My eyes collide head-on with stuffed
Graveyards, false gods, I scuff
At pettiness which plays so rough
Walk upside-down inside handcuffs
Kick my legs to crash it off
Say okay, I have had enough
what else can you show me?

And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They’d probably put my head in a guillotine…

Bob Dylan wrote that. 

The world now knows, the country now knows, fucking everyone now knows that everything is broken. And that everyone now knows everything is broken is a ray of conceivable hope.

I wrote that—preparatory to offering a thought dream of my own, and then some substance about better.

And yes, I just cursed. If that bothers you, well, wake up. There is much much worse to be bothered about. Indeed, the most frequent comment I saw appended to accounts of the debacle called a debate the morning after when I wrote this was “we’re fucked.” And, in second place, “how the fuck did we get to this point.”

By now most who are reading this will have likely heard, if by no other path than Jon Stewart’s overview of the debacle on YouTube, that this was a contest in which the older guy had only to stay upright for ninety minutes to win, and the self-proclaimed youngest, healthiest, smartest, most energetic, most truthful bully on the planet had only to act like he was normal for ninety minutes to win—and yet both lost. As an added bonus those who managed to keep their minds from shutting off entirely got to experience moderators who had only to ask questions, solicit actual answers, call out lies, and elicit a modicum of sanity to be better than useless—and they too failed. 

Two guys competed to be “chief master” of “the masters of the universe.” Two media stars looked to pad their portfolios by generating wise exchange. All four were prime instances of the type of garbage that rises to the top in America. The world saw a society lurching toward the last circle of hell.

Before the debacle, pundits put the bar for successful debate literally on the ground in hopes they could celebrate whoever would manage to step over it—and yet the contending candidates instead managed to crawl under it. Trump was a vile worm who tried to appear human while slithering under. Biden was a life-long liberal who tried to operate past his expiration date while stumbling under. The sight was to weep over. High waters and higher temperatures won. Fear and loathing won. 

In the increasingly unreal world of metastasizing capitalist, racist, sexist, authoritarian institutions, nominally human garbage repeatedly rises to rule. In such a world, should we rush to hope that Jill Biden, the Obamas, and whoever the hell Biden might listen to will tell Joe, “Joe, it is time to move on. It’s time to make room. Time to give peace and justice a chance. Time to go home to your family.” Or perhaps “Go golfing Joe, go golfing.” And at that same time, we should certainly rush to hope that a really really hungry lion wanders into Mar A Lago while Donald is practicing goose stepping on his lawn. Lunch time in paradise. 

Next day, somehow Joe surged back to life in Carolina and Donald sputtered along with his non stop lying in Virginia. And I know, I know, attention spans are already stretched. So feel free to stop here if it suits you. From here on I actually try to generate a thought or two but who knows what even great thoughts, much less my mundane and obvious ones are worth nowadays.

What Happened

Some questions arise. We know about Joe and Donald, they are what they are, but how could the moderators be so passive? For that matter, how could Joe’s “handlers” and “aides” not see what was coming and not intervene? How can the bag of hate that is Donald, lie on top of lying on top of more lies, insecurely mimicking a whining baby over and over, and yet have his support keep on keeping on? I think there may be one multi-part answer that helps explain all such instances of some people kowtowing to another person, whether handlers or moderators to their bosses, or voters to their candidates. 

Poverty of imagination. It has been this way. It has to be this way. I go along to get along. Abundance of obedience. I am emotionally unable to buck authority (check out the Milgram experiment online), so I don’t disagree with my boss or with my candidate, be it Don or Joe. And finally, flat out cowardice. If I step forward I will get knocked way way back so I don’t step forward. 

Meanwhile, the commenters appear right. Without intervention, whether by family, friends, supporters, or even donors on one side, or by our lion buddy on the other side, we are all thoroughly fucked. Or are we? I hate petitions and have never urged anyone to sign one, but please sign anything that seeks to induce a long vacation for Joe and a short pier for Donald to run off into oblivion. Alternatively, maybe we need to buck up?

Okay, whatever the more complete answers may be to how we have gotten to where we are, and whatever your answers to what is the right way toward a bearable Election Day, what if for a bit of clarification of longer-term prospects we offer desires for something more than surpassing sewer standards as a basis for a candidate to earn not only a vote (which we should still give to the lesser evil even in this dreadful situation), but also our actual praise?

For a Trump-like narcissistic liar, I suppose the pundits got it right that you can’t sensibly ask for much. Perhaps the success bar really is to look normal even while you dream of resurrecting Hitler’s final solution for all those unwilling to frolic in your pocket. 

For a Republican of less extreme persuasion, supposing there are still any left to take Trump’s place if that lion I mentioned has him for lunch, how about to look like you care about anything beyond getting to sit in the Oval Office, pad your bank account, and pad your buddies’  bank accounts—while at least noting that Hitler was a punk who ultimately lost and is therefore not a model to emulate.

And if Jill, Barack, Taylor?, or whoever gets Joe to step aside, what would be a higher bar for a mainstream Democratic replacement than just staying upright? What if Kamala, Gaven, or Gretchen steps up to the bar? How about: try to look like you care about anything beyond getting to sit in the Oval Office, pad your bank account, pad your buddies’ bank accounts, and get front row tickets to Taylor’s or whoever’s next show, while, and I suppose this is the differentiating part, sincerely working to not destroy or even to help save the planet and its inhabitants?

I guess I kept ranting a bit there, didn’t I? Okay, enough of that. Now let’s dare to go where the “stay out” signs block entry and the other side’s lions patrol. Let’s ask about a success bar for a seriously progressive candidate? That is, what bar might we set for an actual sentient, caring, and informed soul to have to exceed in order to be deemed truly, seriously progressive?

Progressive Economic Election Program

As a bar to exceed, how about that a progressive candidate has to actually pursue and not just mutter about three primary economic goals—more material fairness, better quality of daily economic circumstances, and increased mutual compassion? How about if she also has to unflinchingly emphasize that corporate elites, due to the pressures of their positions as well as their perverted paths to those positions, obstruct those humane aims?

Oh hell, you can stop right there if you are in a hurry. But if you have a moment for something that tries to exceed “rant status,” how about if I persist in offering standards for success that aren’t fully attainable at the moment but that are what exceeding a progressive bar might legitimately be said to require? If nothing else, to do that for economy, education, health, foreign policy, and ecology may at least give us some points of comparison for setting the success bar well above the ground. Indeed, perhaps to consider some possible progressive program may also prod awareness that all is not forever lost. We don’t have to whine and moan unto death.

How about we suggest that to hurdle our progressive bar a candidate would have to sincerely try to level the playing field of economic struggle between workers and employers by, for example, helping grassroots organizations fight for: (1) a law forbidding capital export and relocation without community and worker permission and (2) a law delineating punishments for employers who impede nationally mandated economic reforms. For each law, to hurdle the bar, our candidate would need to demand that the maximum penalty for owners would be nationalization of their businesses under the management of currently employed workers. (That last aspect should provide a bit of a glimpse into the reach of what follows.)

To be progressive, really progressive, seriously optimally progressive, our candidate might propose: (1) reducing inequality, (2) reorienting productive potentials to meet social needs, and (3) enlarging economic democracy.

To foster equitable wealth and income, our candidate might propose a sharply progressive property, asset, and income tax, with no loopholes, as well as a dramatically-increased minimum wage coupled with a new profit tax that would be proportional to inequities in each firm’s pay scale. Due to the new minimum wage, minimum and really all pay would rise dramatically. Due to the new pay equity tax, industries with a more equitable pay scale would have more after-tax surplus. Not only could more equitably structured firms use their extra funds to further improve work conditions and improve their social contribution, they could also generally out-compete less socially responsible firms. Finally, the new property and asset taxes would dramatically diminish differences in wealth.

To clear our progressive bar our candidate might also explicitly label all these innovations redistributive and repeatedly explain why redistribution from the rich to the poor is not nightmare material but instead both morally justified and socially essential. She might call her program “reclamation of stolen riches.” Other facets of her reclamation project might include a comprehensive full employment policy, a comprehensive adult education and job training program, and a comprehensive social support system for those unable to work, whatever the reason.

Moreover, beyond material equity, our candidate might also advocate that all workers should have conditions and responsibilities suitable to their personal development and ability to contribute to society’s well being. Our candidate might ask, why should many people endure boring, dangerous, subordinate, and rote conditions while few people monopolize challenging, fulfilling, empowering, and varied conditions? 

In reply to her own fairness question, our candidate might explain that to attain equity of life circumstances should we should not only address people’s incomes, but also their social circumstances. 

With such principles as guide, our candidate might welcome union demands for workers’ councils empowered to develop job redefinition and to win increasing say over the pace and goal of work. She might emphasize that work should be a demanding but rewarding part of people’s lives, rather than being alienated and misallocated by those at the top.

Regarding investment priorities, our candidate might propose tax incentives for socially useful production and tax disincentives for waste and socially harmful production. This would, for example, limit excessive or ecologically damaging advertising and packaging and other antisocial behavior. It would help foster production to meet real needs and potentials. It would rake account of ecological impact to slow and then reverse society’s slip slide toward suicide. Indeed, our progressive candidate’s administration might pledge to regulate, punish, and even put out of business any industry deemed by an independent citizens bureau and public plebiscite to be destructive of the public good.

The first change in economic priorities our candidate might undertake might be a 90 percent cut in the defense budget. To make this worthwhile, our candidate might propose that existing military bases be converted to centers for ecological clean-up, schools for participatory citizenship, and workplaces for producing low income high quality housing and new means of clean transportation and energy production. To fund these renovated newly socially productive military bases, our candidate might continue their government budgets while resident GIs, or others seeking new employment are retrained to work in the converted bases.

Regarding economic democracy and participation, our candidate might assist the formation of consumer and worker organizations to watchdog product quality, guard against excessive pricing, advise about product redefinition, and participate in plant and industry decisions with full investigative rights of finally opened books.

Beyond these many first steps, our candidate might carefully clarify that her ultimate goal is the full democratization of economic decision making and initiation of a national public project to develop new institutions for work, consumption, and allocation. 

In short, our candidate’s truly progressive presidential campaign would ratify the public’s suspicion that the basic problem with our economy is that capitalist institutions make capitalists prefer war production, persistent unemployment, and homelessness to having a working class able and eager to demand a steadily bigger piece of the pie and steadily more control over what kind of pie is baked and to demand uncompromising changes that redress existing grievances, create more just and humane conditions, and establish a new balance of power conducive to winning even more fundamental changes in the future. That would set progressive bar to exceed for economy, wouldn’t it?

Education Election Program

So, am I still ranting, or now being rather reasonable? Either way, what about education? To be successfully progressive our candidate might note that while critics often claim our schools are failing, it depends on how you look at them. Our candidate, for example, might emphasize that existing schools actually succeed at developing what other candidates and big time investors want which is on the one hand future executives, professionals, intellectuals, and managers who are made ready to rule by our schools having provided them an empowering environment, diverse skills development, wide-ranging knowledge, and an expectation of fulfillment in life—as long as they don’t rock the yacht.

And on the other hand, our schools also serve society’s investors by providing their future workers minimal literacy and maximal training to endure boredom and obey orders. Our candidate might explain that the schools accomplish their dual  depravity by their extreme differences in teacher-student ratio, in resources allotted per student, and in teacher expectations and training.

Thus, our candidate might explain that while our schools fail to inspire and prepare most students for more than following orders they succeed admirably in the eyes of order givers. She might explain that that’s why representatives from elite constituencies repeatedly finance candidates who will, rhetoric aside, maintain education disparities more or less as they are.

To make educational change, she might report, will require that we instead overcome corporate agendas and existing institutional pressures with our own alternatives. So our candidate might explain that we also have to change the context that schools prepare people for so that good education for all makes sense. She might urge that this requires an economy promising full employment at jobs that require and utilize people’s full capabilities, including their facility for decision-making, to employ ample knowledge about society, and to expect to have a life of success and participation. But our candidate might also emphasize that people need to develop a popular movement to pressure for specific pedagogic changes. To enumerate these changes, our candidate might advocate a national debate about curriculum reform, improved teaching methods and teacher-student relations, improved resources for schools, and increased community involvement.

Next, our candidate might promise to reduce class size to a maximum of 20 students per teacher in all schools, to equalize resources per student across all schools, including architecture, computers, books, and food—and to guarantee education through college to anyone who wants it.

Our candidate might also promise funds to staff all schools at night for community meetings and remedial and adult education, and for socializing. And finally, our candidate might guarantee that additional funding for education will come from corporate profit taxes and from private wealth taxes all collected at the national level to guarantee that regions move toward educational parity.

In short, our candidate might galvanize public anger and activism to: (a) develop a detailed, long-term popularly conceived and supported education agenda, and (b) win immediate reforms, including greater educational equity and improvements for all.

Foreign Policy Election Program

Moving on, our candidate might report that U.S. foreign aid correlates directly with human rights abuses. The more abuses a country practices, the more aid we send them. Our candidate might explain that this is not due to diplomatic stupidity, but is U.S. policy because it pleases elite decision makers who make U.S. policy. She might clarify that our policy makers view foreign aid as a way to maintain a flow of riches and wealth out of other countries into our elite’s hands. Since such rip-off requires that the local populations be subdued, wherever we give aid indigenous populations are repressed. Indeed, that is a good part of what U.S. aid pays for. The idea is that in return for our “largesse” in providing the tools of repression and authoritarian rule, their repressive elites get to take home some trickle down from the bounteous wealth that we extract.

Our candidate might next explain that a proper foreign policy would instead respect the integrity of other nations and seek a human-serving economy at home. To vault over the progressive success bar our candidate’s overall foreign policy program might therefore emphasize:

• Cessation of all arms shipments abroad.
• Cessation of any aid abroad that may, by any means, find its way into the hands of police or other potentially repressive agencies in other countries.
• Elimination of all overseas military bases, with half the funds saved from closings returned to the U.S. for addressing domestic problems, and the other half applied to aid to underdeveloped countries in the form of no-strings attached infrastructure improvements, job training, equipment grants, food aid, and privileged buyer status for many goods on the international market.

Ultimately, the goals of progressive foreign policy, our candidate might explain, should be the same as the goals of domestic policy: to promote equity, solidarity, diversity, and self-management while respecting personal and collective rights.

Health Election Program

Our progressive candidate might next emphasize that a civilized health program for our society must involve three main components: prevention, universal care for the ill, and cost cutting. At a minimum our candidate might argue that we must have:

• Improved preventive medicine, including increased public education about health-care risks, a campaign around diet, and provision for community centers for exercise and public health education.
• Universal health care for all, including a single-payer system with the government providing comprehensive coverage for all citizens.
• Reassessment of training programs for doctors and nurses to expand the number of qualified health workers and to better utilize the talents of those already trained.
• Civilian review over drug company policies and the medical impact of all institutions in society—for example, the health effects of work conditions and product choices.

Our candidate might point out that a single-payer system would save what, approximately, I don’t know, $450 billion a year on billing, collection, bureaucracy, and curtailing useless procedures. She might advocate allotting many billions more than now to preventive medicine as well as treatment. She might call for  limits on the incomes of overly wealthy health professionals and especially on the profits that pharmaceutical and other medical companies can reap. For additional funding and excellent incentive effects she might seek punitive taxes on unhealthful products such as cigarettes, alcohol, and unsafe automobiles, etc.

The overall guideline for a progressive health program she might proclaim, is that illness should be drastically reduced, the quality and availability of health care should be profoundly raised, and if there are any costs beyond single payer savings they should be paid by those who have gotten rich at other peoples’ expense. Simple enough.

Ecology Election Program

Next on this all too brief survey, to hurdle the progressive bar, our candidate might establish a department of ecological balance to develop a list of necessary clean-up steps, as well as a forward-looking policy to preserve the ecology. Beyond this, our candidate might argue that clean-up funds should come from a reparations tax on current polluters and prior beneficiaries of unclean industrial operations.

The critical innovation in our candidate’s approach to ecological sanity, however, might be to open a national public debate about the relation between our basic economic and social institutions and the environment. For example, our candidate might begin the process debate by clarifying that we need our institutions to take account of ecological costs and benefits so that we must experiment with non-market approaches to allocation rather than only trying to police the inevitable ecological ill-effects that markets inexorably foster.

But, lest anyone mistake our current trajectory, our progressive candidate might also immediately promise to speedily curtail and then terminate fossil fuel use, to vastly expand renewable energy offerings, and to drastically cut useless, pointless, counter productive, and all too deadly production of avoidable waste, insane luxuries, excessive individual over collective consumption, and of course our heinous killing machines all while providing for the well being and re-training or the well-earned lucrative retirement of all employees in terminated industries—and all while investing in needed machinery of change.

Okay, our candidate’s briefly summarized possible proposals are of course only one possible seriously progressive formulation, but before closing out this foray into getting beyond believing the end is upon us, there is another step. Yes, outline possible worthy social change isn’t a pile of short Tweets. Still more words needed.

Suppose someone who managed to get into the presidential sweepstakes decided to run on a program like that briefly outlined above, with compelling examples and an additional focus on many issues otherwise ignored or merely manipulated by other candidates, such as race, gender, and political reform. It is not particularly hard to imagine such a candidate having an excellent program and developing a good delivery to explain it. But as things now stand, I would bet that virtually everyone who has stuck on board long enough to be still reading this—what, maybe ten of you—would respond that the progressive campaign would nonetheless be a travesty. Even with a supportive popular movement, for want of money and honest media there would be little possibility of clarifying to a national audience what our candidate’s stands were and especially what worthy implications they would have, much less why they are structurally necessary and possible.

In addition to an evolving and highly conscious movement, therefore, without which nothing is possible, two further conditions are prerequisite to a really, truly, profoundly successful use of presidential electoral politics for consciousness raising, movement building, and actually winning power.

First, we must have our own un-compromised independent means of fundraising to finance such a campaign. I would guess this would mean at least ten million people each willing to give our candidate’s campaign $10 or more a month through a well-established, inexpensive fund-raising system.

And second, we must have our own means of communication to repeatedly and effectively convey detailed information, vision, and analysis to a nationwide audience. I would guess this would mean at least a network of effective, non censorable, decentralized, well funded text, audio, and video venues that span the country and not only welcome progressive content, but function financially and editorially independent of advertising and large wealthy donors who attach strings, and structurally embody the values they advocate.

Some people believe that the way to get more out of presidential and other elections is to advocate campaign reform. I agree that that is critical, but I also think that as we develop a powerful grassroots movement with sufficient support to raise money and with sufficient alternative outlets to reach tens of millions of readers, listeners, and viewers across the nation, further campaign reform will take care of itself, though of course anything we can win earlier, will be a boon as well. 

If you are still reading this, even in an upside-down society where the above progressive candidate is not yet running but is still a young child, or perhaps in high school, or perhaps just left a pro-Palestine campus encampment to return home to organize there too, or, best case, is already in Congress outraged at our election choices and gathering experience for her progressive future, the incredibly sad truth is that even debacle elections sometimes matter massively. And, sad as that is, and as hard as it is to try to make that point about this coming election, one thing did not change last night. Trump must lose. There are many reasons why, but not least so that our future progressive candidate gets a shot, dare I hope for it, if not now then in four years. Change is gonna come, but a necessary first step, insane and nauseating as it may be to have to acknowledge and act on, is that Trump has gotta lose.

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