Monthly Archives: June 2020

Trading Racism for Prosperity

American society has included systemic racism from the beginning. Native Americans whom early explorers mistook for natives of India were systematically pushed aside, uprooted and confined to reservations on lands no one else wanted. At least this is what happened when they were not being exterminated.

Initially black people arrived on our shores destined mostly for slave markets after being “cured” in the Caribbean. Being cured meant being trained to be good slaves. Some were eventually able to gain freedom but the majority did not until the Emancipation Proclamation. Even though Lincoln enacted it in the 1860’s, black people in many places still had not been viewed as full citizens. They had to make do with substandard living conditions, limited health care, education and employment opportunities as well as less than respectful treatment by the police.

Immigrants from Europe also suffered marginalization, particularly waves of Irish and Italian peoples. For the most part, Europeans have been able to blend into the larger white society as have many Asians.

More recently Hispanic immigrants have been vilified as interlopers. They dared to imagine that they could find a better life here than they had in their own countries. Often their children ended up in cages.

In our struggle to keep America white, we tend to forget the many contributions to our culture, economy, and diversity which have helped make us who we are as a society. Of course not all white people have worked actively to denigrate black members of American society. Yet many people have stood by and watched it happen.

What should we do and why should we do it? Our main priority needs to be learning to see all American lives as equally valuable and entitled to the same benefits of living here that the privileged enjoy. This means that we need to make available adequate healthcare, decent housing, and education as well as job training and opportunity.

I have heard two objections to such a plan. One is that the disadvantaged would not appreciate having the privileges the rest of us enjoy. They would only strain our resources and make it harder for the rest of us to access them. The other objection is that it would be too expensive to share these resources with those we see as other than us. That would also make it harder for the rest of us to access them.

The disadvantaged have generally not had access to these basic rights. We have no basis for an opinion on what they would value when they have not experienced it.

Descendents of formerly less valued groups throughout our history have made good use of opportunities when offered to them.

As for expense, the more we make medical prevention and treatment available to those in need the less drain there would be on emergency services as well as on our regular health resources. The more educational and job training resources available to the disadvantaged, the more productive they will become. At the same time the newly empowered will become less a drain on our economy and more productive contributors to our overall societal well­being.

People feeling productive and adequately providing for their families will also result in  less anger and frustration in poor communities. This change will reduce the need for police response to anger and frustration.

We can reshape our society and bring it out of the turmoil we now experience. The choice is ours. What are you ready to contribute?

This is How Trump Steals the Next Election

Written by and published by Umair Haque in Medium.com on 6/12/20

There is No “If” About it — Trump is Going to Try to Steal the Election. The Question is, Will He Get Away With It?

There’s a man sitting in an oval shaped office in a big white house, staring out across a lawn that ends in a chain link fence, thinking to himself: “How am I going to steal the next election?”

Trump’s approval ratings are plummeting. Even his hardcore supporters — that fringe of American Idiots — is being chipped away at.

Trump is going to try to steal the next election. The question is: is America prepared?

I know this next part will sound scary. Bare with me until the end. those of us who’ve both studied authoritarianism and survived it can tell you with near absolute certainty that not only is Trump going to try to steal the next election, he’s going to try to do it in a certain way. A way that those who hope to be tyrants and dictators always do.

Put yourself in Trump’s skin for a moment. Sorry. You’re going to need a shower afterwards.You’re a malignant narcissist. Nobody’s ever really loved you, because you’re not capable of warmth, empathy, shame, friendship, caring. The only thing you know, and crave, is power, admiration, respect. As you yourself put it, “dominating” others.

Becoming President was your one bid for the admiration and respect you’ve always sought — but never earned. But now that’s failing, too. The world laughs at you. The nation has begun not just to dislike you — but to genuinely abhor you, as a man of no honor, a person with nothing inside but a giant void.

Protests wrack the cities. Statues are pulled down. A pandemic rages. The death count spirals into the realm of world war. Your nation is a failure, and the world knows it. You can’t get re-elected legitimately with a record like this. You weren’t really “elected” in the first place.

Now your back is against the wall. What is a person like you — a power-seeking narcissist, a man without honor, shame, courage, or principles — to do? That is when you are most dangerous of all, like a wounded animal. When you’re backed into a corner. You are going to take by force what you can’t have freely. You are going to try to steal the next election.

And then you chuckle. Because you’ve said as much, over and over again. You’ve joked about it, and you’ve brooded on it publicly. Not just stealing the election, but never giving up power, handing it your kids, building a dynasty of dictators all your own.

Only not very many people seem to really believe you. People are gullible. They don’t believe you when you show them who are, when you tell them what you’re going to do. Instead, they say you’d never try that. Their denial is your greatest asset. You’ve shown them who you are — authoritarian, fascist, aspiring dictator. Isn’t that kind of folly why you have such contempt for the very people you are supposed to lead? Why bother caring for them at all — when they don’t believe you when you show them exactly who you are, over and over again? People are there to be used. They always have been. Especially people who don’t believe what’s right before their own eyes.

That snaps you back into focus. Right now, you are thinking very, very hard, about one thing, and one thing only: how to steal the next election. That, by the way, is why you don’t care about any of the terrible things happening to the country you purport to lead: the pandemic, the deaths, the economic fallout, the social upheaval, any of it. You only care about one thing — one thing — right now. How to steal the election.

How will you do it?

You have an endless list of tactics at your disposal. All you need to do is combine them into a strategy now.

You can deter minorities who vote against you — with dirty tricks, with the brutal policing your country’s famous for, with “voter challenges.”

You can mount legal challenges, in the event you lose by a narrow margin. The Supreme Court is on your side, thanks to your first term, in which you stacked it.

You can count on a supine Congress, and the party which you lead, which will follow you into the abyss — hasn’t it already — to back you in trying to steal the Presidency, whatever the outcome of the election.

You’ve already threatened to declare martial law.All you need is one more event, in a nation already on a razor’s edge, to go through with it. And if you can do that, then you can control who votes where and when, and — hey presto! — the election’s yours. You drool with anticipation, hoping for that one event which lets you declare martial law.

Your party’s already published a stance calling for shooting people on the streets. You smile to yourself. People who can just be…shot…don’t tend to vote. You know how easily it will be to steal this election.

Then there are your friends, in the Kremlin. They will do whatever they can to help you. Flooding social media with propaganda and disinformation, just like last time? Planting all kinds of fake news?

Even hacking the vote itself? You laugh. Sure, you’re under their thumb. But isn’t it worth it? They’re going to help you steal an election.

But not just them. You remember how, during the last election, the issue had become her emails. Your opponent’s. It wasn’t your lack of character, judgment, experience, or even any remotely positive human qualities of goodness and decency. Nope. Her emails. How easy was it to trick the media into doing what you wanted? Hadn’t you done it all your life? A lie here, a half-truth there — and weren’t they always ready to pounce on the nearest woman, minority, person of color?

But her emails! You giggle at the stupidity of it. And you know that this time around, you can misdirect the media with any number of similar scandals. Maybe that irritating woman who heads the opposition against you will have a scandal. Maybe this other woman will. Maybe that Latina in Congress will have one. Scandal after scandal appears before your eyes. And you remember how easy it is to pull the wool over the eyes of a nation that’s already gone half-blind with ignorance, fear, and rage. But her…emails. LOL.

You remember, too, then, how the warnings had been ignored. A tiny number had called it all correctly. That you’d do the things fascists do, because you were a fascists: camps, raids, bans, purges, Gestapos.

But nobody much had listened to them. The nation’s intellectual class had warned, instead, of calling you a fascist or an authoritarian.

This time you laugh, hard, sneering in contempt. What fools! You told them exactly who you were, and what you were going to do. You spent election season rallying your base of American Idiots by calling refugees and immigrants vermin, promising to ban them and build walls. But these intellectuals — these ivory-tower fools — didn’t believe you when you said it out loud.

You guffaw, realizing: they probably don’t believe you’re going to try to steal this election, also, even though you’ve told them that, too.

You suddenly feel a surge of confidence.

You can steal this election. Why, it’s going to be easier than last time. This time, you’re already President. You can order the soldiers into the streets. You can create havoc on a scale the nation has never seen before. Your friends in the Kremlin will do anything to keep you there. And this nation, especially its intellectuals and media — how easy are they to fool? They still don’t believe you, every time you tell them exactly who you are, and what you’re going to do. LOL. You can steal this election just like grabbing a p*ssy. Isn’t that all it is? Grabbing a society’s p*ssy, and never letting go? And isn’t that what a real man has to do?

A doubt crosses your mind. What if you lose the election, though, and they send in the military to remove you from office? What then?

Ah, but you’ve been making deals your whole life long. You realize that all you have to do is make the military a deal it can’t refuse. Maybe this general becomes the ruler of this province, or that general owns this energy grid, water system, utility, company, stock market, or that general simply inherits the entire nation’s treasury. That’s what every good dictator does, in the final moment, when the military challenges him. He strikes a deal.

It’s never cheap. That’s how the war criminals of the world buy penthouses in Paris and go on mega-shopping sprees at Harrods. They’ve gone from generals to oligarchs. Now they don’t just control a military — but they own a nation’s vital assets. How much money would you make if you owned an entire energy grid? You realize that you can offer payoffs that would corrode even the sternest, noblest heart.

Sure, the military’s made of fine and noble people. But how many will turn down a payoff so large that it would suddenly make you as rich as a king? Maybe they will turn it down, you brood.

And then you chuckle. But that’s the bet, isn’t it? That that last final safeguard will fall, too, because, now, as President, you can offer payoffs that nobody else can, buying off the last protectors of democracy — and thus become dictator.

You’re willing to take that bet. It sounds pretty good to you, actually. Who’s going to turn down a billion dollars? Five? Ten? Generals in places like Russia and Pakistan don’t. Do they ever? Have they anywhere? Didn’t they ultimately turn into decadent and fat fools in Rome, too?

You laugh. You know, suddenly, that it can be done. You are understanding how to become a tyrant.

The glimmers of a plan now flash through your mind. It glitters, like a great and vast scaffolding, made of silver and steel. You see its girders and bolts joining together. You frown, as you try to see the whole picture of it, this grand edifice, this plan. How to become a tyrant. So many have done it before you. Why can’t you do it, too?

Adrenaline surges through you. Dopamine rushes. Your blood roars and your heart pounds. This is how it can be done. This is how you become the dictator of a nation.

You shake with excitement. Your face is flush. Your lips are twisted in hot, thrilling rage.

What are you going to do these last five months? Govern? Lead? LOL.

You are going to hone your plan. Fine tune it. Account for every eventuality. Plan exactly how to fool the media and intellectuals again, which scandal to offer them, all over again. How to drive your base of American Idiots into a frenzy, all over again. When to drop your friends in the Kremlin a note for help, all over again. When to declare emergency, martial law, send the soldiers into the streets, put the nation under curfew. And what to offer those last few good souls standing in the way of your ascent, as glittering prizes that no one else can, to get the hell out of the way.

You have five months to think this all over carefully. How to steal an election. It’s plenty of time. And the more you think about it, the more you realize: it’s not even going to be that hard. In fact, the more surprising outcome would be if you didn’t.

You smile, the dopamine afterglow’s lightning sizzling across your cortex. You sneer at the stupidity. Everyone’s. The ones who support you, and the ones who don’t. The ones who are against you, and the ones who are for you. All of them. Isn’t this how you rose? Because you were born for it? Because you were always better, stronger, smarter, cleverer than them — only no one knew just how much? Who’s laughing now?

Around you, the cities burn. A gigantic wave of death rips across society. The nation has fallen into poverty, despair, sickness, ruin.

Things have never been better.

Umair
June 2020

There’s a man sitting in an oval shaped office in a big white house, staring out across a lawn that ends in a chain link fence, thinking to himself: “How am I going to steal the next election?”

Trump’s approval ratings are plummeting. Even his hardcore supporters — that fringe of American Idiots — is being chipped away at.

Trump is going to try to steal the next election. The question is: is America prepared?

I know this next part will sound scary. Bare with me until the end. those of us who’ve both studied authoritarianism and survived it can tell you with near absolute certainty that not only is Trump going to try to steal the next election, he’s going to try to do it in a certain way. A way that those who hope to be tyrants and dictators always do.

Put yourself in Trump’s skin for a moment. Sorry. You’re going to need a shower afterwards.You’re a malignant narcissist. Nobody’s ever really loved you, because you’re not capable of warmth, empathy, shame, friendship, caring. The only thing you know, and crave, is power, admiration, respect. As you yourself put it, “dominating” others.

Becoming President was your one bid for the admiration and respect you’ve always sought — but never earned. But now that’s failing, too. The world laughs at you. The nation has begun not just to dislike you — but to genuinely abhor you, as a man of no honor, a person with nothing inside but a giant void.

Protests wrack the cities. Statues are pulled down. A pandemic rages. The death count spirals into the realm of world war. Your nation is a failure, and the world knows it. You can’t get re-elected legitimately with a record like this. You weren’t really “elected” in the first place.

Now your back is against the wall. What is a person like you — a power-seeking narcissist, a man without honor, shame, courage, or principles — to do? That is when you are most dangerous of all, like a wounded animal. When you’re backed into a corner. You are going to take by force what you can’t have freely. You are going to try to steal the next election.

And then you chuckle. Because you’ve said as much, over and over again. You’ve joked about it, and you’ve brooded on it publicly. Not just stealing the election, but never giving up power, handing it your kids, building a dynasty of dictators all your own.

Only not very many people seem to really believe you. People are gullible. They don’t believe you when you show them who are, when you tell them what you’re going to do. Instead, they say you’d never try that. Their denial is your greatest asset. You’ve shown them who you are — authoritarian, fascist, aspiring dictator. Isn’t that kind of folly why you have such contempt for the very people you are supposed to lead? Why bother caring for them at all — when they don’t believe you when you show them exactly who you are, over and over again? People are there to be used. They always have been. Especially people who don’t believe what’s right before their own eyes.

That snaps you back into focus. Right now, you are thinking very, very hard, about one thing, and one thing only: how to steal the next election. That, by the way, is why you don’t care about any of the terrible things happening to the country you purport to lead: the pandemic, the deaths, the economic fallout, the social upheaval, any of it. You only care about one thing — one thing — right now. How to steal the election.

How will you do it?

You have an endless list of tactics at your disposal. All you need to do is combine them into a strategy now.

You can deter minorities who vote against you — with dirty tricks, with the brutal policing your country’s famous for, with “voter challenges.”

You can mount legal challenges, in the event you lose by a narrow margin. The Supreme Court is on your side, thanks to your first term, in which you stacked it.

You can count on a supine Congress, and the party which you lead, which will follow you into the abyss — hasn’t it already — to back you in trying to steal the Presidency, whatever the outcome of the election.

You’ve already threatened to declare martial law.All you need is one more event, in a nation already on a razor’s edge, to go through with it. And if you can do that, then you can control who votes where and when, and — hey presto! — the election’s yours. You drool with anticipation, hoping for that one event which lets you declare martial law.

Your party’s already published a stance calling for shooting people on the streets. You smile to yourself. People who can just be…shot…don’t tend to vote. You know how easily it will be to steal this election.

Then there are your friends, in the Kremlin. They will do whatever they can to help you. Flooding social media with propaganda and disinformation, just like last time? Planting all kinds of fake news?

Even hacking the vote itself? You laugh. Sure, you’re under their thumb. But isn’t it worth it? They’re going to help you steal an election.

But not just them. You remember how, during the last election, the issue had become her emails. Your opponent’s. It wasn’t your lack of character, judgment, experience, or even any remotely positive human qualities of goodness and decency. Nope. Her emails. How easy was it to trick the media into doing what you wanted? Hadn’t you done it all your life? A lie here, a half-truth there — and weren’t they always ready to pounce on the nearest woman, minority, person of color?

But her emails! You giggle at the stupidity of it. And you know that this time around, you can misdirect the media with any number of similar scandals. Maybe that irritating woman who heads the opposition against you will have a scandal. Maybe this other woman will. Maybe that Latina in Congress will have one. Scandal after scandal appears before your eyes. And you remember how easy it is to pull the wool over the eyes of a nation that’s already gone half-blind with ignorance, fear, and rage. But her…emails. LOL.

You remember, too, then, how the warnings had been ignored. A tiny number had called it all correctly. That you’d do the things fascists do, because you were a fascists: camps, raids, bans, purges, Gestapos.

But nobody much had listened to them. The nation’s intellectual class had warned, instead, of calling you a fascist or an authoritarian.

This time you laugh, hard, sneering in contempt. What fools! You told them exactly who you were, and what you were going to do. You spent election season rallying your base of American Idiots by calling refugees and immigrants vermin, promising to ban them and build walls. But these intellectuals — these ivory-tower fools — didn’t believe you when you said it out loud.

You guffaw, realizing: they probably don’t believe you’re going to try to steal this election, also, even though you’ve told them that, too.

You suddenly feel a surge of confidence.

You can steal this election. Why, it’s going to be easier than last time. This time, you’re already President. You can order the soldiers into the streets. You can create havoc on a scale the nation has never seen before. Your friends in the Kremlin will do anything to keep you there. And this nation, especially its intellectuals and media — how easy are they to fool? They still don’t believe you, every time you tell them exactly who you are, and what you’re going to do. LOL. You can steal this election just like grabbing a p*ssy. Isn’t that all it is? Grabbing a society’s p*ssy, and never letting go? And isn’t that what a real man has to do?

A doubt crosses your mind. What if you lose the election, though, and they send in the military to remove you from office? What then?

Ah, but you’ve been making deals your whole life long. You realize that all you have to do is make the military a deal it can’t refuse. Maybe this general becomes the ruler of this province, or that general owns this energy grid, water system, utility, company, stock market, or that general simply inherits the entire nation’s treasury. That’s what every good dictator does, in the final moment, when the military challenges him. He strikes a deal.

It’s never cheap. That’s how the war criminals of the world buy penthouses in Paris and go on mega-shopping sprees at Harrods. They’ve gone from generals to oligarchs. Now they don’t just control a military — but they own a nation’s vital assets. How much money would you make if you owned an entire energy grid? You realize that you can offer payoffs that would corrode even the sternest, noblest heart.

Sure, the military’s made of fine and noble people. But how many will turn down a payoff so large that it would suddenly make you as rich as a king? Maybe they will turn it down, you brood.

And then you chuckle. But that’s the bet, isn’t it? That that last final safeguard will fall, too, because, now, as President, you can offer payoffs that nobody else can, buying off the last protectors of democracy — and thus become dictator.

You’re willing to take that bet. It sounds pretty good to you, actually. Who’s going to turn down a billion dollars? Five? Ten? Generals in places like Russia and Pakistan don’t. Do they ever? Have they anywhere? Didn’t they ultimately turn into decadent and fat fools in Rome, too?

You laugh. You know, suddenly, that it can be done. You are understanding how to become a tyrant.

The glimmers of a plan now flash through your mind. It glitters, like a great and vast scaffolding, made of silver and steel. You see its girders and bolts joining together. You frown, as you try to see the whole picture of it, this grand edifice, this plan. How to become a tyrant. So many have done it before you. Why can’t you do it, too?

Adrenaline surges through you. Dopamine rushes. Your blood roars and your heart pounds. This is how it can be done. This is how you become the dictator of a nation.

You shake with excitement. Your face is flush. Your lips are twisted in hot, thrilling rage.

What are you going to do these last five months? Govern? Lead? LOL.

You are going to hone your plan. Fine tune it. Account for every eventuality. Plan exactly how to fool the media and intellectuals again, which scandal to offer them, all over again. How to drive your base of American Idiots into a frenzy, all over again. When to drop your friends in the Kremlin a note for help, all over again. When to declare emergency, martial law, send the soldiers into the streets, put the nation under curfew. And what to offer those last few good souls standing in the way of your ascent, as glittering prizes that no one else can, to get the hell out of the way.

You have five months to think this all over carefully. How to steal an election. It’s plenty of time. And the more you think about it, the more you realize: it’s not even going to be that hard. In fact, the more surprising outcome would be if you didn’t.

You smile, the dopamine afterglow’s lightning sizzling across your cortex. You sneer at the stupidity. Everyone’s. The ones who support you, and the ones who don’t. The ones who are against you, and the ones who are for you. All of them. Isn’t this how you rose? Because you were born for it? Because you were always better, stronger, smarter, cleverer than them — only no one knew just how much? Who’s laughing now?

Around you, the cities burn. A gigantic wave of death rips across society. The nation has fallen into poverty, despair, sickness, ruin.

Things have never been better.

Umair
June 2020

Can Americans stop their society from collapsing? Why it’s Going to be a Lot Harder to Fix America than “Defund the Police”

Written and published in Media.com by Umair Haque 6/5/2020

People pouring into the streets, in city after city. A wave of protest sweeping a broken, wracked society. Defying a demagogue. Standing against centuries of racism and decades of brutality.

The sudden feeling that maybe, this time, things really can be different.

I don’t know if it’s too early yet to begin speaking of the American Spring. You’ve heard of the Arab Spring, I’m sure. Maybe America’s on the cusp of a moment like that: a tidal wave of people power that attempts to reclaim democracy from failed elites, autocrats, and extremists, and build a functioning, modern society instead.

Of course, the dark twist in the tale is that the Arab Spring ultimately failed, backfiring into the same old authoritarianism as before.

What about the American Spring? What chance does it really have of succeeding?Can America finally build a civilized, modern society, like Canada or Europe — or is it this just a blip on a longer trajectory of collapse?

I am an economist. I think that economics hold the key to the destinies of societies. And so I think the best way to answer that question is to examine the nascent economic call — which means much more than it suggests — to “defund the police.” What does that idea really mean?

From an economic point of view, “defund the police” means something like this. America invested in all the stuff you might expect from a society of people who genuinely hated each other, and feared the world, too. Police forces becoming paramilitaries. Advanced training in brutality and interrogation and military tactics and all the rest of it.

But meanwhile, everything else was massively underinvested in — things which actually improved the quality of people’s lives, from healthcare to education to transport to retirement. As a result, Americans now enjoy a standard of living more comparable to a poor country than a rich one.

According to that story, then, all that we have to do is what economists call “substitute”: take overinvestment from the police (and all the other stuff which doesn’t yield improved lives, whether guns, bombs, and so forth), and put it towards the better stuff, which genuinely improves people’s lives, like healthcare and transport and retirement.

We take money from one pot, and we put it into the other. And — presto — we fix society!!

That’s a nice story. It’s one that everyone can get behind — even the well-meaning white liberal. Because in the end, it’s easy. Unfortunately, it’s also not true.

It’s not going to be so easy to fix America. Taking money from one pot — police, brutality, repression violence — and putting it into the other pot — true public goods which benefit everyone — isn’t going to be enough to do the job.

That is the wrinkle.

How do I know?

Because America has a deeply misshapen economy. In genuinely modern, functioning, civilized societies — like Europe and Canada — the economy is about half private, and half public. That means: a full half of it’s spent on the expansive public goods those societies are famous around the globe for, like good healthcare, education, retirement, and so on.

In America, though, 75% of the economy’s private, and 25% is public. Just about a quarter of the economy is spent on public goods. That includes policing and guns and whatnot, the stuff of repression.

Do you see the conclusion yet? America has to double how much it spends on public goods to become a functioning, modern society.

It can’t just take money from one pot and put it in the other. The pot is far, far too small to begin with.

Why does America spend so much less on public goods than everyone else in the rich world?

That is the deep, jagged scar of slavery and segregation. In the 50s and 60s, while the rest of the rich world was beginning to build expansive social systems, America was still segregated — and fighting to stay that way. By the 70s, when segregation was finally lifted, Europe and Canada had already built world-class systems of public goods. In the 80s, Europe and Canada made these systems the most advanced, sophisticated institution human beings have ever created — but America had the Reaganite counter-revolution against the civil rights gains of the 1970s, in which whites said, effectively, “I won’t pay for their healthcare and education! Those dirty, lazy, filthy people aren’t like us!!”

Racism is what made America a society with a misshapen economy, bereft of public goods for all. And that, ultimately, hurt the white American too, because today, it’s his life expectancy and income falling fastest without decent healthcare or a pension.

If you understand all that, then for the American Spring to succeed — to really transform American into a functioning, modern society like Canada or Europe — something needs to happen that has never happened before in American history.

White Americans need to agree to invest more — much more — in everyone else.

We economists rely on something call “revealed preference.” That means: talk is cheap. Actions are hard.

I think it’s wonderful that so many white Americans have joined the protests. And yet it’s easy to march, tweet, hold up a sign. The hard part? When it comes to actually putting your money where your mouth is. When somebody comes to you and says: “Listen. Will you really spend this much more so that everyone has healthcare, education, retirement?”

“Defunding the police” is relatively easy. We can all agree what not to spend money on. There’s more to go around for all of us, then. What’s really hard for a society — and where most fail — is to agree what to spend money on. Especially more of it. Because that calls for a certain level of wisdom and courage and goodness. I have to say: “OK, I agree to have less income, so that we all have healthcare, retirement, pensions, and so on. No matter the color of our skins.”

I highlight that because it’s the test Americans failed in the 80s, 90s, 00s, and 10s.

They’ve failed this test over and over again, for decades.

Even the well-meaning white liberal has nice political beliefs — everyone’s equal, everyone’s a human being, and so forth. But when it comes time to put his money into systems like that — he votes against it. And conservatives? Lol.

That’s why Americans, when asked blind, want to be a society like Canada. But when whites — even good ones — are asked to invest in blacks and browns — they never have, and still don’t, to this very day.

That’s why America’s public investment level is just half of what it takes to build a truly modern, functioning society — because white people say the right things, and then refuse, flatly, to invest in anyone or anything else. They might talk a good game, but for the last few decades, they have wanted to keep all society’s gains for themselves.

Since the end of civil rights, America has made no economic progress whatsoever towards having a functioning, civilized society of expansive public goods for all.

For the white American, the game went like this. “Oh, so you can drink at my water fountain? Go to my school? Visit my park? I see. I’ll tell you what. Then we won’t have any.”

White America voted over and over again against public goods as a way to not to have share any kind of collective resources with browns and blacks. The result was that today, even white Americans don’t have those collective resources, like good healthcare, schools, pensions.

Meanwhile, Europe and Canada do, precisely because they weren’t home to this kind of vicious backlash from whites against everyone else over the last few decades.

America has never built a functioning, modern society. Never. This is its chance. Maybe this is its last chance.

And so that chance should be thought about clearly. It’s not as simple as “defunding” things to “fund” others. The total pot of money America funds collective goods with isn’t large enough to produce a functioning society yet. That is because whites, over the last few decades, have not put enough into that pot.

The challenge is whether they will this time. Or, like the 80s, they will say that they support a more equal, free, and just society — but when it comes to actually invest in it, they’ll politely look the other way, not put any money into the pot, and hope no one notices.

You can’t build a functioning society that way. Everyone has to contribute — not just in cultural terms, or social ones, but in economics ones. White people may be becoming socially more liberal — and that’s nice. But if they are still economically ultra-conservative, the American Spring will fail.

The American Spring holds great promise. American can and should become a functioning modern society, like Canada or Europe. It shouldn’t be the kind of broken, devastated place it is now — one where a vacuum of optimism and competence paves the way for a demagogue like Trump, to inspire an army of American Idiots to be as hateful and ignorant as ever before.

But the American Spring is not going to be as easy as many are being led to think. It’s not just about what we “defund” and then “fund”, but also, more crucially, how much Americans — especially white ones — are willing to invest in each other. Right now, that number is far, far too low. It has to double, over time. Is America up to that challenge? Are white Americans, especially, capable of putting their hard cash where their polite and well-meaning sentiments are? Or will they say the right thing — and do the same old one, all over again, which is to talk about freedom and equality and justice for all, and then starve society of the cold, hard cash it needs to actually have it?

I don’t know. You tell me.