FEBRUARY 18, 2020 – Yesterday’s opinion in The New York Times by “Editorial Observer,” Alex Kingsbury, contained a disturbing detail: fewer than a third of all young people qualify to serve in the military. The leading disqualifications: (a) lack of education; (b) criminal records; and (c) obesity.
This speaks loudly about a silent crisis all around us. We’ve been too busy at “shout” volleyball; too angry and distracted to discuss how to save ourselves from ourselves.
Who will call “time-out” and lead the national discussion? Or are we to yield to “market forces” in political and economic arenas? By default those “market forces” will exact a heavy toll. Life is a “pay now or pay a multiple later” proposition.
Meanwhile, progressives swing and miss. Their principal mantra is “shame and justice”—”shame on billionaires, and for economic justice, make them pay.” In targeting billionaires, progressives risk few actual votes—608 (the number of actual American billionaires plus Trump), to be exact; fewer than 0.000493% of the total electorate. But right or wrong, America remains center-right, skeptical at best and put-off at worst, by any message that is perceived (or falsely proclaimed by FoxGoebbels) as “socialist.”
If I were hired to help shape the progressives’ message, I’d take aim at America’s “comfortable classes.” I’d start with this: “If you’re comfortable, don’t get too comfortable with being so.”
Tens of millions of Americans are comfortable, and an impressive subset are exceptionally comfortable from global and historical standpoints. Of the “comfortable classes,” many vote “Red”—for the principal reason that Republican are more likely to continue policies that preserve the comforts of the comfortable classes. A smaller subset vote Democrat (whether “moderate” or “progressive”) out of “compassion” for the underclasses, a sense of moral guilt, or for social-issue reasons. Few Blues of the comfortable classes vote out of fear of what I’d call “long-term market forces.”
Whether you live in a prosperous suburb, a cushy city neighborhood, or a small, well-kempt town surrounded by bucolic countryside, if you live in America, you live in a pluralistic country of 330 million people with trade, communication and transportation ties with the rest of the planet’s 7.8 billion people. What goes around comes around. If we ignore or deny the forces that lead to illiteracy, opioid addiction, gun violence, and poor health habits, those forces won’t ignore us or disappear. They will gather mass and momentum until they inundate our lives.
When the consequences of neglect and denial pound on our doors, the threat will cost us dearly to repel. If our plan is to resist—the fist rapping the door will be replaced by a battering ram.
If images of the French Revolution are too remote, too extreme, then consider this: in a country mired in broad-based illiteracy, incarceration, and obesity, who will stoke a vibrant economy? Who will produce in order to consume in order to support the economy that provides our comforts?
And in our old age, who will keep us?
(Remember to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.)
© 2020 by Eric Nilsson
