After the elections: Then what?
Photo: Reuters
As we approach the final days before the election, most of the focus is on the personalities of the candidates: Trump v. Biden, Pence v. Harris. The media pundits briefly mention their records, or they come up in the fractured debates, but essentially the focus is on them as individuals and how they will, in Biden’s phrase, “save the soul of the country.”
Yet the soul of the country is not in either of the candidate’s hands. We, the citizens, are responsible for that collective soul. If we continue to be divided, unwilling to compromise, rancorous and belligerent, the next four years will not only be unproductive but perilous to the health and safety — not to mention the sanity — of all of us.
Dissension prevails on both sides of the political divide, yet neither side is willing to acknowledge the claims of the other. Personality comes before principle; unbridled passion pushes aside justice and common sense. Death at the hands of a brutal police officer is deplorable, but destruction of minority businesses by an out-of-control mob is also reprehensible. Justice demands investigation and judicial procedures but, when they are followed, the results must be acknowledged, not defiantly challenged by crowds of militant teens burning and looting. We have reneged on John Adams’ promise that we would be “a country of laws, not of men.”
The real divide in this country is not systemic racism; rather, it is systemic inequality. According to the Pew Research Center, the United States ranks highest among all G7 nations in income disparity. Worse than France, Italy, Great Britain and the rest of the developed world. The richest 5% of families in the United States make 248 times the median income. That gap has worsened since the last recession and is now exacerbated by the quarantine. It has left millions without funds to send children to college, buy a home or plan for a future. And millions more wondering whether they will be able to pay rent or mortgage or even buy groceries next month.
This systemic inequality affects broad swaths of our population across racial lines. The failure of the mainstream press to address it has more to do with catering to corporate advertisers than with reporting the true state of affairs or, as The New York Times once promised, “all the news that’s fit to print.”
Recently we have seen dozens of articles that show that the COVID-19 death rate is higher among people of color. But that again is a distraction from an uglier statistic which has more to do with inequality than race. The truth is that eight out of 10 of all COVID-19 deaths are people over 65, across all races, who have been affected disproportionately. Living below the poverty line on fixed incomes, with less and less spending power each day, or trapped in retirement “homes,” owned by venal and indifferent exploiters. That is the real story. “Profit before people,” but no newspaper or TV station will headline that ugly truth.
Unless we explore these and other stories, unless we reexamine our tribal loyalties and forgo our personal narratives of victimization, we are in danger of regressing even more in the four years ahead. If we continue to play identity politics, public shaming and self-righteous contempt for those with whom we disagree, neither national party will lead us out of this wilderness of briars. As our university students continue to shout down lecturers with whom they disagree, petition to fire professors for writing an unpopular book or an opinion they expressed, the end of liberal education is in sight. Universities will look more like the Chinese Cultural Revolution than bastions of enlightenment.
It would be easy to blame everything wrong with the country on one individual, party or ideology. But that would be a grave mistake. The problem is not on the debate stage of the national election, the problem is reflected in our own bathroom mirror.