Comments
ACCORDING TO LIZ - The challenge of respecting all viewpoints – from the crazy liberal to the profoundly conservative – underpins the First Amendment right ensuring everyone’s opinions can flourish so long as they don’t incite harm against others.
As the world watched that premise has been tested again and again by the events of January 6, 2021, and the repercussions since.
Beyond the manipulations of the mighty, exists a disconnect in how ordinary criminals are dealt with by the American system of (in)justice.
Those we elect need to ensure all constituents receive exemplary social services, so they don’t have to turn to a life of crime. And flip the consequences from punishment to security, justice, and rehabilitation, not retribution and the breeding of more generations of criminals.
The money saved – in a country with four percent of the world’s population and twenty-five percent of incarcerated individuals – would generate a tremendous boost to the economy.
Our leaders need to prioritize issues that matter – economy, healthcare, education, climate change – leaving family values issues to families.
Frame justice in ways to protect the vulnerable and minorities without imposing potentially antithetical beliefs on anyone. Emphasize pro-family, pro-quality of life, pro-future, pro-economic values on the choice to have and raise a child… or not.
Discover the sweet spot in the balance of immigration and tariffs, in helping other nations and interference in their policies.
Bring out the good in others… and there is always good if you look deep enough. And, from there, use respect and empathy to allow the good to flourish, pushing out the bad.
If you look too hard at the bad, that’s all one sees and such a focus will allow it to fester and destroy what is the most beneficial in our lives.
Replace ignorance and fear with acceptance and education so people learn to no longer fear the unknown.
Find a better way to press forward on the economy, social issues and the judiciary. Constantly criticizing monopolies, selfish behaviors and Supreme Court abuses will only put them in the limelight.
Instead, promote a positive patriotism in the vein of JFK’s best social endeavors.
Bottle the compassion and altruism of FireAid and, yes, its joy in communities brought together by the terrible fires and surviving, spirit intact, with hope and commitment for the future.
Embrace a positive populism promoting the image of a greater America, one that ensures virtuous conduct towards all its citizens, a patriotic undertaking that is inclusive and uplifting, one that has moved beyond divisiveness and shaming. And expand it to the whole world.
How can messages be reframed so that they meet and exceed expectations?
By making the war on climate change a glorious expansion of patriotism.
By making “Buy American” appeals not a hit to one’s pocketbook but the investment in workers’ own wages and a repeal of big business and Wall Street hollowing out the country’s manufacturing base and infrastructure.
Universal healthcare should be… universal because it benefits everyone – here and around the world. No more threats of HIV or Ebola or Covid on steroids crossing our borders.
For that reason alone, healthcare should never be monetized and made inaccessible financially for those who need it most. Instead, the transition to American Medicare-For-All should become part of the pathway towards a vast leap forward in quality of life for everyone.
We the people have great values; it’s many of our leaders, bought and paid for by outside interests, that have adopted ones to advance their sponsors’ rapaciousness, ones that are too often adversarial to our own.
Not only should the United States stop pretending to be the world’s policeman, advancing American armaments sales to anti-democratic strongmen and entrenching the now-global military-industrial complex, but it must slam on reverse, returning us all to a kinder, gentler ethos and become the prevailing force for good.
Focus our energy and repurpose Pentagon funding to feed the hungry, care for others, first here at home and then globally, winning the hearts and minds of those who are currently our sworn enemies.
Doesn’t everyone want to live in a country we can be proud of and love? One that’s not bitter and divided?
Don’t we all want something better? To be better? To embrace the joy ties that binds families and friends, neighbors and those who live in other countries together?
Can’t we find the compassion to care for our elderly neighbors and others down on their luck?
Shouldn’t everyone embrace the importance of service, the satisfaction of giving back to the neighborhoods in which we grew up – hometowns, college communities, work venues? To leave our worlds a little better when we leave them than when we arrived?
Couldn’t everyone strive to embrace the better angels of their natures and work together to improve… everything?
Fight for the hopeful, find and entrench security and justice for all, not on a one-time limited basis but for everybody for all time?
To work together, cry together, laugh together, look out for one another.
Leaving our children a heritage of which they can be truly proud and to which they can add – more equality, more freedoms, a healthier planet – as they pass the positive along to their children and children’s children?
If every American could strive to be the next Jimmy Carter who based his life in believing in the good of all people to love their neighbors as themselves, who left a legacy in the millions of lives he touched, in all the good he had done, the world could be – would be – a better place.
(Liz Amsden moved from LA to Vermont and is a regular contributor to CityWatch on issues that she is passionate about. She can be reached at [email protected].)
