I spoke last time regarding the transformation of formerly moderate Democratic Presidents into liberal and progressive powerhouses, citing that both came to be as the result of a crisis. Even the first great wave of American Progressives were spurred on by crisis, as when Teddy Roosevelt demanded an investigation into the meatpacking industry after reading Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, even after denouncing Sinclair as a "crackpot" for his Socialist views.
By its very structure, American democracy is a slow-moving, deliberative body that is usually built for incremental change. However, as I have also spoken of before, denying a large part of the population their rightly-earned prosperity through what can only be described as a New Gilded Age will only put more and more strain on gradualism and incrementalism until the entire dam bursts in a flood of Progressive ideas. The long strain of multiple labor crises, along with numerous financial crises in 1873, 1893, 1896, 1907, and others lead to the end of the original Gilded Age with the initial successes of American Progressivism. A few years later came the most explosive consequence of profits-before-people in the Great Depression, which lead to Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, which all but culminated his cousin Teddy's Bull Moose Platforkm of 1912 in terms of Progressive achievements. For the Progressive gains of the 1960s, the horrific assassination of President Kennedy made Lyndon Johnson, once considered the conservative of the two, to champion Kennedy's Progressive ideas that lead to Medicare, the War on Poverty, and the programs of the Great Society. It seems that, for all of the destruction and obstruction that comes from right-wing ideology, it still takes something big to burst the dam for Progressivism.
The cynics in the audience are now going to cluck their tongues and suggest I am advocating for catastrophe or crisis to fit my own desires with a newly-inaugurated President Clinton. To those people I only say: the crisis is already here. I am the Crisis. You are the Crisis. We are the Crisis. We can't afford a decent life, drug abuse is rampant, our food isn't fit to eat, our country wages unlawful war in our name, the climate is changing, mental health issues are boiling over into our streets, our schools are suffering, our bridges are crumbling... yes, friends... the crisis is already here. It is now up to us to let them know it.
This is more than a liberal or conservative issue, but Progressives are the ones who know the way out. We've studied the History and we've seen this movie before, and we want to change the ending before it's a tragedy instead of a triumph. We are running out of time to bring our crises to the White House, the Supreme Court, and to Capitol Hill. It is time now for the great majority of Americans, suffering under a broken system, to make their voices heard so loud that even insulated with donor money and the upper-class-bubble, they can no longer pretend they can't hear us. We are in crisis, and they need to know.
Get up and shout. Make a noise. Let them know we are still here, and we are struggling. If we don't do this now, we will only be walking directly into the next great catastrophe with full knowledge of how to prevent it. We could very well be at a tipping point in this election, and those we choose to put in office need to make big, bold changes and they need to make them now. We are in crisis, and we need them to know it. If not, we may very well end up celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Great Depression by landing slap-bang into the middle of a new one.
At Your Service,
Doremus Jessup
