What Ideals Should We Focus On: Progressive or Regressive, People or Corporations?

by | Jan 28, 2022 | Opinions & Commentary, Progress & Solutions

People enjoying the outdoors at Santa Monica Pier, 2018. Photo by Jack Finnigan

What Ideals Should We Focus On: Progressive or Regressive, People or Corporations?

by | Jan 28, 2022 | Opinions & Commentary, Progress & Solutions

People enjoying the outdoors at Santa Monica Pier, 2018. Photo by Jack Finnigan

Progressives and Regressives view people in two different ways. Progressives view people as assets. The other side views them as an expense or liability—or at the very least sources to extract money from by any means.

Much emphasis is placed on examining what is wrong with this country. And in what is designed as a self-correcting model of government, this is not incorrect—some of the time.

But when too much attention is placed on the examination of wrongness leaving rightnesses overlooked, an imbalance occurs. The oddity of this is that this imbalance starts to make the things that are going right look wrong. Sound confusing? It is.

We get hammered through news and social media about what is amiss in Republican or Democratic politics with diametrically opposed messaging—some true and some so completely fabricated as to defy anything resembling logic. Picking the facts out of this has always been what this site has been about. And adding perspective to those facts.

But that imbalance of spending too much time debunking the crazy can leave the sane out there dangling in the breeze unnoticed and unacknowledged. To counter this trend, we are inaugurating a new category: Progress. Progress is what Progressives in Congress and in general society want. Hence the label.

You would not know it from current media coverage, but there has been a lot of progress of late in the United States. In her latest newsletter, political historian Heather Cox Richardson pointed out:

Numbers released today by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which is part of the U.S. Federal Statistical System producing data and official statistics, show that the U.S. economy grew by an astonishing 6.9 percent annual rate from October to December 2021. That puts the growth of the U.S. economy for 2021 at 5.7 percent in 2021. Despite the ongoing pandemic, this is the fastest full-year growth since 1984.

At the same time, the U.S. added 6 million jobs in 2021, pegging the unemployment rate below 4%.

Economists predict that in 2022 the economy will continue to grow at a much higher rate than the 1.8% policymakers generally expect, expanding at 3.9%.

This growth is the outcome of a dramatic change in economic policy launched by the Biden administration through measures like the American Rescue Plan and the bipartisan infrastructure law.

The results of policies instituted by the new administration have been so successful that Republican House and Senate members have been taking credit for them with their constituents—completely ignoring the fact that they all voted against these measures.

There is a saying that you get more of what you put your attention and industry behind. So, because of the actual success of progressive elements in our society, we’re going to do just that. Simply put, we want more progress.

Mitch McConnell and the Trumpublican party are diametrically opposed to progress. This is a completely crazy position, but is the reality of the situation. The evidence of this is the laws passed in 19 states to bring back the specter of Jim Crow laws to restrict voting. This was followed by the Senate going to bat against voting rights. These are not just efforts to stop progress, but to roll back the clock to darker times.

There has always been an underbelly of fascism in the United States. Franklin Roosevelt, arguably the most popular and effective President to hold the office, weakened this element. Subsequent administrations further pushed back with Civil Rights actions and laws.

The fascists have been fighting to claw back their influence and are succeeding now more than they have since the days of Reagan. Make no mistake, Reagan was considered almost a deity to those people—much like Trump is now—even though Reagan’s biggest actual talent was to convincingly read his scripts, the most influential actor of the age. The policies passed by his administration set in motion the near destruction of the middle class in this country and the rapid erosion of America’s standard of living. It also fueled the crack epidemic for profit and illegal war financing—but that’s another story.

The diametrically opposed viewpoints of Progressive and Republican—now Trumpublican—view people in two different ways. Progressives view people as assets. The other side views people as an expense or liability on their ledger—or at the very least they are people to extract money from by any means.

Progressives view people as the true source of the wealth of the nation—and that investment in them and their ability to produce what they can envision and create will result in prosperity all around. The Regressives—as they should really be called—think that corporations are the source of wealth and are all that should be invested in, and that predation by these entities should be allowed and unregulated.

These are the real opposing ideas of America today. We need more of the former. So we’re going to be putting more attention on the progress that has been made and invite you, our readers to do the same. Don’t worry, we will still be calling out bullshit when we see it being sold as something else.

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