by Kevin Ellis
It’s Earth Day. Trump’s criminal trial has begun and the US Congress just approved $95 billion in foreign aid for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, and all manner of bank accounts outside the US. On a flight to DC from Chicago, that does not sit well with my seatmate in 34E – who is also my son.
My son is a school counselor in Washington, DC. He has a Master’s degree in social work and lives in the kind of neighborhood that is popping up all over the country – rapidly gentrified with housing that is unaffordable for most. He spends his workdays counseling young kids.
And by counseling, I don’t mean advising kids on college or how to fill out a student loan form. Jackson and his colleagues deal with kids in the midst of a massive mental health crisis, income inequality, and oftentimes despair.
This crisis is a part of Washington DC, a modern city in a market economy that rewards success and wealth creation, efficiency, and profit. Web firms, artificial intelligence, high-tech, lobbying, law firms, and defense contracting do very well there because the system is designed to ensure their success.
But for the teachers, counselors, and so many others, success comes not because of the system but despite it. People are trying to make the system work for their schools and their families but just a few blocks from Congress and the White House, families are sleeping in their cars and going hungry at night. They are on the edge every day. And the teachers and counselors pay a steep price of their own emotional, mental, and physical health.
There is a scene in my favorite TV show, The West Wing, where the White House communications director sits at a bar next to a salesman on the road. They fall into a conversation about why the system can’t make things just a little easier. The guy doesn’t want a handout. But he just wants it to be easier to send his daughter to college.
That’s what we all want.
It is this system atop which Joe Biden presides. For generations, it was enough for Democrats to use this system to advance small incremental change – elect good Supreme Court justices, modestly advance health insurance, protect Head Start and NATO, provide a low-income tax credit to the poor, and foreign aid to those whom John F. Kennedy called “those yearning to break free.’’
Ever since World War II this has been enough. Personally, it was enough for me. My wife and I bought our first house in Nashville, TN in the mid-80s for $28,000. We got a federally-backed mortgage from the Farmers Home Administration. The city gave us a $15,000 grant for a new roof. That home gave us the start we needed on my $36,000-a-year salary. From there we traded up, always up.
In the booming economy, we sold our house in 1987 for $108,000. Today it would be listed at $1.1 million. That house cannot be bought and lived in by a teacher, firefighter, police officer, or social worker. That is a huge change that raises tough questions about the society and economy we have built.
And I hear how the next generation feels about those changes from seat 34E.
And it is not good for Joe Biden.
“Why are we giving part of $95 billion to Israel when they are killing and starving innocent Palestinians?”
“Why don’t we invest the Ukraine money in our public schools that are falling apart?’’
“Do you know how many young people in mental health crisis could be helped with that money?’’
And then, of course, there is the always-looming issue of Trump.
“Why are they prosecuting Trump for sex with a porn star?”
I tell my son that the city of New York is prosecuting Trump – to use the prosecutors’ words – because he tried to influence an election by paying off the porn star to keep their tryst a secret.
“Really,’’ he asks, incredulous. “Isn’t that what politicians do all the time, keep the bad stuff from coming out?’’
I have a hard time disagreeing. I mumble something about signatures on business forms, that lying is wrong – blah blah, blah.
The truth is, Trump is just a cancerous symptom of the system. He embodies the worst of a market economy that encourages his kind of “Me at the expense of others” behavior. Cheat on your wife and pay off the porn star? Sure. Don’t pay your fair share of taxes for 30 years? That makes me smart. Make fun of war heroes like John McCain for being captured. I’m hilarious. Sexually assault a woman in Bloomingdales and spend your life treating women as property. Why not? It is all part of a system that we built to maximize wealth and profit. And we have done a really good job.
My son and thousands like him live every day with the result. He works at the end of a capitalist funnel that sends all our country’s ugly stuff – the externalities – to him and his colleagues. And they are overwhelmed, underpaid, and gasping for air.
I continue to mumble about how people do care. Lena Khan at the Federal Trade Commission is trying to police the big tech companies. Biden is pressuring Israel not to kill so many people. We need to stop Russia or else Ukraine is just a pit stop on the way to Europe.
“Isn’t that the Vietnam argument?’’ he asks. “It’s the same thing.’’
He is talking about the Domino Theory. The idea was that if the Communists took over Vietnam, they would move on to Los Angeles and we would all be studying Marx. It didn’t happen, of course. Thousands of American boys died for that misunderstanding by the supposed “Best and Brightest’’ minds in American history. And today Vietnam is a capitalist economy and friendly to the US. Who would have thought?
I try to defend again, but I sound like the parents of the kids in the 60s. Or worse. I sound like Joe Biden and the Democrats fiddling around the margins of a system that needs wholesale change.
My son says we are hypocrites about Trump.
“Trump just airs our dirty laundry and we don’t like talking about that side of our system,’’ he says. “We can’t pretend that this isn’t the system we live in. A system where a guy like Donald Trump can be president and be seen as successful. We don’t like Trump because he is acting the way the system incentivizes him to act.’’
And that, right there, is Biden’s election problem. The sentiment coming from 34E is angry and it’s loud. The generation under 40 has lost the thread. They don’t connect personally to the creation of Israel. They don’t think Biden has done enough for them. And they don’t think it’s all that bad if Trump wins the election. Let the system hit rock bottom, they say. Then maybe people will wake up and really push for change.
Sure, in the end, my son will probably vote for Biden. But he is not happy about it. Neither are thousands in his generation who have lost faith in the system and no longer care about defending the institutions of democracy.
I am more of a “support Biden to stop Trump’’ guy. But I find it harder and harder to refute what my son is saying. The American system, built to maximize profit, has left so many behind. And the scars are there every day for the people left to pick up the pieces from the wealth we created.
And a tax credit here and a student loan forgiveness there won’t be enough to bring this generation of Americans back to Joe Biden. And into that void walks a guy who has been married three times, assaults women, encourages an insurrection, and said his top general should be executed.
In a cafe before our flight, a guy from Costa Rica told me: “You folks better fix things in the US. You are the envy of the world. The leader. Without you, it all goes to Hell.’’
That leader of the world stuff depends on the next generation having some faith in democracy, some hope that the system serves people instead of profiting off them. I grew up thinking all that good stuff.
This next generation? Not so much.
The author publishes the “Conflict of Interest” blog, where this post appeared on May 1. He was a co-founder of Ellis Mills Public Affairs and spent 22 years at KSE Partners, LLC, a leading government affairs and communications firm. He spent 10 years as a newspaper reporter in Nashville, Washington, DC and Burlington, Vermont where he covered politics and environmental issues. As Washington correspondent for The Tennessean in Nashville, he covered presidential campaigns, energy and national security issues. He was a reporter for the late Jack Anderson, a Pulitzer Prize winning columnist who was targeted for assassination by the Nixon administration during the Watergate era. He grew up at the Jersey Shore and lives in Montpelier. He is a former member of the VT Journalism Trust board and is the president of the Board of Directors of Downstreet Housing & Community Development, a non-profit affordable housing organization in central Vermont.
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Categories: Commentary
Wouldn’t have just been easier to say “I’m a idiot”, rather than “I’m a vote-for-Biden-to-stop-Trump” guy”??
Some people heavily invested in the “social service” sector seem to be more interested in perpetuating problems than in solving them…maybe out of concerns for job security. Trump, coming out of the private sector is a problem SOLVER. That’s part of the reason they hate him. They prefer someone like Biden who has been “solving problems” his entire adult life and has NEVER existed in the world of the private sector.
To those who helped install The Biden, the bitter crow is well prepared for your consumption. Don’t say you can’t swallow it because you’ve swallowed more lies and deception than your intellectual, psyop-soaked mind will ever grasp, admit or wrap around. Instead of gaslighting yourself to save face and ego-driven reputation, do something worthy to save the State and the Nation from impending third-world status. Also, mothball all the various flags that signify fraud and elitist game theory.
Trump is America writ large. A lot of people seems to have a problem with that. Trump works for America, for Americans.
Dear Kevin,
Your son and everyone else in despair about the kleptocracies in control of our national government CAN fight back this year — vote for Robert Kennedy. He is the only candidate who WILL reign in the Deep State (the narcissistic entertainer Trump said he would, but he never did), and polls show that RFK can win this election. Check out RFK’s campaign website at https://www.kennedy24.com/, and vote for RFK.
The last time a Kennedy tried to reign in the deep state they killed two of them. Then JFK’s son was killed. An RFK administration would be full of the same democrats that are there now. You apparently forgot the corruption that Trump as dealing with as they tried to take him out also and are still trying.
Kevin, please encouage your son. A vote for rfk is -1 for biden and thus a + 1 for Trump.
Then why vote for the dementia ridden career liar? That’s the problem people hate Trump but will vote for Biden because of it, that is idiotic.
Nothing is worse then reading the ranting contradictions of someone suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome. There are other candidates like JFK and Dr. Shiva.
I stopped reading when I got to the Trump derangement syndrome paragraph when the dad expressed to the son that Trump magically does his own business books and changed the course of an election. Notice the son said, “but they all do it”. Of course, no mention of the congressional hush money fund used to pay off lawmaker’s sexual misdeeds. Democrats are such hollow people with huge egos and of course blind to their own misgivings and flat out lies to protect their fantasies.
pedojoehasgottogo//// no more smelling little girls////
“Why are they prosecuting Trump for having sex with a pornstar?” “They’re not son, stop getting your news from Tucker Carlson and social media.”
Agreed. Biden engaged in sexual activity in the shower with his underaged daughter & he wasn’t prosecuted. Go figure, right??
To Chris,
Apparently, you missed the part in the testimony where the lawyer for Stormy was exposed as a sleazy extortion lawyer and has had numerous celebrities squeezed for hush money payments. He also stated under oath that she never claimed they had a relationship and just assumed it was a sexual encounter. She previously signed a letter stating that it never happened. Of course, it’s beyond the imagination of liberals to believe anything that interferes with their collective hatred of DJT or that wealthy people are scammed all the time by lawyers like the one the stand. Maybe, get up to date before showing how little you know.
Here’s some detail for Chris and Ellis concerning their TDS. Actual testimony and facts about the extortion of Trump and other celebrities. NY Prosecuting Trump for Being Extorted
By John Cleer
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/05/ny_suing_trump_for_being_extorted.html
VIP, you came to chirp at me about the lack of integrity of lawyers, pornstars and a Trump? Are you really that naive? I’m not a liberal and I don’t have DTJ, I find his antics amusing other than the Jan 6 and selling nuclear secrets to the Saudis. I love that DJT makes people like you feel like winners despite reality. Do me a favor and go back to your basement and get back to me when you actually have something interesting or original to say.
If you’re so confident in this case, lets talk and I’ll bet you $500 he’s found guilty.
Amerikans willing to live in Communism & despoil the entire US Constitution all because they despise Trump based upon disinformation and omissions from the mainstream media.
I had to laugh when he said his favorite show was the West Wing. When I got to the Trump derangement section I stopped reading the article.
Kevin,
Your son wasted hundreds of thousand of dollars on his “education”. The passive voice used in describing the “helping the downtrodden” is a giveaway. Who suffers from “income inequality”? Maybe the middle class taxpayers who have to fund your son’s “job”
I have so many questions for you. Do you believe Trump won in 2016? Do you think it was Russian interference?
Why would Trump be prosecuted for questioning the validity of the 2020 election when your side did the same thing again and again in every election since 2000?
It obvious you don’t approve of Trump as you expect high moral standards for elected politicians. Did you ever question the morality of the Clinton’s? What about Biden?
Your “Trump acts according to system incentives” so the system “needs to change” is correct but not in the way you think. Your son is a case in point. His future career depends on taxpayer funding. It will always depend on that. What if the system changes and the rewards go to plumbers, electricians and factory machinists. Imagine the horror!!
My faith in humanity is slowly being restored by the wise people replying here. Thank you.
Chris: I’ll bet you way more than a measly 500 bucks he’s found guilty – after all, this is nothing less than textbook lawfare for those who know history insofar as persecuting, prosecuting, arresting, and jailing political opponents the world over since history began. It was all “executed” upon Jesus Himself, a historical figure who lived over 2,000 years ago.
It’s all but meaningless & an effort in sheer futility, which is why President Trump is leading in the polls. Kangaroo courts in banana republics either self-destruct or end up murdering millions, including but not limited to the pawns and the suckers who licked the jack boots of the tyrants they believed would elevate them into position of political prominence. Yeah. Sure.
$1,000? My money doesn’t come out of a conservatory either, I actually had to earn it.
Maybe Lina Khan at the Federal Trade Commission is a free thinking and autonomous political appointee. Could there be one? More?
Although I am a never-Trumper, Trump bashing is offensive. I almost stopped reading there. I was gonna vote for John McClaughry once in 1992, until he called Howard Dean “just another liberal democrat”. Love and tolerance of others is essential.
Re: “Why don’t we invest the Ukraine money in our public schools that are falling apart?’’
Great analogy. A difference with little distinction.
Why are personal choices always redirected into institutional selections? Why not invest directly in parents and their children, letting them choose the investment they believe is best for them from an educational free market?
This is the crux of our current circumstance. While autocrats, paid to make decisions on our behalf, are failing miserably, when challenged they always default to the argument that circumstances would be even worse if individuals were left to their own devices.
“Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.”
― Milton Friedman