Nicholas Kristof: We Interrupt This Gloom to Offer ... Hope

[babylonsister]

Opinion
We Interrupt This Gloom to Offer … Hope
Yes, America is suffering needlessly. That may save us.
By Nicholas Kristof
Opinion Columnist
July 16, 2020


snip//

The last time our economy was this troubled, Herbert Hoover’s failures led to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s election with a mandate to revitalize the nation. The result was the New Deal, Social Security, rural electrification, government jobs programs and a 35-year burst of inclusive growth that built the modern middle class and arguably made the United States the richest and most powerful country in the history of the world.

snip//

Marian Wright Edelman, the founder of the Children’s Defense Fund, who for six decades has been battling for a more just society, told me, “I’m very optimistic. I think we have a chance of getting something done.”

Like others I spoke with, she said that one reason for hope is, paradoxically, President Trump and the way he has become the avatar of failed “let them eat cake” policies and narratives. “Mr. Trump is the perfect opposition to have,” Edelman said. “He represents the implosion of the American dream, and we can’t go down his road much farther.”

“If we can’t get something done now,” she added, “then shame on us.”

Betting markets like PredictIt expect Joe Biden to sweep into the presidency in January with a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate. By then we may have lost a quarter million Americans to Covid-19 and remain mired in the worst economic downturn of our lifetimes, with racial antagonisms inflamed by a president whom a majority of Americans regard as a racist. I’ve known Biden since he was a senator, and he’s no radical — but that reassuring, boring mien may make it easier to win a mandate and then use it to pivot the United States onto a new path.

So perhaps today’s national pain, fear and loss can also be a source of hope: We may be so desperate, our failures so manifest, our grief so raw, that the United States can once more, as during the Great Depression, embrace long-needed changes that would have been impossible in cheerier times.

more...

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/opinion/sunday/coronavirus-blm-america-hope.html

[soothsayer]

1. The phoenix rising from the ashes

[Bernardo de La Paz]

15. Yes. If Greed Over People can be defeated in Prez, House & Senate, it can be a golden opportunity

An opportunity to move the country forward in a very progressive way: Greener, more sustainable, more science based, more teaching critical thinking, kinder to children and minorities, more inclusive, less stupid.

[Nevilledog]

19. OMG first thing that came to mind....phoenix.

[DeminPennswoods]

2. Also believe this to be true

nt

[lunatica]

21. I do too.

I used to see no way of changing the status quo except for a very long process that would happen too slowly to make a real difference, especially in the climate change disaster. Now I see that we have a genuinely life saving opportunity that we can start implementing within a year. I am quite hopeful. It’s not for nothing that so much of the destructive forces seem to all be happening at the same time.

I want to live long enough to see it happening and making a difference. I’m 72 so I think I’ll see progress in the next decade, or if I’m lucky, two decades.

[DeminPennswoods]

32. I feel the same way

If Biden can find his Frances Perkins (perhaps Elizabeth Warren), his presidency can be transformational.

[Aristus]

3. It would be nice if we could have had those things without Trump ever disgracing the Presidency.

A few hundred thousand people voting for Hillary Clinton in strategic states would have done it. But the Hillary-haters had to have their day, I guess...

[lagomorph777]

6. MAGATS love their Turd, and they will follow him into obscurity and isolation.

[CrispyQ]

8. ...

The non-voters are almost as big a segment as the voters. Too many have bought into "both parties are the same" and "voting doesn't make a difference" bullshit. And too many don't understand that old adage, "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." If their perfect candidate doesn't win the nomination, then they want to take their vote & stay home. I've had to remind some of my college educated friends why having a majority in the Senate & the House gives your party more power than just a positive vote tally on legislation.

[Aristus]

10. And "I see both sides" is just as damaging as "Both sides are corrupt".

I don't know what to say to someone who can't climb down off the fucking fence and pick a side...

[Blue_true]

36. Those people are like a person who is in a runaway car. Instead of grabbing the steering wheel and

trying to stop the car, they put on a blindfold and sit back.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

16. That's a great graphic. Post it far and wide. . . . nt

[DeminPennswoods]

33. If Hillary was prez, obviously the last 4 yrs would've seen

competent gov't, but she could not have really transformed America.

[Mister Ed]

4. I've told my young daughter that she's part of Greatest Generation v2.

Like the original Greatest Generation, their lot is not one that they would choose. But I see signs already that they're rising to the challenge. Let's all support them until our life's last breath.

[C_U_L8R]

5. Apparently, Hope is too busy kanoodling.

[Blue_true]

37. I wonder what it was about the losers that she bedded?

Was it the aura of power? Was it she has a bone to pick with Trump and know how to do that? There seems to be more in the past between Trump and her, because every time she beds one of his underlings, Trump gets rid of the guy.

[fierywoman]

7. Didn't the Renaissance follow the Black Plague?

[CrispyQ]

13. Yes, but they climate change wasn't barreling down the pike back then.

I don't see how humanity isn't totally FUBAR.

[wryter2000]

9. I've been thinking along the same lines

I've always been in favor of the filibuster. It's saved us from the worst of Trump and his Republican congress (now Republican Senate). But I'm afraid we need to have a new New Deal, and the Republicans will never allow that. If we take the Senate, we should get rid of the filibuster at least for a while, so we can turn this country around. Then, maybe, reinstate it later.

[empedocles]

11. Good point. I'm not too sure either. Hope JB not get pushed into too many

promises.

This decision may be clearer in November.

[Fiendish Thingy]

12. Biden will have a once in a century opportunity- I hope he doesn't squander it

The momentum and the people will be with him, and he will only have 12-18 mos to ram through substantive reforms before some spines in Congress begin to jellify in the face of the 2022 midterms.

[CrispyQ]

14. This: "...he will only have 12-18 mos to ram through substantive reforms..."

Although I'm a pessimist and bet my money on the party going soft, not bold, and squandering the enthusiasm and good will of the People, along with the opportunity to set the ship right again. People will be disgruntled because our side didn't fix everything fast enough or good enough, and the right wing noise machine, which our side has never seriously challenged, will be non-stop blame the dems, & 2022/2024 will be neck-to-neck races again and we'll be lucky to hold both chambers—assuming we win both chambers this fall.

[Fiendish Thingy]

26. But if Dems can succeed in enacting substantive change even in a few areas, they will win

Dems could dominate govt for decades if they can enact substantive change in even a few areas, income inequality, health care, environment/green jobs, police reform, etc. before the run up to the midterms.

If Americans see the tangible benefits (eradication/control of COVID, higher minimum wage, better/lower cost healthcare, etc) they will keep Dems in power to finish the job.

[DeminPennswoods]

34. Americans had pictures of FDR hanging in their homes

because they we so devoted to him and the things he did. I remember the one that hung in my grandmother's bedroom.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

17. +1. After crisis management, fixing voter suppression & gerrymandering is top priority.

Restore a proper balance.

Black Votes Matter.

[wryter2000]

20. I have a feeling

He'll get a lot of advice and support from someone named Obama. They aren't likely to let people suffer if they can do something to relieve the misery.

[zipplewrath]

25. Reaching across the aisle

So will he be reaching across the aisle to his GOP friends?

[wryter2000]

28. Obama is across the aisle?

I don't think that's what I said.

[zipplewrath]

29. No

I suggest that is what Obama would advise him to do, as that is what he advocated for nearly his entire presidency, even against all evidence of the contrary.

[wryter2000]

31. IMHO

It wouldn't be a mistake to reach out to them. When they reject any reasonable appeals, go on without them.

From the start, the Republicans made it clear they would do everything to obstruct any constructive legislation Obama put forward. He got the ACA passed, anyway. If we get rid of the filibuster, they'd lose any hope of obstruction. (Assuming we take the Senate.)

[bucolic_frolic]

18. We need Democratic Tidal Wave so the media turns its back on failed Republicanism

[Bernardo de La Paz]

22. The more severe the defeat of Greed Over People the louder & clearer the message is. . . . nt

[NNadir]

23. I have kept this hope in my heart as well. It has been the US's good fortune that terrible...

...Presidencies by weak men have always been followed by great Presidencies, Buchanan by Lincoln, Andrew Johnson by Grant, Hoover by FDR, and G.W. Bush by Obama.

Trump of course, sets a new standard for worst, having likely displaced Buchanan as the "worst ever."

In defense of Buchanan, it can be said at least he didn't create the divisions that tore the country to pieces, killing more than 600,000 Americans.

Trump, by contrast, created much of the divisions now tearing us to pieces, and...it's not clear that the death toll he created will end up below 600,000, not clear at all.

[Midnight Writer]

24. I assumed this was a thread about Hope Hicks and her morale boosting among Trump's staff.

[central scrutinizer]

35. I see what you did there

Nice double entendre!

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

27. I've been thinking for several months now that

when all of this is eventually, we will be living in a vastly different country and a vastly different world.

Not to mention that it's going to take years. Not just one or two but at least five or six. And possibly a decade or more. Think of the time frame of the Great Depression and World War II.

[SergeStorms]

30. In order to achieve that...

the U.S. is going to have to stop the mindless military buildup that now defines our nation. We're approaching a trillion dollars a year on national defense. Think about that. $1,000,000,000,000. That's a shitload of zeroes. It won't be long until we reach that dubious milestone if republicans get their way.

Guns or butter. We must choose butter for once.

[colsohlibgal]

38. Please Make This So

As Mary Trump said, this could well be it. Win and steer our country back or lose and risk sliding into Unadulterated Fascism.

And no breaks after, that Orange Psychopath needs to rot in the psychiatric wing of a Prison.