A People's History of the New Millennium

Like many of us born well back in the past century, I spent a great deal of my life knowing I would have an opportunity given to few in human history: that of living into a new millennium. Since we tend to endow round numbers with enormous symbolic significance, I did a lot of wondering about what things would be like once the magical year 2000 arrived. I am not the late Howard Zinn, nor do I possess even a fraction of his knowledge or passion. For the benefit of those younger than I, though, I am going to try to write an accurate account of the way I and many other people in America have experienced the past eleven and a half years. It has certainly not been what I or we expected, or hoped.

During this long decade I have moved into late middle age and have had my share of personal triumphs and setbacks. In this summer of 2011, though, I have been finding my sleep troubled by dire forebodings of things I never thought I would live to see, and have been following the news cycle in a state of numb disbelief. Events unfolding in the public realm seem to me to threaten our very survival as a society. How did we get here?

In the year 2000 we lived through the most extraordinary presidential election in American history. The result was, to say the least, disputed, but the candidate who clearly lost the popular vote nevertheless managed to seize power. He was aided in this coup by the fact that his brother controlled the pivotal state of Florida, but his success was sealed by the most extraordinary act of judicial activism I have ever witnessed. Instead of allowing the democratic process to continue, the partisan Supreme Court stopped the gears of democracy and arbitrarily anointed a winner.

This unelected president then proceeded to act with the arrogant self-confidence of a leader who believes he has received a ringing electoral mandate. Having inherited the soundest economy in living memory, he began his term with an array of tax cuts that virtually guaranteed huge deficits in the near future. The result was not the creation of more jobs or of a more robust economy. It was, rather, an ever-widening gap between rich and poor that has now made the United States one of the most manifestly unequal countries on earth.

A devastating and unparalleled attack on our nation then led to one of the most misguided responses ever undertaken by a sovereign state. Letting the man responsible for the attack go free, our country proceeded to wage vicious war on a country that had nothing whatsoever to do with the events of 9/11/01. We waged that war - which has turned out to be one of the longest in our history - entirely on credit. No attempt was made to raise money or to ask anybody outside of the military to sacrifice anything.

Meanwhile, the unelected president took advantage of the huge surge in his personal popularity that followed the disaster, not to further the common good, but to systematically dismantle the regulatory net painstakingly constructed since the Great Depression. Thus, he made it inevitable that we would see a repeat of that experience. When the catastrophe struck late in his second term, the unelected president gamely proposed a huge "bailout" scheme that would save those most responsible for it from any adverse personal or financial effects. Meanwhile, the gap between rich and poor reached epic proportions, and a huge group of permanently unemployed citizens solidified into a permanent underclass. The national debt, brought on by the enormous tax cuts and the two wars, reached unimaginable proportions.

The successor to the unelected president accomplished extraordinary things during his first two years in office, including what I believe to be the most important achievement by the US government in nearly 50 years. If that achievement is allowed to reach fruition, we will no longer be the only advanced country on earth that does not provide health care for all its citizens. A huge blot of shame will have been removed from our national conscience.

It is not humanly possible, though, to undo eight years of damage in a mere two. Since we elect our Congress every two years and have short memories, 2010 saw the party responsible for the damage swept back into power in Congress. It is at this point that events went from bizarre to surreal. The huge national debt brought on by the unelected president and his policies was now blamed on his successor and his party. More tax cuts were proposed, even though the wealthy corporations who had benefited from the last round were still sitting on huge chunks of uninvested capital. Drastic cuts in social programs were demanded: cuts so severe as to virtually guarantee that the permanent underclass we have created will live out their lives in abject degradation. Any attempt to stimulate the economy or create jobs was simply abandoned, in the hopes that the national economy could lift itself up by its own bootstraps: something that the history of the past century had clearly shown to be impossible. The one course of action that could actually solve the crisis - raising taxes, even on the obscenely wealthy - was rejected a priori.

It is at this point that the current Congressional temper tantrum over the national debt ceiling began its chilling, devastating course. The party in charge of Congress seems actually willing to default on the nation's debt - not the hypothetical future debt, but the debt that we have already incurred - in order to bully the president into beginning to dismantle a century's worth of social progress. The realization that this could actually happen is what has been keeping me awake at nights, gripped by foreboding. As someone who grew up to love this country and what it represents, I very much fear that I am witnessing its death throes.

This has been the most heartfelt post I have written in a long time, but it is the honest, unadorned truth. Barely over a decade in, this is how I see the events of the new millennium. As this long, hot summer of 2011 drags on, I am watching my country progressively lose its sanity and its soul.

While I am currently disgusted with the government, though, I still think there's a chance the American people are better than this. If we can remember that this illustrious nation consists of individuals, bound together in community, and that we do more than serve the giant corporations and the billionaires who run them, there may still be hope. I am on the lookout for signs that there are still others who believe this as well.

Calling Congressman Flores

Congressman Bill Flores, I want to talk to you.

I confess that I was not happy when you were elected to represent me in Congress last fall. I already have two Senators whom I never bother to contact about anything, since all my communications with either of them are read by staff members and answered with form letters explaining why they reject my point of view on issue X. I did, however, enjoy a constructive relationship with your predecessor, Congressman Chet Edwards.

Chet enjoyed the dubious distinction of representing what used to be described as the most conservative congressional district in the country to be held by a Democrat. He often cast votes I didn't agree with. However, he was a genuinely independent thinker who took the challenge of representing all of his constituents in Congress seriously. I got to know him a bit during last fall's campaign, hosting him at my house to speak to a group of progressive Democrats. He convinced most of us who were there that he is a sincere person of integrity who deserved our support.

Of course, you proceeded to beat him in the November election. This was probably foreordained. I don't think it was possible for anybody with a D after his or her name to win anything in the toxic atmosphere that prevailed here last fall. It is very discouraging, though, to know that I now have two senators, a congressman, a state senator, a state representative and a governor all of whom I disagree with on every single issue. There is something in the principle of democratic government that at least tries to pretend that every citizen has a voice.

In fact, I did find a very effective way to exercise that voice this spring. I joined a large and well organized group of professional colleagues and students in successfully opposing a bill that everybody had assumed would pass this year: the one allowing concealed weapons permit holders to bring their guns into buildings on college and university campuses in Texas.

So I am not exactly feeling ignored - or ignorable - at the moment. That fact makes your failure to respond to my persistent overtures since your election to Congress all the more discouraging. I wrote to you shortly after the November election to let you know that I spoke for the large number of liberal Democrats in your district for whom even Chet Edwards was far too conservative, although we had learned to live with him and respect him. I told you that I sincerely hoped that you, like Chet, would take seriously the mission of representing all of your constituents, not just those who agree with you politically. I told you that if I did not get a response to my letter, I would know the answer. I wrote again a few weeks later, just to make it clear that I was not eager to close off communications with you.

I did eventually hear from your field representative Will Flores, who assured me that you were indeed interested in hearing from all your constituents and asking me which issues I considered most important. I immediately wrote back to say that, as an educator, I was deeply concerned about possible cuts to education funding, and that I would be glad to organize a group of educators to speak to you about this subject. I never heard back.

Then last night I found a message from you in my voice mail. It seems to have resulted from what is generally known as a "robo-call." You were calling, you said, to see if I agreed with your efforts to cut government spending. Taking the question in good faith, I called your congressional office right back, leaving a long message explaining why I do not support those efforts. I also emailed Mr. Will Flores and reminded him that he had not responded to my message of last November. I am posting this publicly since I now want my efforts to contact you to become a matter of record. If I continue to be ignored by you and your staff, I will know - and so will the dozens of people who read this blog regularly (I can't claim a mass readership, but it is what it is) - that you are really not interested in hearing my voice, or those of the thousands of other liberal Democrats whom you theoretically represent in Congress.

We vote.

Sincerely,
Robin Wallace
700 Candlelight Dr.
Woodway, TX 76712