This is It!

This is the most important election since the Civil War. Nearly all of us have either voted or know who we will vote for. In less than a week, we will know who won the election but may not know who will become president until after the first of the year. By January, we will know whether we still have a democratic republic or have chosen some form of autocracy or monarchy instead.

This election has never been about choosing between Democrats and Republicans but between competing political ideologies and forms of government. The choice is between a government of the people, by the people, and for the people or a government dictated to the people by an autocrat.

My first Facebook post about this election was my 2023 Christmas Reflections. Since then, I have written 20 additional posts sharing my perspectives on a wide range of issues related to the upcoming election. Those “A Time to Choose” posts are also on my personal website at https://www.johnikerd.com/. I dreaded starting this process and have not enjoyed it, but I felt a responsibility to do all I could to help people understand what was at stake in this election.

My intention was not only to share my views but also to provide a forum for discussion for those who agree with me and those who don’t. Some comments have been supportive and others have been defensive, as expected. Unfortunately, many comments have been attacks on me personally rather than perspectives on the issues. Regardless, I have not removed any comments, positive or negative, related to the election and hopefully have provided a useful forum for political discussion. That was my intention.

As we approach this election, my thoughts are dominated by a deep sense of sadness or loss. I remember the days following World War II when we a proud, united nation committed not only to peace and prosperity at home but to sharing our bounty with Europe, Japan, and the rest of the world. The Eisenhauer and Kennedy years were times of peace and hope. Even during the tumultuous ‘60s we were building a Great Society where everyone would have an equal right to participate in making the rules with which we all agree to abide. During the Nixon and Carter years, we were still united in beginning to address environmental problems and working toward world peace.

This all changed with the Reagan Revolution of the 1980s. People were told that “the government” was their problem, not a solution. They were encouraged to pursue their economic self-interests to grow the economy; a “rising tide lifts all boats.” Tax cuts and deregulation were touted as the keys to prosperity. This economic ideology, which was thoroughly discredited by the Great Depression, began to dominate governance under both Democrat and Republican administrations.

Democrats talk about taxing the wealthy to ensure the economic well-being of the poor but never get around to actually doing it. Democrats also talk about regulations to protect the environment and address the challenge of climate change but lack the courage to impose them. Republicans are content to do everything they can to ensure that “government doesn’t work” when they don’t have the political power to reduce taxes and regulations.

Neither Republicans nor Democrats have used government to “promote the general welfare” of the American people, as promised in the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution.  Both parties have been captured by corporate interests that benefit from unrestrained economic growth, regardless of the ecological and social consequences.

Reaganomics was a revival of the economic policies of the Gilded Age when large, industrial corporations dominated both politics and economics in the U.S. We learned then that the only power greater than corporate power is the power of the people—not individually, but collectively, through government. Whenever the people lose their willingness or ability to work through government to promote the general welfare of the people, corporations are freed to extract and exploit to serve the economic interests of their shareholders.

The growing cultural and political divide that now threatens the nation was fomented and funded, if not created, by corporations to destroy the willingness and ability of people to work together through government. They successfully populated the Supreme Court with justices who have granted them the right to use their virtually unlimited economic power to influence elections and thus dominate the actions of elected officials.

Many voters in this election will cast their votes based on matters of gender, race, sexuality, or other personal and cultural differences that have been magnified, if not created, by corporate propaganda. Others will vote against Democrats because grocery prices are too high or against Republicans to protect their Social Security benefits. For them, it is about the economy. There seems little concern among most voters about whether we continue the nearly 250-year American experiment with a democratic republican form of government.

The choice in this election is clear. I will not attempt to summarize or add to my perspectives in my previous 20 posts. I will, however, respond to those who have commented that Trump did not govern as an autocrat or dictator before so there is no reason to believe that he will do so if elected again. Trump tried to do everything he said he would do when he was President, but he was restrained by his advisors, his cabinet members, the Congress, and the Supreme Court.

This time, he has made it crystal clear that he will not have advisors or cabinet members who disagree with him. If he is elected, Congress will likely be controlled by MAGA Republicans. The current Supreme Court has granted the President virtually unlimited powers to do as he pleases. Trump’s rhetoric also sends a clear message that a new Trump administration would be very different from his previous administration. Trump will do what he has been saying he will do. And, autocrats are removed from power by military coups or revolutions, not by elections. 

If Harris is elected President, it will not mean the democratic republic has been saved—only that we have four more years to try to make the government serve the “general welfare” rather than promote the economic interests of wealthy individuals and corporations. And, we can vote her out of office if she fails.

Though largely unrecognized and unappreciated Biden has done more to make government serve the “general welfare” than any president since FDR. However, Biden has failed to rein in corporate power and continued to promote economic growth as the solution to the problems of middle-class Americans. If Harris addresses these issues during the next four years, we will at least have resumed progress toward the more perfect union envisioned by the Founders. If she fails to address these problems, we will continue to slide toward autocracy.

I approach this election with a sense of sadness and loss because about half of Americans seem willing to abandon the greatest political experiment of all times, the democratic republic of the United States of America. My personal stakes in this election are small compared to those of younger Americans and of future generations. I am nearly 85 years old and the odds are against me surviving to vote in another presidential election.

After this election, I plan to quit posting my perspectives on Facebook and perhaps shift to blog posts focused on economic issues. There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding about how the economy works and the essential role of government in maintaining competitive markets and restraining capitalist economies. I will use Facebook, at least for a time, to let my FB followers know when I post blog pieces.

Finally, I have not given up hope for the great American experiment in democracy. It survived the Civil War and the Great Depression. There is hope that it will survive this crisis and continue its slow and halting progress toward realizing the Founders’ vision for the United States of America: A government that secures the God-given equal and unalienable rights of all to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. A government that establishes justice, ensures domestic tranquility, provides for the common defense, promotes the general welfare, and secures the blessing of liberty for ourselves and our posterity.

I will close this post and the series with quotes from Vaclav Havel, the playwright, philosopher, and the post-Soviet Union president of the Czech Republic. “Hope is definitely the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”

It simply doesn’t make sense to keep doing what we have been doing in this nation, at least since the 1980s.  We know from American history that something better is possible, and in possibility, there is hope. Returning to Havel, “Life is too precious to permit its devaluation by living pointlessly, emptily, without meaning, without love, and without hope.”

John Ikerd