Businesses United for Stability

Businesses like stability. You generally can’t trust them to look after anyone but themselves, but they and the general public share a lot of common ground. Businesses make things we need. They innovate. They strive for efficiency. They do all that in the name of profit, but we all benefit from those efforts. Historically they haven’t been great stewards of the environment, and they are slow to fess up to other harms they cause, but we have laws and regulations to keep them more or less in check in those areas.

Businesses have to plan ahead, sometimes far ahead, so they don’t like unexpected changes in the rules of the game. They don’t like trade wars. They don’t like economic conflict. Businesses who need lots of workers like sensible immigration policies.

Not surprisingly, businesses want to have a say in government to assure their needs are considered. So, they liked the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which gave them broad rights to contribute to politicians. 

Many of us, including me, thought that decision was a bad one. We thought businesses didn’t need more political clout. 

I think I may have have changed my mind. Why? Because I like stability too.

Trump gave us the opposite of stability. The rest of the GOP is not much better. These days, businesses are looking like my friends. They are like a gyroscope on our national clown car to keep it from careening out of control.

Businesses got us where we are economically. So, if they want to make big donations to politicians who share their interests, fine. At least I know that most of their interests align with mine. I can’t say that about the MAGA wing of the Republican party, which seems to hold sway over most of the GOP these days.

This Land is Our Land

This is going to sound unpatriotic, but I've gone off the Fourth of July.

When I was a kid we went to Fourth of July fireworks. When I had kids, I took them to Fourth of July fireworks. I love fireworks. I love John Philip Sousa’s Stars and Stripes Forever. Like almost everyone, I like both America the Beautiful and This Land is Your Land (although the latter was written as an angry retort to the former). 

Do you remember that childhood game of capture the flag? It seems to me that our flag has been captured. I’m not sure I recognize what it stands for when I see it flying like a warning in the backs of pickup trucks or stretched across freeway overpasses. Displayed that way it seems to be itching for a fight that is not only stupid and unnecessary, but unwanted. It reminds me of what I used to hear sometimes when I would walk into a redneck diner and glance around and somebody in one of the booths would scowl and say, “What are you looking at.“ When I see the flag in the hands of Proud Boys, all I want to do is run from it.

I’ve lived during one of the longest periods of peace and prosperity in American history. I recognize the protection my country has given me all these years. I am grateful for it. And I am grateful for all those who served in uniform for our country, even if some of the wars we fought, like Vietnam and Iraq, do not in retrospect seem just. So I don’t mean to demean the flag. It is important to me. It is important to all of us. 

But we must remember that it stands for liberty and justice for all. It has no place being waved in support of bigoted, provincial and hateful invective shouted in vulgar displays of pseudo patriotism. It is a dishonor to all who have struggled to defend the citizens of this country to use it that way.