2023 Archives

America has an entirely new type of slum we haven’t seen here since the 1930s, the product of 42 years of the Reagan Revolution. We call them “tent cities” & roadsides lined with old RVs and cars… Louise and I got home Saturday from a week with extended family in Central America. On the drive from our rented vacation condo by the Pacific Ocean back to the airport, we passed miles of slums or barrio bajos. Some homes were made from scavenged cinderblock and brick, but most were scrap wood and cardboard with tarps as roofs. Along the rudimentary streets ran ditches filled with raw sewage, and electricity was hijacked from streetlights. Back in the 1980s, when I was doing international relief work for the German-based Salem organization, I spent months in such places in Uganda, Peru, Kenya, Colombia, Mexico, southern Sudan, Ecuador, Peru, Thailand, India, Sri Lanka, and several other “Third World” countries. At that time, four decades ago, the “slums” in America looked like high-quality housing compared to those countries, with most having electricity, running water, and reliable sewer systems. But no longer: America has an entirely new type of slum we haven’t seen here since the 1930s, the product of 42 years of the Reagan Revolution. We call them “tent cities,” along with their more upscale neighbors: roadsides lined with old RVs and cars in which desperate or hopeless people live.

"Crossing the Threshold Boldly dared is well nigh won! Half my task is solved aright; Ev’ry star’s to me a sun, Only cowards deem it night." — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “To the Chosen One” (1797)

Have we just watched as Jared & Trump walked away with billions after selling out Yemen, Khashoggi, and the United States? With virtually no questions from the mainstream media or Congress? Lauren “Bam Bam” Boebert announced at CPAC: “We are going to investigate Hunter Biden because he has used his father’s positions in government for shady business dealings with Ukraine and China. We no longer need a resident in the White House. We need a president who puts America first and not his business dealings with corrupt foreign countries.” You’d think such a statement by a Trump supporter would be met with shocked silence, but the crowd went wild with applause. And there is, of course, some legitimacy to the sentiment.

Words matter, as Joe McCarthy knew well. Republicans, by trashing the name of the Democratic Party, are simultaneously trashing the concept of democracy itself… It’s one of the most toxic and corrosive memes the GOP is pushing today, that’s now being used to minimize the importance of universal, free, and fair elections. Writing at the Heritage Foundation’s website in a warning about “egalitarianism,” for example, Bernard Dobski also uses the famous John Birch Society mantra as the title for his article: “America Is a Republic, Not a Democracy.” It’s a memorable slogan, and the GOP has been pushing it ever since the 1950s when Senator Joe McCarthy echoed it while recommending that Republicans only refer to the Democratic Party as: “The ‘Democrat Party,’ with emphasis on the ‘rat.’”