Critical Politics

Do not worry about these brief essays for editing. None of them have been.

The analysis of public response to the Great Recession of 2008 reveals similar errors compounded in the Pandemic of 2020.  The failure to produce a system change from the private and public realms regarding these two instances is evident and a little frightening. Now is the time for writers to demand improvements in critical thinking from every mountaintop.  It was not until political interference was exposed in the POTUS45 DOJ investigations that the possibility of a similar financial manipulation occurred.

Financial service companies, insurance agencies, and families went underwater on bad loans and poor judgment. Thousands of people have become sick and face financial disaster. A high percentage of the most vulnerable to infections have died. Fire, flood, drought, and a rising sea is encircling cities all over the world. Ending what is beginning to look like the tragic cycle of change requires a summary of the public response to correcting the “money” problem. Money, faith in trade, and its use for the oblivious accumulation of goods are the root cause of this trouble. The use of it dominates the argument and the conversation. It is accurate but a distraction to the purpose of consequence. More plainly, my super wealthy grandparents just said, you cannot take it with you, and we (all of us) should only get a leg-up on confidence with a dose of tenacity.

In 2008, the American business community won the case – use federal funds and reestablish aggregate demand, sustain liquidity for global trade, and keep employment up, but income marginal in a high percentage of households. Attack tax rates, government interference, and expose public incompetence. Continue to reduce and weaken mechanisms for public oversight of private financial practices. These are highly persuasive claims and strategic practices from the business community. They draw values such as individual freedom and independence that took over two centuries to establish a Republic built on a foundation of slavery.

The struggle for the freedom of all people remains unexamined. Civil rights, social justice, equity, and a basic “leg-up” is falsely claimed as a strain and a distraction. Despite the depth of the 2008 and 2020 global economic tragedies, several questions go unaddressed disproportionality.  Why wasn’t it disproportionate when eight percent of the households in a Georgia county were slaves? That isn’t the issue today, but The Report has comparable questions.

Why does the world function as if the acquisition of equity is the only means of power? Where are their attempts to succeed with alternatives? The vote seems a possibility. Yet, the dividing lines tell us to separate the ability to meet human needs in the private marketplace from those found essential to the validity of a public realm.

Only one modern American hero has a national day of remembrance for the courage it took to lead his challenge in the public realm. His agony became ours, and his name was Martin Luther King. He was murdered in 1968 by something much bigger and more heinous than the racism of his era.

King’s anguish for justice held the U.S. Constitution to account first, but this did not extinguish his view on the economics of politics. He believed the solution was not in a “thesis of communism or an antithesis of capitalism.”  His demand was for synthesis based on two facts. An economic system built on slavery and imprisonment will not change the rules. Change must, therefore, come from changing something else.

“I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective – the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed matter: the guaranteed income…” MLK

Where do We Go from Here? 1967

The economic crisis of 2008 and the health and financial crisis of 2020 has one word that tends to stop any discussion of change dead in its tracks.  That word is “debt.”  Less understood is the concept of equity as it is a thing larger than cash.  An accountant will tell you that “equity” combines your assets and liabilities. One of the first pre-eminent sources of it in the United States is homeownership. With the help of government mortgage guarantees, it is the prime asset held by most Americans. Still, confidence and trust in each household is the one thing that makes the liability expressed by a mortgage possible. Thus, the question. If it is confidence, where are the approaches to building it anmog those to which it is denied.

Recently the idea of retaining that trust and confidence was expressed by none other than the American Enterprise Institute in a map of the United States they tweeted to the world. The map illustrated the relative GDP of individual American States with other countries globally so that people would be more confident – to trust the system.  I would call your attention to Wisconsin before you read the next paragraph.

In response to the pandemic, Europe understands the “system exchange” relationship between public and private equity.  I have one example of why Wisconsin should have no difficulty changing their health care system if they were like Denmark.  The Denmark government stepped forward to continue paying wages even when they were not working.  People kept their jobs with their employers.  Denmark retained some business and family income and stopped the COVID-19 virus from spreading efficiently. The policy maintained the cultural status quo of the nation’s steady anticipation of ending the crisis. Denmark’s business activity restarted with as little cost and disruption.    

System Change

I have a request in closing this bit of critical thinking about the need to produce a system change first with the idea that this would allow the rules to change. The first is to ask you to conduct a brief exercise, followed by taking the concept outlined above further in some way and sharing it with this blog – a link would do.

The habits of the mind that contribute to critical thinking involve the following types of thought.  The first one should be on the word critical. In health, the word describes a “short-term” condition. Here is a quick exercise.  Run through the following ten words in ten seconds, asking.  

What is?

If you had a rapid response to each one of them, know three things 1) you have some or all the skills listed below, and 2) if it took even a bit longer than ten seconds, more work on “critical” thinking is essential and 3) they are just words — you can pick your own ten if you choose.

1. analyzing
   1. break the whole into parts to discover practical relationships
   2. list the parts piece by piece
   3. sort the things into things
2. applying criteria
   1. judge using well-known rules
   2. apply personal, professional, and social standards
   3. compare and assess the means
3. discriminating
   1. recognize differences and similarities
   2. rank things together or separate in groups
   3. differentiate categories or decern status
4. information seeking
   1. evidence
   2. facts
   3. sources
5. logical reasoning
   1. inference stated
   2. conclusions made
   3. basis of evidence
6. predicting if that then this
   1. envision events
   2. plan futures
   3. determine possible consequences
7. transforming knowledge
   1. changing conditions
   2. converting function
   3. alter concepts

Pick Your Own

Critical thinking can be brief, momentary, temporary, short-lived, impermanent, cursory, fleeting, passing, fugitive, flying, and like lightning.  It can also be transitory, transient, temporary, brief, fading, quick, and meteoric. Not being curious enough is a problem — inquisitiveness exercises human intuition. It helps a person run inference, seek integrity, and demand contextual change.  Therefore, differentiating the language as becoming more demanding, or obscure, improves hearing.

Just after the election of POTUS45, one message kept getting repeated about the need to produce change at the local level that moved to the city, county, and state governments.  Only then would a change have a chance for federal legislation or be recognized as a new cultural norm. The example given most often was the demand to make laws governing marriage far more inclusive.  The changes began locally but rapidly across the United States.  The rules change issues regarding women’s rights and voting rights. All are noted here because few of them go unchallenged, and all of them require leadership demanding a civil discourse and faith in the law. The following table or chart is one of the easy-to-read summaries of the process.

To solve problems adequately or ask more satisfying questions. The Report uses the following chart to create a change.

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