Let me be blunt. The last thing on this planet that can be accurately used to describe MAGA Republicans is “patriots.” They are a bizarre cadre of autocratic/anti-constitutional leaning, White Christian nationalists, coopted by mega-wealthy special interests and bound together by conspiracy theories. You will note that I do not apply that description to the Republican Party as it was configured in the post-WII era under President Dwight David “Ike” Eisenhower, a military hero and a true patriot. Even as a Republican, he warned the nation about the “military industrial complex” of special interests, and his GOP invested in America, something MAGA Republicans simply ignore. The MAGA priority is cutting taxes, which generally only benefits the top 5% of Americans and saddles the rest of us with bearing the increase in the deficit that results. Today’s piece is very much a follow-up to my recent In America, Why the Rich Get So Much Richer blog.
What these non-patriots and their noxious representatives in Congress do not do, and what they have pledged never to do, is “invest” in America… other than old school military allocations. It’s strange that MAGA Republicans, particularly represented by the House Freedom Caucus, do not believe enough in this country to invest in it. And remember, as opposed to an “expenditure” (which is most of our military budget), an “investment” carries a longer-term rate of return (a continuing direct benefit to taxpayers). The benefits of such investments far outweigh the risks. Our lack of investment even in public schools has dropped our academic performance from first in the world to somewhere between 19th and 38th, depending on subject. We aren’t competitive!
Contrast this MAGA lack of belief in our nation to the “investments” promulgated by Republican Eisenhower: the authorization and beginning of our Interstate Highway system, the post-Sputnik Space Program and the huge increase to our public schools and higher education. Scientific and medical research became a congressional priority. Post-secondary education was generally affordable, and even student loans to Ivy League graduates could be paid off in a few years. But that was then. Even with modern technology, Congress’ failure to update and expand our infrastructure, focused on the fictious and clearly discredited notion that cutting taxes for the rich is good for us all, makes life more difficult than it was a mere 50 years ago.
Writing for the October 17th New York Times Magazine, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer David Leonhardt took on this national affliction, starting with a simple metric: the time for Americans to get from A to B. His simple observation: although our aircraft are faster and technologically superior, in the 60 years since the inaugural transcontinental flight of the then-new Boeing 707 jet from Los Angeles to New York – then a five-and-a-half-hour flight – “there has been no progress. Instead, the scheduled flight time between Los Angeles and New York has become about 30 minutes longer. Aviation technology has not advanced in ways that speed the trip, and the skies have become so crowded that pilots reroute planes to avoid traffic. Nearly every other part of a cross-country trip, in airports and on local roads, also lasts longer. All told, a trip across the United States can take a few more hours today than in the 1970s.
“The speed at which people can get from one place to another is one of the most basic measures of a society’s sophistication. It affects economic productivity and human happiness; academic research has found that commuting makes people more unhappy than almost any other daily activity. Yet in one area of U.S. travel after another, progress has largely stopped over the past half-century.” Effectively, as rightwing non-patriots continue to focus on cutting budgets so rich taxpayers do not have to bear a greater burden, our infrastructure is overburdened, much of it so deteriorated that it needs more than just repair; it needs to be replaced.
As a result, average Americans pay more everywhere they turn. Educational costs are close to prohibitive. Commuter time has increased significantly as roads no longer accommodate the rise in traffic usage. As tax policy clearly favors the rich, from structure to loopholes, upward mobility is now relegated to the history books; young Americans do not believe that they will live better than their parents. Income and wealth inequality has never been worse. And even as medical technology has improved, even as citizens in every developed nation on earth (except us) have improved healthcare, millions of Americans have no corresponding access.
In short, the United States has surrendered to special interests, as gullible Americans have bought into the claptrap that government spending is killing the country, that Democrats must be purged before they spend us into oblivion. Ike proved otherwise, and even diehard conservative President Richard Nixon proselytized universal healthcare, and GOP President George W Bush pressed for immigration reform, that rising rightwing in the GOP shot them both down.
Leonhardt continues with his time-of-travel metric: “In 1969, Metroliner trains made two-and-a-half-hour nonstop trips between Washington and New York. Today, there are no nonstop trains on that route, and the fastest trip, on Acela trains, takes about 20 minutes longer than the Metroliner once did. Commuter railroads and subway lines in many places have also failed to become faster. When I ride the New York City subway, I don’t go from Point A to Point B much faster than my grandparents did in the 1940s.
“The lack of recent progress is not a result of any physical or technological limits. In other parts of the world, travel has continued to accelerate. Japan, China, South Korea and countries in Europe have built high-speed train lines that have tangibly improved daily life. Because the United States is less densely populated, high-speed trains would not work in much of this country. But they could transform travel in California, the Northeast and a few other regions — and it is not as if this country has been improving its highways and airline network instead of its rail system. All have languished.
“Why has this happened? A central reason is that the United States, for all that we spend as a nation on transportation, has stopped meaningfully investing in it. Investment, in simple terms, involves using today’s resources to make life better in the long term. For a family, investment can involve saving money over many years to afford a home purchase or a child’s college education. For a society, it can mean raising taxes or cutting other forms of spending to build roads, train lines, science laboratories or schools that might take decades to prove their usefulness. Historically, the most successful economic growth strategy has revolved around investment. It was true in ancient Rome, with its roads and aqueducts, and in 19th-century Britain, with its railroads. During the 20th century, it was true in the United States as well as Japan and Europe.”
In the end, MAGA policies are the stuff that autocrats in China, Russia and North Korea dream of: a doctrinaire political party unraveling the United States from the inside, placating fat cats and passing the burden to the rest of us. Americans today live pretty much on the investments from past generations…
I’ve Peter Dekom, and for those who want to be real “patriots,” prove it by believing in America and investing in it!
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