Will A Principled Democrat Help Keep Trump In Office?
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Elizabeth Warren supports the idea of paying reparations to those having ancestors who were Slaves in the Southern States. Will that support cost her the Democratic candidacy? Would it cost her and the Democratic party the election? Perhaps, if she’s nominated, we shall see.
Of course Americans still are unclear how laws are made and a president’s role in making it happen. They will presume the success of a policy that not only creates two classes of American citizen and demands proof of heritage, but might rank people in order of the number of slave ancestors they can claim after more than 150 years. How do you show how many great, great, great grandparents were Black and were slaves? Will people have to carry some sort of internal passport? Would it be like the racial identity or “Abstammung” cards Germans had to carry because of the Nürnburg race laws? DNA testing can’t be enough to prove slave descent for several obvious reasons that should be obvious to Ms. Warren.
Take someone like President Obama – would he be eligible? His father was African but not American and with no legacy of enslavement. What about his children, do they get a half-share or less? Will what reparations they get take into account their substantial advantages of having family wealth and notoriety? I know several rather successful Black people who came here from the Caribbean rather recently. What degree of reparations does the US owe them if any? Is a general assumption of an African disadvantage really fair on an individual basis?
Who will have the responsibility of producing tens of millions of applications and checking each one for validity? How many decades would it take and how long will some people have to wait while others cash in quickly? Will it be much harder for the poor to prove entitlement? Does that nullify the basic principle here?
Will the reparations be a guaranteed income, regardless of all other income or will it be more like a tax credit for those earning below a certain amount? Will a light skin privilege be assumed that might result in more ambiguity – or will it work the other way? by what complex formula will we determine just how much someone will get? However we do it, fairness demands complexity and expense more than just the nebulous support of principle.
Would there be problems because of the equal protection provisions under the constitution and more importantly, will that argument arise? I think that’s inevitable and I think the inevitable animosity will further divide this already torn and bleeding society.
I could go on. This is a high-minded proposition but based on very broad and blurry generalities and a selective view of historical oppression and current responsibility – but like most things done out of principle the unavoidable details are more than numerous enough to hide a great number of devils and I have not begun to address the inevitable unpopularity among the population in general.
Americans seem not to be enthusiastic at what they feel is an “entitlement” or anything that will raise their taxes. Americans have a near phobia about anyone getting anything like “free stuff” to the point where it’s been a millstone around the Democratic Party’s neck, whether the free stuff is actually free or even real. To me, the real existence of toxic prejudice, even if no longer official, suggests that there may be other solutions involving opportunity rather than cash, but that’s another long, winding road to go down.
Will the general principle involved here antagonize other groups who have been subject to persecution, deprivation and violence and are still being ignored? Will Ms. Warren be subject to a great wave of mockery, rebuke and scorn after having claimed indigenous identity? That I can guarantee and I’m willing to bet that if this proposal becomes part of the Democratic platform, Trump will remain in office long enough to ensure that this republic will perish from the earth.
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It is odd that humans invented the word utopia but the image in so many minds is so different. A perfect world would probably contain no humans.
The whole Democratic attitude seems to follow what I heard from Ocasio-Cortez this morning – that the “semantics” may be incorrect and the numbers may not add up to the truth, but her plan is “morally true”
So were the ideas of Marx and Engels. Self-righteousness and fraudulent accounting sounds just like Republicans with a reverse polarity.
The truth is this is a question no Democrat wants to have to answer. Yes or no sets them up for scorn either way. The only answer is building an America that provides equal opportunity for economic success as well as fair treatment from our justice system. A more perfect union, to go back to Jefferson, is the solution.
This is another wild ass idea that has no future. What of the native Americans, or the Japanese Americans.
I believe the Japanese Americans who were put in the camps did receive some compensation, but then they were actually in those camps and not the descendants thereof. Native Americans? Well, many are still on reservations and among the poorest people in the country. We even keep them from voting when when we can get away with it.
I worry about this actually. Then I worry about the world I’m in where I have to worry about being principled. How could it be, that a principled person could bring about such pain and sadness, like the re-election of an awful human being?