One of the most persistent issues throughout human history is how to deal with what seems an unchanging given: the rich become richer while the poor become poorer. Neither democratic capitalism nor autocratic communism nor any other system has successfully solved this dilemma. The poor we seem to always have amongst us.*
As we head for November elections here in the USA, most of my mail (including email) appears to suggest that if I don’t donate for my candidates, the others have amassed a fortune and will surely win. Usually this means that whichever side(s) can pay for the best advertising is sure to win. In some ways, November 2024 is different.
Many millions of dollars collected by the Republicans will be spent on legal fees to defend a candidate who has been convicted of 34 felonies-- with more on the way. Republicans have more millionaire donors than the Democrats, but how can money have more power than the facts in a serious election. The fact of the matter is that facts do not matter so much as many other factors. Organized and energized people are more effective than organized money. As one reporter expressed last December around Christmas: A sanity clause in a new election law will be needed well before November 2024! One protestor recently carried a sign: “For the many—NOT for the money!
Another factor is that facts and truth are often uncertain, and we do have confusion sometimes in the English language. Both Republicans and Democrats confirm that the 2020 elections were ‘incredible.’ For many Republicans, this means that they were not believable—for democrats ‘incredible’ means an amazing victory for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
The words victory and victim share an ancient linguistic root.** Is this due to how we interpret ‘facts’ differently? Our 2020 elections were won by Biden according to our system of laws—Democrats were the victors, but many Republicans claimed they were the victors, but they became victims of a faulty election.
There is some similarity here to the ancient Chinese philosophy of “Yin and Yang”—that there is a dichotomy in life and nature but while they are opposites, they are interconnected and are essential for a dynamic system in which the whole is greater than the parts, and the parts are key for the cohesion of the whole.***
Let us hope that by December 2024, we will focus on the post-election ‘cohesion of the whole.’
*The Bible (Hebrew and Christian scriptures) has multiple direct and indirect statements about the poor, usually calling on the wealthy to acknowledge their obligation to help.
**Proto-Indo-European, the root is weik(to fight, conquer).
***Thanks to Wikipedia for their excellent article on Yin and Yang. The “wiki” prefix to Wikipedia is borrowed from the indigenous Hawaiian word for ‘quick’—not from ‘weik’ in the second footnote above.