Fighting negativity and making America better

Well, you could probably write a bookshelf full of books on this topic from many different viewpoints and opinions. Tonight though, we are going to focus on a few general ideas and hopefully not step on too many toes. Right now, there is some general hatred in our country and much misinformation and confusion. Unfortunately, this means to even get started you have to call out some things and I won’t say some people, so let’s say some general groups and hopefully dear reader you realize there are some generalizations that must be done to get down to some points.

So where does a person begin. In this situation, the writer gets to choose and I choose the what use to be called the Eastern Establishment. Wait let me back up a moment. For America to be successful many different groups or relationships need to have I guess a symbiotic relationship. For example, and I have talked about this before; liberals and conservatives (true open minded liberals and conservatives) need each other not for themselves to be successful more for the country to be successful. Sometimes we forget events will dictate what is the best course of action to take. We cannot let our closed minds push aside better options just because it does not fit in our worldview.

And this is where I start with the Eastern Establishment. And now this group has evolved from when this label first became used. Taking this in a general context, many liberals of the Eastern Establishment would pounce immediately and say it is the modern conservative who is thoroughly closed minded, not us. Why can you accuse us of the same label, when we have known for decades what is better for the country? And oops maybe you don’t. For example, the high handedness of this group comes from their education and granted most people who fit this mold have gone onto higher degrees in general than the average American. Yet they do not know middle America, nor have a general understanding of how middle America feels right now. First example and it is a disastrous one is the election of Mr. Trump.  The current liberal mindset is just shocked that Mr. Trump was elected. Pretty much the way the liberal news has reported for the last three months is the proof in the pudding for this thought.

Now I once proposed that he was elected because of a few smart people who knew the electoral count going in and made a play at the end to pull the rabbit out of the hat. And yes, that is partly why he won.

The bigger picture is something most people do not talk about anymore. Older white middle America is lost. Yes, I said white and white for a reason. Truth be told back in the 50’s and 60’s white middle class America had it better than other races, creeds etc.. that is a different topic for a different day. And I will touch on it as I go along, for now though let’s focus on where we are now with middle America as a whole. And again, yes this is different from middle white America of the 50’s and 60’S. And try to address how we got here today.

The modern “well educated” liberal has forgotten one extremely important fact. And I suggest if you are insulted by my labeling coming up, go back and read what Adlai Stevenson, II was saying in the 1950’s. You have missed some large boats.  Anyway, in the 50’s and going into the 60’s white middle class America had reached a zenith in the history of mankind. In the minds of white middle class America, the world was their oyster. Yes, there was many underlying problems from race relations to bad foreign policy to the ultra-pollution of our air and water, yet on the surface no group of people in the history of the world had the opportunity the children of the 1950’s had. None. Public education was available to all, when people said if you worked hard and applied yourself you could be anything you want it was true. Think of all the opportunities that came about with the space race, computers, military buildup, the interstate highway system just to name a few… degrees in engineering, science, accounting, law, education built up the next generation and created what is now known as the upper middle class or the height of this opportunity. And most of these people came from white middle class, all their values, beliefs, status etc. are a byproduct of this time. And even some Eastern Liberal establishment members have some roots with this same mindset. The federal government grew and a whole slew of programs and departments grew to handle all our problems. We fought a war in Vietnam and we fought the war on poverty. Unfortunately, we don’t seem to have won either and this is just one statement that shows where we went from the 1960’s.

The so called Eastern Establishment never realized middle America enjoyed being middle America and resented the Eastern Establishment laying much blame about all the bad things that came about in the 60’s and 70’s on them or just that they didn’t know any better; hence Richard Nixon could say with great confidence the silent majority was for him. He was right. Yes, there were problems that needed to be addressed and more were developing, but the Eastern Establishment began an attack on middle America that leaves us in a very precarious situation today. Now I am not saying this is the Eastern Establishment’s fault or whatever modern version of this group that exists today. I am saying they are part of the same problem on the opposite side of the coin that produced Donald Trump. I will be fair; you are going to hear about the closed minded, Republican establishment also.

Okay so what does Donald Trump’s statement I am going to make America great again mean. Well to many in white middle America, they remember opportunity, they remember kids being able to play outside all day during the summer, there were no bogeymen except as parental threats, they remember the concept of you are supposed to respect certain people just because of the job title whether it be teacher or policeman, they remember people want to be astronauts or Presidents or owners of businesses. Middle America sees this as why America was great. This is good and now it is gone. (not really, this is how we make America better). To middle America, something happened over the last 30 or 40 years and now we live in an ugly country where all these people are destroying everything they grew up to believe.  Are they racists and bigots and horrible people? There are a few that are, for many though they are lost. Maybe some inherent racism just because they are white, in most people of all races it will exist some, but not because they are evil people who want to shut down everyone and hate everybody. No, they want everyone to assimilate. Why,,,,, well Eastern Establishment because what they grew up with… was great.. they didn’t realize they reached a zenith of humanity, they just realized life is good.

And then along came the modern Republican party establishment and what is rather ironic, it grew post Nixon. Yes, the greed mongering and self-righteous came after the worst Presidential debacle in our history. Nixon was smart, calculating, very politically aware, and at the same time very paranoid and well just afraid. He knew what he wanted. He grew up believing that if you worked hard you could be whatever you wanted. In his mind, Kennedy took that away from him, so he had to fight back and fight back hard to get what was his, which led to some of the most stupid political decisions in our history. When I was young I use to think Nixon was evil. He was not evil. He just made himself a trap and jumped right into it. A smart calculating politician, went overboard and made some very dangerous to our country decisions. And he got caught. And we should be glad he did. Eventually we made need to rely on our strength as a country to get past future problems of this nature. That will be part of making America better somewhere down the line.

Post Nixon though the original generation of what we know call the 1 percenters realized they needed to get better control of this nation or people might step up and take away what they have “accomplished”.  This led to the Republican party post Nixon becoming more outright about taking away advantages to other people and lying to their base to make sure they had what they wanted and no one else was going to interfere. Unfortunately, at this point the Eastern Establishment starting devolving in their own world while the Modern Republican Establishment came to be and starting devolving themselves.  Yep not a pretty picture, yet at the time, both sides were becoming so self-absorbed they didn’t realize how much the other side was falling.  The modern Republican is not conservative anymore though, nor is the Eastern Establishment or whatever you might want to call their devolution is liberal. Both sides have agendas that benefit their noise, not the rank and file liberals or conservatives. In fact, a really decent liberal or conservative agenda is not going to be passed through our government right now since the self-serving leaders of both sides cannot give up one iota to the other side no matter how far they take this country into the trash. Yes, liberals you act like you will work with conservatives, but in fact all you do is state how superior you are and that conservatives do not know anything. Well since the Republican Establishment call themselves conservative I can see why you would go down this path, yet the truth is, since they are not conservative (just self-serving greedy pricks), you throw the baby out with the dirty bathwater.

And after 20 or 30 years of this, we have the extremes of both sides so separated from the rest of the country they are leading the noise of hate at each other. The good thing is this is still the minority of both sides. The noise they are making though sounds like there is much hate in this country. Yet if you really watch people, most want to go to work, work with the people they do, come home and hide away from all this grief being thrown at them by the extremes on both sides.

And that is where we start to make America better. This country still has the potential to lead the world into the next zenith of humanity. (or unfortunately drag down the whole planet). The change though must come from the people. Think about my earlier statement that in the 50’s leading to the 60’s there was so much opportunity for white middle America. Our task is to create the same opportunity for all. And that is so possible. There is new technology for people to work with to create so much. There is an opportunity for a whole new space race that encompasses the whole world.  We can use new technologies to solve age old problems like how do we feed everyone? Over the years, I have proposed many ideas and I know if I can sit here in my living room and just dream up new economic development plans and ideas to better EDUCATE our children others can also. And then we can sit down and choose the best of the ideas to move forward. The world is still our oyster. Let us not be dragged down by the hate and ignorance of a few. Let us fight this tyranny of thought, remove the self-serving interests that hamper our growth. Businesses can still flourish, people can still dream, new products and new ideas and better government can be done, yet only if we take back the mindset that we can do it.

Like I said at the top, there could be books written on my title and all I wanted to do was throw out some general ideas and here I am lost in the myriad of possibilities, trying to avoid the hate that dominates the media noise. America is great from Constitutional writing and on. It is time for us to take the next steps to continue our greatness. We are not perfect, but we can continue to become better. And to do this, we need the Eastern Establishment and Middle America to realize they need each other. When one is successful, the other is also. They are not always going to move in lock step. That is okay. As long as both realize they are working towards a better America and then let the best path at the time be chosen then all will be well.