THE NOBILITY OF THE AMERICAN BUREAUCRACY.
We “rethink the week” with Stephen Pimpare, Professor at the University of New Hampshire and a nationally recognized expert on poverty, homelessness, and U.S. social policy; Dean Spiliotis, Civic Scholar and Presidential Scholar at Southern New Hampshire University; and Ron Abramson, immigration and criminal defense attorney from Concord, NH.
We pay homage to the inspirational testimony from so many career bureaucrats in last week’s Congressional impeachment hearings. The State Department, the military and intelligence communities, and other civil servants in America’s federal agencies are smart, dedicated, knowledgeable people, committed to serving the welfare and interests of the country. Even in the face of personal threats to their persons and their careers, we saw them stand tall, comply with lawful subpoenas, and answer questions fully and truthfully. Our professorial guests explain the lessons from this moment in history: American institutions were established to protect our democracy, and they have succeeded thur far – based on a system of checks and balances.
We note with awe the results of the elections in Hong Kong, which saw a resounding victory for the supporters of democracy and a surprising rebuke to the authoritarian regime controlled by China. These results are a tribute to the demonstrations that have been organized and energized by a growing group of younger people in Hong Kong who decided that they were no longer going to tolerate the regime’s lack of respect for the needs of ordinary people. These young leaders inspired large-scale mobilizations, continuing over a long period of time, willing to endure retaliation by the police and the powerful special interests in their society.
In the United States as well, social change has almost always been the result of brave individuals coming together in groups, mobilizing and publicly demonstrating against the powers-that-be, taking risks and growing their movements consistently over long periods of time. Such consciousness-raising, persuasion, and confidence in doing the right thing has usually been necessary before electoral or social advances have been successful. (Sometimes the media have assisted these movements, but sometimes they’ve been slow to shine their light on people who rock the boat, especially their media companies’ corporate boats.
Examples of social movements changing history range from labor unions to the civil rights movement to the women’s movement to the opposition to wars in Vietnam and elsewhere. (More recently, the resistance to Pres. Trump and the Extinction Rebellion against climate change have built on the work of our predecessors.)
THE RIFT IN THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY IS NOW OPEN FOR ALL TO SEE.
Well, it’s public knowledge now. There are two distinct wings in the Democratic Party, and their values are not always the same. In the context of the 2020 presidential election, the Sanders-Warren wing has highlighted the overwhelming and disproportionate power — economic, political and social power — exercised by “the 1%” (America’s richest people and corporations), as compared to the power that the other 99% enjoy. And because of the influence of money in politics (dark money; Citizens United), the monied elites control our government and bend it to serve their own interests, to the detriment of ordinary working people.
On the other hand, the centrist leaders of the Democratic Party support many of the same social policies but are not willing to change the overall power dynamic in the U.S. They work to support and protect the financial institutions that they believe are necessary for our economy to thrive: the banks, Wall St. brokers and equity markets, insurance companies, Big Pharma, and the like. They oppose the kind of systemic change that the Sanders/Warren wing advocates, precisely because it will diminish the power that these institutions exercise over U.S. policy.
Centrist Democrats are doing everything they can to divert electoral support away from Sanders and Warren, to increase support for one of the centrist candidates already in the race, and to push new centrist candidates to throw their hats into this already-crowded ring.
