A Subtle Sigh For Tomorrow
Texas V. Pennsylvania was Trump’s last, best attempt to manipulate the overall intent of the Constitution while crafting a seditious end-around of an election that resoundingly repudiated his particular angst and antics. Had the Supreme Court allowed this case to move forward — 1 of over 57 other lawsuits that have failed in six key battleground state based off their merits — it would have allowed other (lesser) political elections to be immediately sent to the court(s) utilizing this precedent to decide their fate rather than the electorate.
The Supreme Court ultimately decided, 9–0, or 7–2 depending upon one’s perspective. Justices Alito and Thomas adhere to the premise that the Supreme Court structurally has to hear cases involving state versus state yet Alito and Thomas were not willing to honor the wishes of Republicans wanting an injunction which SCOTUS soundly dismissed late Friday leaving the Trump administration a final, final act of desperation in filing injunctions within district courts. Barring that anything will stem from which, come Monday the electors of each state will formally cast their votes.
In SCOTUS’s remarks it was asserted –“Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another state conducts it’s elections. All other pending motions are dismissed as moot.” This was, in effect, the only sound conclusion that the court could have came to else suffer the fate of our democracy to the ignorant and the foolish. Best case and point, Texas was suing these key states only after changing their election policies prior to the lawsuit. But in moving forward toward Biden being sworn in, it would behoove Americans to take on the perspective of Lincoln who stated “We must bind these wounds and move the country forward.” What all that entails begins with a larger conversation about the need of active temperance where neither side of the aisle can tackle alone the adversities besetting the country, and proactive empathy where no persons were free of contempt, or the perpetuation of divisiveness. The chains that bound us as Americans interlinked regardless of station or status, politics or presentiment.
But we can glean such instruction as a people through the words of Martin Luther King Jr. that wrote “the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is […] the white moderate […] who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action’; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a ‘more convenient season.’”
Much is wrong with our country as we have witnessed with blinding clarity since the era of Reagan by way of socioeconomical, cultural and interpersonal relations. Through which, the seasons come and go with little change, justice, or freedom for one man or many. But through such a prism we have a prescient glimpse of America maintaining the status quo yet there will remain gradual changes to be made under the single term presidency of a Biden administration in course correcting America’s path forward. Greater of these has already come to pass in placing a wedge between America and the growing global tendency of adopting a national populous stance by the renunciation of such tribalism born out of Trump’s authoritarianism.
I speak to this as dark clouds loom with the coming of the third industrial age that will inextricably bind the middle class and working poor to a new ‘useless class’ as some historians have dubbed it. One where the enhancement of both automation and robotics will assume the majority of roles of blue collar workers — Uber and truck drivers, teachers to doctors. Why employ a hundred workers where two technicians and a few robots can create the same amount of production at 2/3 less cost? As diagnostic capabilities grow in both scope and skills, the more jobs to be lost within a service based economy. The remedy for which is that which the pandemic has prophesized in way of a universal wage, or UBI (Universal Basic Income) — a stopgap and first step in confronting this multi-tiered crisis. So far, UBI has seen success in parts of India, Namibia and Canada, and is being tested in Kenya, Uganda, Brazil, Finland, the Netherlands and Italy. UBI has already been implemented in Alaska, and new pilot projects are currently being planned. A possibility that isn’t conceivable under the bigoted and xenophobic Trump administration nor a McConnell ran senate that each serves a greater plutocratic oligarchy as witnessed through tax cuts for the wealthy, and endless bailouts better suited for the consuming classes. .
One historian told the story of a simple tribe seeking out sustenance from a local river. The tribe was small and everyone gathered as one for protection and skills that one might bring to the table. But over time more and more would flock to the river either separately or having been embraced by the original tribe. This would continue until the day was reached where the once ample river would recede inevitably to dry up. As the world moves into the vaccine stage of the pandemic, we are finding this analogy to be true where through the abundance of testing, the shortage of protein K that is utilized in both the testing and preventative stage of the treatment is running out.
The parallel can be drawn where the abundance of jobs will recede to such areas of the Earth with the means, resources, and willingness to sacrifice whatever is necessary to stay prosperous while mass migrations of peoples seeking employment from country to country becomes the next very real and palpable global crisis. Historians and scientists alike agree that we stand upon the very cusp of this hellscape of a reality where it is only twenty to fifty years off.
Some have made the foreboding suggestion that modern teachers do not know what to teach, nor how to educate the current generation to prepare for this eventuality. Where one industrial revolution stole the need of physical labor, and the next stole the need of cognitive labor, the third will force the adaptation of using our empathetic labor where no matter how vast the technological changes are to be in the immediacy, though we can teach computers to think, we remain incapable of programming them to feel. So on top of the need for coders adept in crafting complex algorithm, advance mechanical, electrical, and bioelectrical engineering will replace the current Walmart cashier as prevailing jobs leaving a vast majority behind to languish where they will be uneducated or incapable of adaptation.
Moving forward, America cannot stand back to this inevitable crisis as it has done many times over in it’s short history. Isolationism and/or tribalism isn’t the cure as America faces 9/11 type numbers in daily death counts due to the pandemic. We share in globalism through trade, economy, and culture. The next step as we are currently witnessing, is in crises as well so it is through a subtle sigh of relief that for as vile and unrecognizable as America has been over the past five years due to identity politics, coded language, willful ignorance, prideful division, and a Sisyphean use of violence to create inclusivity, there remains hope — perhaps only a glimmer of which currently — that the better angels amongst us can take hold as we strive for the solutions that will march us through the next evolutionary stage of man’s ascent to that next plateau, whatever that might look like, thus awakening to a new day and brighter tomorrows.
“We are not here to curse the darkness, but to light a candle that can guide us through the darkness to a safe and sure future. For the world is changing. The old era is ending. The old ways will not do.
The problems are not all solved and the battles are not all won and we stand today on the edge of a New Frontier — a frontier of unknown opportunities and perils, a frontier of unfulfilled hopes and threats.” John F. Kennedy
