Dejected? Not Me
by Errington C. Thompson, MD
It is a little after 9 p.m. on election night.
Many Americans are watching the Internet or their TV and trying to make sense of the election results. Not me. I spend as little time as possible trying to make sense out of this nonsense.
Seinfeld Democrats: a Show About Nothing
It seems that every four years or so the Democrats go into some sort of introspective funk. I really can’t explain it. The party has no enthusiasm. They seem to have no identity. They seem to be running away from their own accomplishments. The old party stalwarts like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden seem unwilling or unable to step up to the plate and clearly articulate a way forward.
When you sit back and look at America, what are the good things and what are of the bad things? What things do we need to change or improve? These are the questions that we should be asking ourselves before we go to the polls.
Economic Wrongs and Rights
Over the past six years, we’ve gone through an awful economic depression. We saw millions of Americans lose their jobs because of the recklessness of Wall Street. If we are truly honest with ourselves, we must recognize that the economic hardship that we went through in 2007-2008-2009 was all a man-made calamity. Congress changed banking rules. We had lax regulations. We had bankers forging loan applications and handing loans out like they were hotcakes.
To some extent, we have corrected these wrongs. Some of them, anyway. Millions of Americans have gone back to work. The economy is much improved. The stock market is soaring, breaking records. Yet millions of Americans still remain out of work. Millions of those with jobs are so underpaid they need food stamps and other subsidies to get by. But who in this campaign season has discussed a solid plan to put millions of Americans back to work, to raise wages, improve benefits?
Shooting the Breeze on Shooting Kids
Just last week, there was a school shooting outside Seattle. Unfortunately, we’ve seen these stories many times before: they’re all too familiar. Innocent children gunned down. Some lunatic loner has decided that he can endure no more pain, anguish, anger—whatever. He needs revenge, or release, or … who knows what? I don’t understand why we as a country don’t tackle this problem head-on.
Yet instead, we continue to believe that somehow guns are just innocent bystanders. Of course the problem is complex, but we can solve it. We fly to the moon, go five miles under the ocean, engineer a CERN reactor, build the new World Trade Center. We’re not stupid!
We know that sticking our head in the sand and pretending that gun violence is going to go away leads only to more innocent children dying. We need leadership—and not from the president alone, but from the Senate and the House also. We pay our politicians to lead. We pay them to tackle difficult problems. This is a huge, difficult problem that can be fixed only with a multifaceted approach. Yet nobody is talking about it.
Gasbags on Gas Prices
Recently there’s been endless discussion from the talking heads about gas prices. Are falling gas prices good or bad for Americans? As usual, they’re missing the point. Gasoline/oil must be looked at as an addictive drug. Like Ray Charles and Johnny Cash—both drug addicts—we need to quit the habit.
We have to begin to seriously develop renewable energy. We need to put serious tax incentives behind a major push for energy independence. Jimmy Carter said it back in 1978: “The fact remains that on the energy legislation, we have failed the American people.” 1978: 36 years ago. And they’re still failing us.
The Errington Thompson Platform
I refuse to be dejected. I refuse to be depressed. I’m going to continue to work for a better tomorrow. Here’s my platform.
• We need energy independence.
• We need an economy that is going to work for all of us.
• We need high-quality, low-cost health care for all.
• We need an education system that prepares our kids for the complex challenges of tomorrow.
• We need a political system that is not dominated by the rich and powerful.
• We need a legal system that is going to treat bankers with the same harshness that we treat common criminals.
• We need to create a society in which women and minorities have the same opportunities as men.
Find me a politician who is supporting these values. Find us a political party that will support this platform. If we can’t find one, found one!
These are values once supported by one of America’s richest families, the Roosevelts—Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Eleanor Roosevelt. And by poor working people. By unions, and GIs back from the war. By white barbers and black sleeping-car porters, housewives and pastors, secretaries and marching band directors.
They’re American values, Main Street values. They’re human values. They’re MORAL values. This is what our democracy is about. This is what I’m fighting for.
