An Open Letter to Moderate Leadership

Participation by high-status, high-income (HSHI) individuals in the Capitol Riots clearly indicates that the US is in peril.

First, while the right-wing Reps* are (broadly) driven by socioeconomic concerns, we cannot assume that high-income individuals share the economic concerns driving middle- and low-income people. When HSHI individuals participate in a riot it seems clear indication that the importance of the social component supersedes the economic component.**

Second, when HSHI individuals participate in a riot they risk much more than low-status, low-income people. Further, we can assume that many have made net gains as results of past risks. Assume, therefore, that HSHI individuals risk less than they think they can gain. And interpret the size of the expected gain as representative of the importance of the problem they see.

Third, as above-mentioned, HSHI individuals have demonstrated capacity to take risks that pay off. That makes them better judges than average of the likelihood of success. Further, they bring their expertise when they join a movement. Assume, therefore, that the movement is 1) more likely to succeed than when it was comprised solely of “fringe” elements and 2) that it is gaining intellectual ground.

Fourth, when HSHI individuals take part in a riot, it suggests the possibility of an extremely large movement. Assume that virtually everybody of lower status and economic standing (with same party membership) is behind them.

Fifth, participation by HSHI individuals indicates that the movement is decentralized. There are minor leaders in all corners. Therefore, assume that from family table to state legislatures, myriad individuals are likely willing to step up and take the place of any single individual leader who might be removed from the field.

Biden should be breaking with Chuck and Nancy. Instead, after Nancy presided over an impeachment, Biden doubled down on left-wing agenda in a frenzy of executive action and vocal support almost guaranteed to inflame the right-wing.

While Dem leadership may understand this and may be willing to take the risk for ideas they think are right, they mislead their base into thinking that right makes might. One must command sufficient intellectual prowess and/or physical superiority to effect an outcome. The Dems failure to convince tens of millions of Americans that Trump was wrong to embolden rioters indicates that they don’t have the prowess. That means they need to use muscle.

Within the current context, a context within which Lieutenant General Michael Flynn has continued to express support for Martial law; there is clear over-representation of active-military and veterans among those arrested in the aftermath of the riot; and the National Guardsmen protecting the Capitol were forced to sleep in a parking garage; and in a country with a history of radical right-wing terrorists who emerged from the US military, regardless of what Military Leadership asserts publicly, Dems must ask themselves: Are the Armed Services’ rank and file on-side?

Realists should plan for the worst now because it is better to be prepared, but leadership must act for the best.

The new Congress faces five pressing socioeconomic issues that must be addressed if we are to avoid the worst: Immigration, Outsourcing and Automation, Income Inequality, Debts—Medical and Educational, and Social Statuses. While the President may be allowed to take executive action on these issues, that does not change the fact that tackling these issues is the job of Congress.

Illegal immigration represents the single smallest threat to US jobs and wages, but Mitch & Co. continue to allow their base to believe that the problem is illegal immigrants taking jobs away from Americans. On the other hand, outsourcing and automation represent existential threats to the US way of life. Big business can no longer be allowed to depress wages by pitting poorly paid foreigners and robots against US citizens. The Rep base still hasn’t put two and two together here, but that doesn’t mean they’re not angry at immigrants.

The US is an extraordinary success—a superpower—conceived of and organized by high-status, white-male-Anglo-Saxon rebels with high-minded ideals who would almost eradicate the natives and build the nation on the backs of slaves, people of color, and low-status whites, to achieve freedom and opportunity through ascendency over Britain.

Gradually freedom would ring. The nation would begin to realize the high-minded promises enshrined in the Constitution. Northern whites would fight Southern whites over slavery. Over many years, former slaves, women, and immigrants would be given new freedoms. But, immigration would become a curated affair; and recent immigrants would conform or be ostracized with a small group of like-minded non-conformers. White-male-Anglo-Saxons would remain in power. It was their country, and everybody else was here at their pleasure.

In 1942, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (D-New York) ordered the creation of Internment Camps to house Americans of Japanese descent during the war against Japan. He spoke privately about his sympathy for Nazi concerns. And German POWs were reportedly well-treated in America. The last Internment Camp was closed in 1946. Only 55 years later, in 2001, when Islamic terrorists brought down the World Trade Center, George W. Bush (R-Texas) declared a War on Terror while asserting that this wasn’t a war on Islam. He did not round up every Muslim in the Country (legally or illegally). He did not bar Muslim entry. He did not talk privately about hate for Western Jewish Financiers. Everything in this brief time span had changed. And change would continue to accelerate.

Now the same people whom those white-male-Anglo-Saxons admitted to America and a Jewish man and an Italian woman would use the system created at great personal expense by relatives of same white-Anglo-Saxons’ descendants to wrest power from them and remake the America they love into a Prog Dem Paradise.

The right-wing is pissed because they see their legacy slandered by minorities and “race traitors” (some of whom have come to deny even that whites fought a war to free the slaves) while their lives are turned upside down, and they’ve been garnering smaller real wages for nearly 50 years.*** Seen in this light it is difficult to understand how US business and political leaders failed to predict and prevent populist nationalist backlash.

Prog Dems continue to marginalize and usurp white-America, but, they cannot simply eliminate the threat that socioeconomic upheaval presents by marginalizing ideas and people they don’t like. For this reason, progress will depend on new leaders who demand and extract extreme self-control from Prog Dems.

The Social War must pause. That’s the first order of business for new leadership. Arrest the assault on the legacy of US Founders and the struggles of subsequent generations of American whites. Re-engineer social progress to include all Americans and frame it as progress for all Americans. But, do not present it yet. People are too angry to hear it. Instead get to work on the problem of radical income inequality. Cooler heads will prevail when everyday is easier.

The time is right for Debt Forgiveness, Universal Basic Income, and Medicare for All.

Debt forgiveness cannot take the form of erasure. [Those who are not in medical or educational debt as well as many vested interests backing that debt must be kept on-side.] Instead, Pass Universal Basic Income sufficient to pay off average household debts in reasonable time-frames. Incentivize debt repayment by, for example, making funds used for same tax-deductable. Everybody is made whole.

If Prog Dems are (truly) after Universal Basic Income and Debt Forgiveness then this is something they will want to do. Reps will be a hard sell. So, make social and ideological peace.

1) Legislate freedom of speech back into the public square. Force Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Twitter, YouTube to choose either regulation as publishers or neutrality.

2) Reaffirm commitment to the Second Amendment because you understand that a people cannot self-govern from a position of weakness.

3) Commit to leave taxation alone.

4) Reverse legislation to rename bases named after Confederates.

5) Commit to keep the filibuster until the tie in the Senate is broken.

6) Do not raise the minimum wage (it will catch them off-guard and be covered by Universal Basic Income).

7) Suggest a foreign war.

When the Social War stops, Universal Basic Income is flowing into Rep and Dem pockets alike, and Debts are paid down, while the country rallies behind a foreign enemy the wind will be stolen from the insurrectionists’ sails. Then, introduce the new plan to lift all Americans socially to everybody’s benefit to ensure continued American superiority.

*Words matter. Neither are so-called Republicans republican nor are Democrats democratic. They’re Reps and Dems—parties not political ideologies.

**Except in special circumstances, e.g., when a soon-to-be-ex president attempts a coup to avoid facing trial and potential jail time

***Exception in the early Clinton (D-Arkansas) years—possibly attributable to George H. W. Bush (R-Texas?)