While this is a time of severe divisiveness at home and abroad, there’s one thing that binds us together and it always has. It doesn’t matter who you are, how much money you have, where you live, the color of your skin or whether your bodily plumbing is on the outside or the inside.
For each of us time is our most precious commodity.
So I’m troubled that I’m spending so much of my time trying to find leadership and inspiration among the Democrats who want to be our next President.
What about Leadership?
Oh, they have positions on issues. They have positions coming out of their asses. But evidence of leadership? Evidence they have what it takes to heal this nation and get us working together on big problems? I haven’t seen it.
Our challenges are going to require truly painful choices. We need a leader who is going to level with us, a leader who is going to tell the truth about dirty words like taxes and sacrifice.
The snake-oil salesman living in the White House can’t do it. He’s a divider not a uniter and a chronic liar, as well.
Many of our biggest problems are global, but explore the campaign websites of the top five Democratic candidates and basically you find online lip service to foreign policy, even though it is constantly drubbed in our skulls that we are competing in a global economy with some very dangerous madmen on the world stage.
The Democratic front-runners of the 2020 race sound remarkably alike, appealing to the kombucha and gluten-free crowd. Progressives, they like to call themselves.
Rights versus Responsibilities
The 2020 campaigns are all about “rights.” Nothing is said about citizen responsibility or civic duty. The fight against big issues is never spelled out.
“And so my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”
It’s been a l-o-n-g time since an American politician talked like that.
In World War Two, Americans made sacrifices that cannot be imagined in this era of endless rights and no responsibilities.
Actress Rita Hayworth posed with her car with no bumpers to show she had donated the metal to the war effort. Average citizens saved and donated aluminum foil to help.
Today’s kids never heard of rationing. Most of them are denied nothing.
Women went to work in factories building bombers, tanks and artillery. They didn’t have to worry about sexual harassment in the workplace. All the harassment-age men were away, fighting in Europe or the Pacific.
A poster of a woman who came to be known as Rosie the Riveter symbolized the contributions of women to the war effort.
People were asked to dig in to their wallets, too, even though the nation was still recovering from the Great Depression.
A pro-America Fund-Raising Film
A 1942 film funded by the government that amounted to a commercial, pleaded with people to buy war bonds.
It centered on Hollywood movie stars touring the country by train, urging people to buy war bonds.
People were asked to give up millions of dollars. And this was 1942.
The film includes a cringeworthy scene featuring heavyweight boxing champ Joe Louis and the racism that was blatant at the time. Here are some excerpts:
“Hollywood’s most famous movie stars leave the film capitol to help the government sell war bonds.
“The country has asked the people to invest a billion dollars in one month to help pay for the war. And here’s the start of the drive.
“Boarding a special train for Washington, they’ll tour 300 cities from coast to coast. Go to any city that agrees to subscribe one million dollars.
“In Democratic America everybody is doing his bit. There goes Jimmy Stewart on his way to enlist. One of the most popular stars on the screen, joining the Air Force as a pilot, Jimmy has now won promotion. Today he’s Lt. Stewart, USA.
“That husky young Negro, on his way to an Army induction center, is the heavyweight boxing champion of the world. Joe Lewis, the boy who beat Max Schmeling. The Army can use that fighting spirit, and Joe Lewis is now a corporal of cavalry, somewhere in the West.
“And how that crowd lines up to buy bonds from their favorites. They buy knowing that every dollar invested helps send more planes, tanks and ships to the United Nations. This is the peoples’ way of saying ‘From the home front to the battle front, from movie stars to sales clerks, America’s 130 million citizens are in the war.”
In 1942 the government knew what Madison Avenue’s advertising men had known for a long time. Sell to the kids if you want to sell to the adults. Even Bugs Bunny was enlisted to help.
“The tall man with the high hat will be comin’ down your way.
Get your savin’s out when you hear him shout, ‘Any bonds today’?
C’mon and get ‘em, folks. C’mon, step right up and get ‘em.”
Anyone with an IQ of at least 90 and the ability to look around them can see we are sailing toward stormy weather, and so far we refuse to put on life jackets.
The “T” Word
Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg hit the problem on the head during a CNN town hall on the environment when he was asked about taxing big corporations that spew out carbon emissions:
“First of all, it’s one of the reasons why I proposed that we assess a carbon tax. And I know you’re not supposed to use the ‘T’ word when you’re in politics, but we might as well call this what it is.”
His admission that citizens and politicians have a phobia about the “T” word—taxes—acknowledges one of the fundamental problems facing this nation. And it doesn’t matter who is trying to lead us.
We face multiple costly messes
To paraphrase one of Jack Nicholson’s lines from the movie A Few Good Men, we can’t handle the truth. The truth is, we are going to have to pay and pay a lot to get out of these messes.
Global warming and climate change are killing the planet. Fixing it is going to cost nations trillions and it will disrupt the way we’ve been living. Who is going to pay—and how much?
The U.S. national debt is now measured in the trillions. At some point, we have to pay our bills. Are Democrats ready to talk about taxes in detail?
China is on the march with a plan for global domination and the United States is standing in the way. We are at the start of an economic and digital war with China even though most politicians and the media refuse to admit it.
Confronting China is going to require a costly credible military force at sea because global commercial shipping, which means jobs, is a big part of the battle. Are the Democrats ready to spend—really spend—on national defense?
Our Navy is poorly equipped, understaffed and in deep trouble after years of diverting billions of dollars in to the Army’s failures in the Middle East.
The Navy used to have 13 shipyards. Now it has four. Collisions at sea have been attributed to extreme crew fatigue as the Navy tries to make do with a lot less.
The United States used to be the shipbuilder for the world. Now just one-third of one percent of commercial ships are built in the U.S. Most shipbuilding nations subsidize their ship yards with tax money. The U.S. stopped shipbuilding subsidies in 1981. It was part of Ronald Reagan’s get-government-off-the-backs-of-the-people fixation. It eroded our shipbuilding industry.
During our nation’s frenzy to gut the U.S. industrial base and outsource everything to cut costs, the Pentagon started outsourcing millions of vital parts to the lowest global bidder.
Are Democrats willing to propose rebuilding our industrial base, and do they mean it?
In the days ahead, what if we can’t get access to those global suppliers because of Chinese submarines? If we had to truly mobilize for another world war, we couldn’t do it because our nation’s industrial base is decimated.
These are a few of the challenges we face.
We know if the going gets tough we can’t count on Cadet Bone Spurs. If there’s a major war he’ll declare it fake news, insult some patriots and go golfing.
But it should worry all of us that we don’t know if we can count on the Democrats, either.
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