…

By 2016, four decades of neoliberal governance had created inequalities of income and wealth not seen since the 1920s. Labor unions were in decline. Workers received a smaller and smaller share of the profits they produced. Finance claimed a growing share of the economy but flowed more into speculative assets (like risky derivatives) than into productive assets (factories, homes, roads, schools) in the real economy.

…

Mr. Biden’s ambitious public investments in infrastructure, manufacturing, jobs and clean energy recalled the muscular role of government during the New Deal. So did his support for collective bargaining and the revival of antitrust law. It made him one of the most consequential presidents of modern times.

…

When he [Biden] broke with the era of neoliberal globalization, reasserting government’s role in regulating markets for the common good, he did so with little fanfare or explanation. He did not acknowledge that his own party had been complicit in the policies that had deepened the divide between winners and losers. Perhaps he was guided more by political instinct than thematic vision; perhaps he did not want to highlight his break with the market-friendly philosophy of the president he had served. His American Rescue Plan, Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, CHIPS and Science Act and Inflation Reduction Act — in the end, it all made for impressive policy but themeless politics. His presidency was a legislative triumph but an evocative failure.

[From How Harris Can Win, guest essay by political philosophy professor Michael J. Sandel, published in The NY Times July 27, 2024]

“The bird upon the wing
Will never give his power
To the man who would be King”
[John Stewart, “The Man Who Would Be King”,
From his 1992 album Bullets in the Hourglass]

“Ah, once
We were dreamers on the rise
We were the sun
Where the sun never shines
And we were gold
Where the night bird only flies
Oh, that’s a long time you know
For that kind of wind to blow
A long time ago
We were dreamers on the rise”
[John Stewart, “Dreamers on the Rise”,
From his 1985 album The Last Campaign]

“The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
[Alfred Lord Tennyson, “Ulysses”,
Written 1833, published in his 1842 collection Poems]

What would we?
Lucky folk who share the keys
to a people-led land
Gripped not so well as we’d please
But here yet, still in our hands.

Here, oh magic spell,
rare and precious well
where human hearts combine
beyond pomp or empty swell
to together sound and find
Our path ourselves to tell
Needn’t be an oligarch to keep one’s children safe
Don’t have to swallow lies and crime for their sakes
Why, here a president’s a temporary assistant
to us all — to what we all together are!
Here while we yet listen well and only assent
to those ready to serve this brittle star,
that we might soonday know
a yet wider wiser glow

What form we?
A poem, a thought?
Ah let it
Coalesce around
A Beauty
that answers only
to the Love
that chooses all.
Help us
together sing

Kamala and us all are
Not heroes saints or saviors
Just people
With jobs to do

Before the Civil War
Before the great depression
And lately again
So much money at the top
So many feeling squashed

Maybe this time
No great calamity
Merely a shared vision
Maybe this time
A shared heart song
could be enough
to stir the pot
share the wealth
with meaningful work
and a safety net
that complements
work thought democracy community

Don’t worry, Mr. Big Shot!
It’s always way better
to be a billionaire
In our free USA
Than an oligarch
Wrapped in Putin
and his bloody fingernails
You can still be so rich
as to do whatever
You ever want
Just not quite so rich
so as to
buy our government

Besides
People who rule for power
Don’t govern well
!It’s not their goal!
And so in the long run
(even setting aside
having always to decide
between abetting political crime and looking after your loved ones)
everyone does better in a country
where the leaders know they are working for their countrymen,
and that just for a time — just for a time lending a hand

How to work together
For ourselves and each other?
Our job is to listen well
And act with great care
Gently the truth to tell
Gently this treasure share
and expand,
that all in the land
might better stand,
might better lend a hand

Author: BW
Editor: AW
Copyright: AM Watson