For a progressive like me, the rise and rise (followed by, I can only hope, an eventual fall) of Donald Trump has been a little terrifying. . . Many pundits are watching this loathsome man's advance with rapt disbelief, like they're watching an unfolding disaster in a movie (a fully loaded dump truck has lost its brakes and is hurtling toward a schoolyard filled with children) and are powerless to intervene. Knowing the outcomes of some previous presidential elections, how could they not be fearful? In 2004, George W. Bush, who led us into a war on utterly mistaken, or possibly manufactured, evidence of WMDs - a war that resulted in the ascendance of ISIL - was nominated by his party and beat John Kerry in the general election. By the time he left office, the nation was on the verge of economic collapse. How can anyone trust in the judgement of the American voter any more? (1)
In an interview on 60 Minutes last Sunday, Bernie Sanders, the current frontrunner in the Democratic Party race, made comments favorable to Cuban dictator Fidel Castro: "We're very opposed to the authoritarian nature of Cuba but you know, it's unfair to simply say everything is bad. You know? When Fidel Castro came into office, you know what he did? He had a massive literacy program. Is that a bad thing? Even though Fidel Castro did it?"
Sanders’s comments were, at best, disingenuous. (And he’s even more disingenuous when he talks about “socialist” Scandinavian countries – countries that are welfare states, not socialist.) Given his lifelong struggle - a steep uphill battle in America - to rehabilitate the word “socialism,” he took a leap backwards by arguing in favor of the social reforms of a Communist tyrant. Socialists have lived in the shadow of totalitarian regimes that have been nominally Marxist ever since Stalin’s purges in the 1930s. It does the socialist cause no good to inform people that in the USSR, if you needed a job a job would be found for you. If you needed an apartment an apartment would be found for you. If you got sick medical care would be provided. But you couldn't elect your own government and if you criticized the ruling party you would be arrested and imprisoned. The same goes for Castro's Cuba. How could it possibly matter what the quality of life was like if you had no liberty?
The counter-argument, however, is that all the liberty in the world isn’t much use when you’re broke, out of a job, homeless or ill. Two popular American anthems approach this dilemma, one of them pointedly. In 1940, in a cheap New York City hotel, Woody Guthrie wrote “This Land Was Made for You and Me.” He wrote it in response to hearing the Irving Berlin song, “God Bless America,” which he thought was out of touch with the country that he saw all around him, a land of workers who lost their jobs and farmers who lost their land, of bread lines and soup kitchens. America’s landscape was beautiful and inspiring, Woody declares in his song, but two of the original stanzas were removed on some recordings that cast a questionable light on America:
As I went walking I saw a sign there,
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing.
That side was made for you and me.
In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?
The America in Guthrie’s song was a land of contrasts that had to be assessed. His song remains patriotic, but its patriotism is balanced, nuanced. A later, and lesser, American anthem came from country singer Lee Greenwood in 1984. “God Bless the USA” starts out seriously enough:
If tomorrow all the things were gone
I worked for all my life
And I had to start again
With just my children and my wife
I thank my lucky stars
To be living here today
'Cause the flag still stands for freedom
And they can't take that away
And I'm proud to be an American
Where at least I know I'm free
And I won't forget the men who died
Who gave that right to me
And I'd gladly stand up next to you
And defend Her still today
'Cause there ain't no doubt
I love this land
God Bless the U.S.A.
I have disliked this song since the first time I heard it – not least because it’s a country song. (I am not a fan.) It’s a confusing, flimsy kind of national love song. Greenwood argues that he’s proud to be an American even when it’s a country where, tomorrow, he could lose everything, because, what the hell, “at least I know I’m free”. The economic injustice that many Americans, including many of Greenwood’s fans, have faced for generations, with the nightmares of unemployment, eviction, foreclosure and unexpected illness hanging over their heads, seriously devalues one’s personal liberty. It is the obscene gulf that separates the rich and the poor, which has widened terribly in the new millennium, that exposes a serious weakness in our one person, one vote political system. If one voter makes $40K a year and another makes $40M a year, the value of their votes is wildly unequal.
Whatever happens next week on Super Tuesday, and whatever effect – if any - that Bernie’s mistaken conditional praise of Castro may have on voters, he has at least championed the common man as the preeminent subject of the debate, just as multibillionaire Mike Bloomberg, who dedicated most of his life to gathering for himself an enormous fortune, evidently thinks he can win votes by buying them.
We shall see.
(1) See Indecision America.
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