Taxes: The Glue of a Civilized Society

Taxes: Every quarter, we make out a check for the Feds and a check to the State of North Carolina for our quarterly income tax estimates. Then, of course, annually, we calculate our taxes due to each, and send in our tax filings for the year past.  Do we love this annual ritual? No, of course not. Do we think it is necessary, vital even? Of course we do. What’s not to hate about paying taxes? Well, for one, I regard taxes as a kind of glue of a civilized society.  It’s almost literally the thing that binds us together as civilized human beings.  What do we “buy” through our taxes? Well, things like roads and bridges, allowing us to move about in things called automobiles and trucks.  And then there’s those police forces that protect us from the ne’er-do-wells of the world.  Yes, we need quality policing to protect all of us.

Oh, and then we have one of the biggies—public education—that system republicans of the Trump stripe really hate.  Public education literally educates the vast bulk of our population. Yes, I know, the Trumpies, people like Betsy Devos have never attended a public school in their fortunate lives. But, as a result, Betsy missed something important, vital even. She missed out on an understanding of who Americans really are. Yes, in addition to learning the ABCs, and the 1,2,3’s, Betsy missed out on associating with real people, the ones who constitute America. She missed meeting and understanding what makes the vast middle class tick.  Because it is the public education system that created the middle class and it is the middle class that created America.  But Betsy doesn’t know that. She thinks it’s all the private forces in education that made us what we are. She’s wrong. But Betsy, apparently dumb as a pet rock, wants to slowly destroy our public education system and channel all that public money into private, even for-profit schools.  Again. Betsy is wrong, but we all know that.

Then we have health care. We really do seem all steamed up about health care. Heaven forfend that people should have access to quality health care. They might actually remain healthy and live long lives. And wouldn’t that be terrible?  We seem to be the only vaguely civilized nation on earth that fails to guarantee our entire population with access to quality health care.  Yeah, Trump loves those white Norwegians. He welcomes them to migrate to America. But Norwegians just laugh at this proclamation. Why would they do that, they ask? They have a profoundly better system of government that makes their lives profoundly better than they might have here. For one thing, they all have guaranteed health care. So, they laugh at his dumb idea.  

And as they laugh, Trump looks at ways to reduce the Federal commitments to providing even our elderly with quality health care. See, he can buy his own health care, so he doesn’t need Federal systems, like Medicare and Medicaid.

And within that vast arena called health care, we have or used to have an array of programs intended to enhance our systems.  Programs intended to assure a more effective distribution of health care practitioners around the country. Programs intended to deliver the numbers and quality of the many different kinds of health care practitioners needed by our population.  And within that vast arena are also programs intended to carry out research—research on human ailments at NIH, research on drugs at FDA, research on new and better ways to deliver health care.  But our bozo president doesn’t understand any of that, because he can’t read.  So, it’s no use giving him copies of reports on any of these programs, because he won’t understand any of those reports.

So, apparently, mainly because he doesn’t understand anything, he wants to zero fund a whole host of programs and agencies.  We all know, the five-time draft dodger loves his military and, especially his generals and his tanks and planes. So, he wants to give them a lot of money. But all dictators everywhere first and foremost love their military. It’s how they remain in power, or so they reckon.  It’s why he wants his parade, so his military can pass by and salute him—honor him he thinks.  He fails to understand that the Nazi’s he salutes and speaks favorably about, are the very ones our military fought to defeat, and that our military people actually despise Nazi’s and others of their ilk.  Although Trump has managed to surround himself with some generals who never knew a bad wife-beater, most generals frown on such things.  But Trump doers love blowing up things, so he wants even more money, our public tax money, for the toys used to blow things up.

But on the agencies that don’t specialize in blowing things up, our President wants to eliminate their funding. Not just, marginally reduce their funding, but eliminate it altogether.  I guess his budget choices should come as no surprise to any of us. He has been routinely appointing folks to head these agencies who seem to fundamentally disagree with the basic premise of the agency.  So, he places in charge of public education, someone who has zero experience of public education and who actively opposes public education. He puts in charge of EPA someone who does not understand climate change and who thinks the polluting industries (the Koch brothers come to mind here) are just fine and dandy for America.  Similarly, because he finds all Federal regulations burdensome, he puts people in charge of those regulations who are fundamentally opposed to their purposes.  Even St. Ronald of Reagan didn’t do that for heaven’s sake.

And then he pretends to sponsor a vast array of infrastructure development ideas, to improve our crumbling infrastructure, you know, bridges falling down, roads falling apart, and rail systems crumbling. But then he tosses out another of his wishful thinking proposals, like his Mexico Wall that Mexico will pay for. In this instance, he wants the infrastructure all restored by tossing a minor amount of Federal money at it, but then the States and locales, like Mexico, will really finance the bulk of it.

Oh, and never forget his disdain for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and its agents like the National Public Radio. Because Trump has been bought by Murdoch and the Faux News Network, he thinks PBS and all those folks are out to get him, because they try really hard to practice even-handed journalism, and he really cannot stand such broadcasting.  See, "even-handed" does not mean slavish fawning over the Drumpf, and he can't stand that. So, zero-funding it is.

And his republican colleagues and partners don’t break out in laughter at his proposals.  There are a few republicans who find his proposals absurd, but their voices seem drowned out by the chorus of approval from the Paul Ryan crowd and the 30 odd percent in the land who still approve this absurdist, masquerading as our president.  Republicans have now shifted from being conservative to being anarchists, like Paul Ryan.  They really don’t want any government, except for the shoot’m-up variety.

And so that glue that binds us together as a civilized society becomes slowly but surely undone.  And, at the same rate, our nation gradually becomes less civilized.

There is no hope for any of this, save one—VOTING. Yes, this insanity called the Trump Federal Government, is reversible, but only if rational people get out to vote. Regardless of the Republican efforts to devise ways to deny people the right to vote, it is still possible to get out, get registered, and VOTE. I would say, Vote Out the Rascals. But these people are not rascals. They are dangerous, ignorant tyrants. The entire Republican Party has gone off the rails of sanity.  They no longer deserve the support of ordinary, thinking Americans.  

So, consider our future, Americans. And do your duty as patriotic citizens. Restore our democracy.  

Bring back thoughtfulness. 

Reintroduce the Enlightenment.