I did an art giveaway for the holidays – 33 paintings and drawings out the door. Nice. Someone had commented about one of them – “I don’t even like orange, but I like this!” I thought she would ask for it – when she didn’t I sent her a message. “I’d really like to have it,” she replied, “but I’m afraid to ask for it.” So I sent it to her.
“I’m afraid to ask for it.”
What if you weren’t?
“Oh, I couldn’t.”
What if you could?
Where do we get that from? What would be so bad about asking for it? What if we could?
I hear the Republicans rail against anything that might… you know, be something that would be um, nice to have…. I watch them smack the label “socialism” on things with a triumphant smirk, like, “There! That settles it! Look at me — I just won! I’m so good! None of that Commie bullshit around here! No lazy handout welfare queen get a job food stamps crap on my carpet!”
What’s with that? Would it really be all that bad to have stuff? I mean stuff like…
Free universal healthcare. Wow. What if the first thing that comes to mind when you think maybe you should get that checked out isn’t, “What’s that going to cost? Will insurance will cover it? Have I met my deductible yet?” What if you could just, you know, just kind of go get it checked out? How bad could that be?
Free education. Omigod the sky is falling! No, but seriously… what if you could get the best education in the world and didn’t have to be in debt forever and never be able to make the monthly payments on it for the rest of your life? What if you could get the degree for the job you want, and if you change your mind or something else redirects your life at some point you could go back to school and do something different? You know, make higher education free and lifetime education. And how about we cancel all existing student debt while we’re at it?
Would any of that really be all that bad?
What’s with us, in this country? We want everything to be up to us. Every individual better be rugged. Everything weget better be something we by God earned.Like it’s not good enough to just be a citizen of These United States.You gottta be able to stand on your own. Government is evil, remember?
Okay, so you’re too proud for a handout – could you live with maybe just some economic equality? A playing field that’s actually level? A return of the notion of upward mobility? The possibility of a better life?
What would be so wrong with that?
Minimum wage of $15. Fifteen dollars!!! That means somebody working full time could actually make enough to about get up to the national poverty standard. Whoop-dee-doo! The people having problems with fifteen stinking bucks an hour have expense accounts that shell out more than that much to buy a lobbyist a drink.
And since we’re talking about wages, how about the ability to make enough so that you’re not always just barely getting by, living paycheck to paycheck, and you could actually make enough to put something in savings now and then or even – gasp!! – take a vacation more than once in a lifetime?
And speaking of vacations, what’s with the national must-have of a week off after you’ve been there a year? And then you won’t take it anyway, because we’re all too busy realizing our manifest destiny.
Don’t tell me we can’t afford it. I learned to add and subtract in grade school. So did you. It’s not that hard.
I mean, does the USA really need to spend more on defense than China, India, Russia, Saudi Arabia, France, Germany, the U.K., and Japan… combined?[1] We spend three times more than China and ten times more than our other closest “competitor.” How safe do we need to be? And are we, actually? What about some of that money to, let’s say hire back the medical personnel who lost their jobs during a pandemic? Or to pay teachers a living wage?
And really, how much of a multi-billionaire does anyone really need to be? And what about those mega-corporations who have more invested in a square inch of world headquarters than you and I and all our friends and families will ever see in our combined lifetimes? And what if we don’t hero-worship microwave high-tech entrepreneurs, and sponsor corporate stock buy-backs that make the rich richer?
Do you suppose it might be okay to ask some of those folks to contribute?
Is there any chance hyper-competitive, privatize-everything, monetize-your-life, gig-economy-side-hustle, zero-sum capitalism could survive the stress?
Just asking….
And now that we’re getting warmed up our afraid to ask list, how about
- Affordable housing?
- Streets, roads, bridges, and ports that don’t look like a lot of that war glorification money got spent on target practice?
- A really cool public transportations system that’s safe, clean, and ridiculously on time. What if we even had trains – like those crazy fast ones that run on air or magnets or whatever?
- And how about really nice and well-maintained public toilets?
Okay, okay… we probably reached the stage of total delusion. But since we’re there, how about:
- An end of extreme nationalism
- The USA’s embrace of international law and accountability
- A worldwide climate change strategy
- Clean oceans
- A renewed commitment to parks, public lands, and open spaces
- Free universal internet
- Reparations for slavery
- Reparations to native Americans
- And end to misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia
- Gender identity acceptance and kindness
- Immigrants and refugees welcomed and embraced
Let’s just go for the whole stack…
- A return of public discourse based on intelligence, reason, science, truthfulness, ethics…
- And how about an end to reality TV and instead we have something like style and taste and decency and…
Okay dreamer boy, sit down before you hurt yourself.
Sigh.
What if all these things were part of what it means to “establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity”?[2]
What country is this country, anyway?
What if the “public good” wasn’t a bad word? (Okay, two words….)
What if everything that would be nice to have wasn’t unAmerican and a sign of bad moral character and general wimpyness?
What if everything that would be nice to have wasn’t… wait for it… socialism?
What if we weren’t afraid to ask for it?
What if we could?
[2] Preamble to the Constitution of the United States of America
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