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The Plot Against America

I've had a number of discussions with friends about government in the last year or so. They'll claim that government doesn't work and that no government is ever any good. Having some ancom leanings of my own, I can understand and sympathize with that point of view. What my friends don't understand is that the US government isn't working because it has been deliberately sabotaged for decades. I've had to make the case a few times, so it is worth putting down in writing.

A few years back, I read an alternate history novel, The Plot against America. I'm not going to discuss the novel here, but I'm stealing the title for this post, because it is such an apt description of our current condition in the US.

In the 1930s under FDR, the US government started to actually serve the people, rather than just serving business interests. It wasn't perfect. Nothing ever is, but the New Deal was a giant step forward.

It's worth a digression here. FDR actually saved American capitalism. We were ripe for a Socialist revolution in the thirties. I've read that there were even militias of farmers drilling for a Communist revolution out on the prairies. Today, some of the descendants of those farmers are likely drilling for a Fascist takeover. How times have changed! FDR, through his reforms, breathed some new life into the zombie of US capitalism.

The capitalists did not thank him for it. In fact, they even plotted to overthrow him. This was the "business plot", wherein business leaders attempted to enlist General Smedley Buttler to lead an army to oust the president. Thankfully, that first plot failed.

The effort to undo the reforms of the New Deal was in full swing after Roosevelt's death in 1945. But for a few decades, government was viewed as the solution by most folks, not the problem. This was the era between 1945 and 1980 or so. A lot of things were terrible during that era. Let's not wax nostalgic about it, like conservatives do. My point is that on balance, things were improving, often with the help of government.

In 1980, the US elected Ronald Reagan, a mediocre B-movie actor best known for snitching on fellow actors to HUAC and hosting some Western TV series called Death Valley Days. Death Valley Days is probably a good description of this turd's reign, along with much that followed. With the election of Reagan, the unraveling of the New Deal reforms began in earnest, and it has continued henceforth under all subsequent administrations, both Republican and Democratic.

In fact, two notable blows against the New Deal were struck during the administration of Bill Clinton, beloved of the neoliberal intelligentsia. Clinton eliminated AFDC, thereby increasing the suffering of poor families led by single mothers. My own mother was on AFDC for a year or two after I was born, and it was literally the hand up that she needed. Clinton also signed into law the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which separated investment and commercial banking. This was one of the causes of the 2008 financial collapse. Clinton was most definitely Wall Street's creature.

The decline has continued a-pace. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the weakening of government went hand-in-hand with the strengthening of the national security state. Here we are in 2023, and most Americans despise their government without realizing that it was deliberately sabotaged.

The saboteurs even told us what their end game was. Here's Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform, and a co-author of the 1994 Contract with America:

I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.

That quote summarizes their intent in two short sentences.

In conclusion, government can work for the people, and we should make that happen again, fast.