expression, acts of violence against our political institutions and our elected officials will be vigorously and unrelentingly prosecuted.
President Biden needs to send a clarion message that he is prepared to reach across the partisan divide to address the deep-seated issues that created the kind of anger, anxiety and frustration that resulted in previously patriotic Americans to act in un-patriotic ways. This begins by acknowledging the vast geographic divisions that exist in our nation and further acknowledging that there are no quick fixes to restoring the American Dream to those who lost their good manufacturing jobs. In this regard, it should make it clear that shutting our doors to all immigration and sending all non-citizens back to where they came from will not restore the American Dream.
Further President Biden needs to respond to the needs of the millions of Americans who had somehow managed to squeeze by, but now are finding themselves out of work and their meager savings gone because of the pandemic. Some Republicans will scream about the growing deficit. They will fail to mention that they were not concerned about the deficit when they passed a $2 trillion in tax cuts for big corporations (since 2016, the top corporate tax rate has been cut in half, to twenty-one percent) and millionaires.
President Biden should heed the words of Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman who in a December 17th New York Times column entitled the “Return of the Phony Deficit Hawks” wrote: “Even economists who worry about deficits normally agree that it’s appropriate to run big deficits in the face of national emergencies. If a pandemic that is still keeping around 10 million workers unemployed isn’t an emergency, I don’t know what is.”
President Biden knows better than anyone that Barack Obama wanted to reach across the aisle and strike a “grand bargain” on the debt. His efforts at bi-partisanship went nowhere. There is little evidence that Republican will change their tune and deal with President Biden any differently. The President needs to try to seek unity, but be prepared to go at it alone to implement bold plans that will reduce income inequality, level the playing field and address wage stagnation.
A crucial next step is for President Biden to make the case for why a government sponsored non-pork infrastructure improvement program is our nations best opportunity to provide the good jobs America desperately needs to restore the American Dream and to begin to address soaring income inequality.