While serving as U. S ambassador to the United Nations Adlai Stevenson said global politics made him yearn for the simple brutalities of American politics. Today both are on display in the US/Saudi Arabian war against Yemen and in political tactics in North Carolina, Wisconsin and Michigan. State Republicans leaders seek to make changes during lame duck sessions that strip newly elected governors of many of their constitutional powers. But the Democrats are not virgins. They have a long track record of doing business with the Saudis who have been executing dissidents for decades.
Which raises the question of how the forty newly elected democrats-the Blue Wave- should prepare for their journey into the lions mouth. Growing disillusion abounds not only because of the age of Trump but because modern realities suggest that the present Constitution needs substantial amendment. The question is whether that can happen.
Bloomberg News reported last August 18th that the ten most valuable corporate stakeholders who've not yet gone public to offer their shares in the open market (e.g. Elon Musk at SpaceX, Brian Chesly at Airbnb, Ben Silberman at Pinterest) have a value of $60 billion. Silicon Valley's huge wealth concentration has the weird configuration of a flashy world where no one earning less than $200,000 a year can own a home.
French economist Thomas Piketty and UC Berkeley economists Immanuel Saez and Gabriel Zuchman report
"the average pretax earnings of an American in the bottom 50 percent by income was $16,197 in 2014, a nearly invisible 2.6 percent gain over 40 years. Over the same period, the top 10 percent of Americans saw their pretax incomes grow by 231 percent."
It's similarly true elsewhere and the reason Paris has been set on fire.
It's old news, but newly elected members of Congress will find themselves morally compromised even before they can get off the plane by a Pentagon that in 2017 placed total contracts worth $299 billion scattered throughout every congressional district in the country. The necessary science for the Blue Wave will be to understand who has what dog in which policy debate in their own congressional district and to estimate how much citizen support they can get if local congregations want to keep faith and politics separate.
This is without mentioning the U. S. pharmaceutical industry with its thousands of lobbyists in DC and U. S. sales in 2016 of $333 billion [source: International Trade Administration] that keep drug prices too high for average citizens. Or that that U. S. health care spending in 2016 was $3.3 Trillion [U .S. government estimate] creating unequal access to health care for millions of citizens.
Trump is only the symbol of big money power that has produced Trifecta state governments--one party control of both legislatures and the govenorship--with the ability to pack the courts that control gerrymandering for one party's advantage in the next election. In many states such control enables national government to appoint a Chief Justice, John Roberts, whose Supreme Court decision, Citizen United, turned free speech into a form of speech bought and paid for by the super wealthy, such as the Koch Brothers.
This situation requires a studious Congress that will need constant refueling to digest and begin a new democratic construction in ideas and practice; one that can enable Constitutional amendment that ends Citizen United among other matters. It's an exciting time but it won't happen if faith communities fail to supply civic life with a fresh supply of moral fuel.
The Blue Wave badly needs studious churches, synagogues and mosques that move away from "Sunday school" modes that recite, remember, and sentimentalize but stop short of anything that is "political." The connection between faith and ethics needs to be made clear from the roots of each diverse faith tradition. Since this is uniquely "religious America," the future of the Republic probably hangs on whether the religious traditions of this country connect our spirits, our life commitments to mercy, justice and the truth. Right now the truth is that religious America permits its government to kill children in Yemen by the thousands.
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