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THE VIEW FROM HERE - This article follows up on Polarization Destroys, but shows how wonderfully close the nation is to throwing off the yoke of extremist polarization. The national media makes money on sensationalism and focusing on personalities as if government were nothing but an eternal prize fight. The recent vote on the debt limit and the removal of the House Speaker has laid before us an opportunity to choose a national life of cooperation where the center of America comes before the malefactors of either extreme.
The House voted 314 Yes to 117 No to pass the debit limit vote. More important is the party breakdown: 165 Democrats and 149 Republicans
— that means 72% voted Yes. This was a clear victory of centrist government.
The extremes were out voted: 71 GOP and 46 Dems voted No.
There are 435 House members, which means 50% plus 1 is 218 (435/2 = 217.5) Thus, the center has almost 100 more votes than the extremes.
Raising the Debit Limit Was Not Policy Matter
The entire concept of voting the debt limit is asinine. It came about when economists had the scientific credibility of alchemists. They still thought the government was like their family’s finances and the term macro-economics did not exist. It was not until John Maynard Keynes came along that some economists looked at the analyzed the whole economy itself with its own rules and not by concepts for family or business microeconomic parts. Medicine adopted antibiotics far faster than economists took to macro-economics. The problem with the huge economy is that when individuals make their billions of decisions, they often act like a flock of birds in formation. When one turns, they all turn. That gave us a Boom-and-Bust Business Cycle.
When things are going well, people think that prosperity will continue forever and they spend, spend, spend, but when a slowdown occurs, everyone assumes its doomsday and horde, horde, horde. Keynesian economic is as old as Joseph in Egypt. When times are good, one hordes sot that when times are hard, one can spend. On a societal level, only the government can horde enough or spend enough to smooth out the business Boom Bust cycle. If Pharaoh had called for grand festivals during the fat seven years, everyone would have starved during the seven lean years. That way Egypt weathered the famine. When macro-economics is ignored, entire societies suffer and even disappear.
When there is a shut down, millions of dollars are withdrawn from the economy for no sane reason. When a country fears a recession may be coming, it takes a blithering idiot to take money away from consumers. That only accelerates the Bust phase of the business cycle. The government’s purpose is to protect people’s inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Congress takes a constitutional oath, and closing down the government for any reason is domestic treason; sad to say we have no such statute. Then, maybe people would understand that screwing with government spending for petty partisan politics is immoral.
In America the purpose of government is not to allow a few lunatics run roughshod over the public welfare in order to aggrandize their power lust. Due to idiotic polarization for which both the GOP and the DEM are responsible, morality is dead. Neither party gives a damn about the welfare of the nation, which has to operate by certain processes in order to keep everything balanced. All they care about is their policies and they are certain that their ideas are God given and any other idea is satanic.
Our nation of laws is not based on policy, but on procedures designed to constrain the illicit passion of the power mongers. Nancy Pelosi is not one whit better than Donald Trump and she has done more harm to the nation than any other person since the Civil War. Donald Trump, however, is seriously mentally ill and destroys all our processes and would declare himself Emperor in a second. Pelosi, however, remained within the confines of our processes and never would have launched an insurrection. In the long haul through, Pelosi so weakened the Constitutional safeguards that Trump is still a viable threat. Read Unchecked, The Untold Story Behind Congress’s Botched Impeachment of Donald Trump, by Rachel bade and Karoun Demirjian and November 8, 2021, CityWatch, Nancy Pelosi is the Most Dangerous Person on the Planet. If one wants a deeper understanding how we got in this mess beyond simplistic memes which politicos and the media throw out, one needs to understand the story on a deeper level. Also, the see recent New Yorker article The New Yorker, To Fix Democracy, First Figure Out What’s Broken, by Adam Gopnik
The Ouster of Kevin McCarthy Is No Ill Wind
The extreme right MAGA Freedom Caucus and the extreme left wokers have been holding 85% plus of American centrists hostage to their power lust. Both are as anti-democratic as possible. They are so self-centered that they will not even vote to save the American people from extremism. Extremism in pursuit of virtue is a vice. More than that, those who believe in extremism never are virtuous. They willingly sacrifice the well-being of others on their altar of self-defined holiness.
The best thing about Kevin McCarthy is that no one thinks he is a man of principle and that makes him the ideal speaker. McCarthy will go with the 85% when he knows he can freeze out the fringe lunatics. While the Debt Bill passed with 72%, one can be certain that at least another 15% to 20% will become centrist when they know the extremes cannot harm them. The genius of the Founding Fathers is that they knew there is no such thing as angels in government. Thus, they balanced power against power. With McCarthy as Speaker and totally dependent on a wide center, he’ll shun both extremes. He has no loyalty to any policy; his devotion is only to his remaining speaker. And, to quote Martha Stewart, “That is a good thing.”
The Issue is Whether the Dems Are too Addicted to Polarization
The small minded among Dems will try to extract petty policy concessions from McCarthy to get their support, e.g., end the Biden impeachment. Both center GOP and center DEM, however, want a dramatic new era – A speaker who will stick with the center. McCarthy will do that as his allegiance is to himself, not to the Freedom Caucus, not to MAGA’s, nor to Wokers. If the extremes want to scream and holler, they will learn that nothing fails like failure. The nation will learn that nothing succeeds like success. The nation is sick and tired of all the polarizing extremism. Americans just want politicians to cooperate for the benefit of the American people.
(10-2-23: McCarthy says he won’t run. We’ll see, and maybe, there’ll be a centrist GOP-Dem draft for him or another who rejects extremist control.)
(Richard Lee Abrams has been an attorney, a Realtor and community relations consultant as well as a CityWatch contributor. You may email him at [email protected]. The opinions expressed are those of the author and not those of CityWatchLA.com.)
