We human beings need guides to assess behavior; some form of the Golden Rule is necessary if we are to lead moral lives. This is how we should judge our actions as we move along the path of a humane life. Masters of self-deception, we need criteria to assess whether we are really moving forward. Are we following the Golden Rule or a leaden one covered with dross? In Buddhism there are principles by which we can judge our negative behaviors as well as those that indicate that we are on the right path. Those that assess the degree of our backtracking are the three kleshas, or three poisons, greed, hate, and delusion. They permeate and complicate the life of virtually everyone.
Do they ever complicate political life! Buddhism demands that we begin with ourselves as we simultaneously strive to improve society. This article, however, is not about individual introspection.
The old adage that political power corrupts has become a cliche because it is so true. Another adage is just as true: citizens get the government they deserve. Both of these maxims help us understand the current nadir of political life in America. Powerful special interests have turned many current politicians into "mouth heroes"--they say things many voters want to hear, but their hearts lie elsewhere. Corrupt politicians are one matter; a more important question, however, is why do representatives who only represent a minority get elected? Good government demands educated citizens; the average political sophistication in America is quite low. Education is undervalued and underfunded; entertainments keep us bemused; That toxic combination didn't work out well for Rome, and it's not working out well for us.
Is the current level of greed, hate, and delusion in today's political arena unprecedented ? It definitely feels that way. It is the subject of this essay.
Greed
Trump is the president of his base, not the president of the nation as a whole. His base, however, is so ill-informed that they imagine that he is for the little guy while the Republicans, with his support, continue to make inequality worse.
There is perhaps no better example of this than the so=called Tax Cuts and Jobs Act; a reconciliation of both House and Senate versions will surely pass and be signed into law by Trump, most likely by the end of the year. The new tax structure is without a doubt a net transfer from the poor and middle class to the wealthy, especially to the very wealthy. The irresponsibility of this bill is staggering; since the mid-seventies wages have been stagnant, while the proportion of national income received by the top 1% has doubled form 10% to 20%.
A major blot on the Republican Party is that it only represents the rich. The vast majority of Americans are considered "other"--in much the same way that nationalists deem foreigners to be categorically different from themselves. This attitude has been clearly expressed by the Republican senator Chuck Grassley who recently said, in regard to the tax bill, that it is a good thing that the rich are given the breaks because they are responsible; the rest, if they get more money, will spend it on "booze, women and drugs."
This is not the place for a detailed analysis of the tax bill, but I will provide a brief list of how this inequality engine will chug along from poor neighborhoods to the secluded mansions of the rich. Cutting the corporate tax, eliminating the federal inheritance tax, reducing the tax on pass-through income, etc. will benefit the wealthy and increase the burden on nearly everyone else; the elimination of the mandate for the Affordable Care Act will increase the number of those without health insurance by thirteen million, resulting in 42 million people without heath insurance--Criminal! Elimination of the income tax deductions of state and local taxes, which will hit blue states especially hard, will almost surely result in program cuts that benefit the poor.
What is perhaps most distressing is that the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the proposed tax legislation will balloon the deficit by 1.3 trillion dollars by the end of the next decade. Once the Republicans, (who now apparently now have no desire to lower the deficit), get their tax bill, they will metamorphose from deficit doves into deficit hawks. Their aim is to "starve the beast" of government in order to cut popular and progressive programs such as Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare.
Greed, Greed, Greed!
I will end this section with an analogy. I am a retired pediatrician. One day, a young man came into my office and presented with weight loss, increased hunger, and increased urination, all clinical signs of diabetes. I performed a blood sugar level in the office; the diagnosis was confirmed. I thereupon had him admitted to a hospital for diabetic education and to determine the proper insulin dosage, since he was now insulin-dependent. He did well.
Let us suppose that his high sugar level was analogous to the high income inequality in the United States. What if I hadn't sent him to the hospital and, instead, told his mother that from now on he would have to have candy and lollipops for breakfast, cotton candy for lunch, and cake and soda for dinner? The patient, already ill, would have become much worse. The Republican tax bill is cotton candy for the poor. Let hard candies dissolve in unfortunate mouths while their eyes stare into a fine restaurant where the rich feast on Peking Duck--According to the Grassleys and the Hatches of the world, this is how it should be.
Greed, Greed, Greed!
2. Hate
Trump is an explicit racist, many Republicans are implicit racists; no doubt about that. I will provide only a few examples of Trump's racism, there are far too many to include here.
In 2015, before he was elected, Trump tweeted the following racist tweet.
This was Trump's Willie Horton moment. It is wildly inaccurate as well. For instance, whites killed by blacks account for 15% of murdered whites, not 81%. The chart makes no correction for class and education level. It almost sinks to the level of anti-Semitic diatribes during the Nazi era. Disgusting.
Another example: before he was elected, Trump published a full-page ad in the Daily News, claiming that the five people of color, (four blacks and one Hispanic), accused of a brutal attack on a jogger in Central Park in 1989 should be "made to suffer." He referred to them as criminal misfits. When it was later proven that the men, boys at the time of the attack, were coerced by the police into making false confession and that DNA evidence indicated that they were innocent, Trump still insisted that they were guilty and should not have been released from prison.
Since he's been elected, there have been numerous examples of racism as well. For instance, his hesitation to condemn the racist march on Charlottesville and his assertion that there were "good and bad on both sides." Other examples include his severe condemnation of black athletes who have knelt during the National Anthem in protest of police brutality, and his false assertion that immigrants are "pouring across the border" and increasing the crime rate, etc, etc.
A recent especially egregious example of his racism is his tweeting of vicious anti-Muslim videos.
Trump's base is overwhelmingly white. Why ?
Delusion
Trump, a malignant narcissist, cannot accept criticism, only praise. If facts don't gratify him, they are not facts but "fake news." Hillary Clinton won the popular vote; oh, no she didn't--it only appears that way, since five million illegal aliens voted for her. The largest crowds at a inauguration occurred when Trump assumed office; never mind proof to the contrary. Now he has been telling others in private that Obama was born in Kenya after all, and that the voice on the Access Hollywood tape might not have been his. His lies and delusions have increased to the extent that many believe he is mentally ill. I never doubted that, and do believe that the stress of office and the looming corruption investigation are making his instabilities worse. (The fact hat a stiff opposition is troubling the waters in which Trump sees his great reflection is obviously bothering him--Fatter and sadder and madder, Narcissus is suffering--and, since he is still our president, so are we).
The assertion by a member of his own party that the White House has become "an adult day care center" is truly unprecented.
Conclusion
The Three Poisons of Buddhism have been poisoning us all. It has seeped down into the groundwaters of democracy. Will true patriotism be able to filter out much of the poisons and return them to acceptable levels?
This isn't Putin's Russia; ours is till a system of checks and balances. I am therefore cautiously optimistic that the pendulum will soon swing in a more progressive direction. I recall a line from Schiller's William Tell, regarding a prison being built, in which political prisoners are to be confined: "What hands build, hands can take down." Trump's little hands have been smudging our democracy since they assumed power; if the working class, black and white, join hands, the mess could be cleaned up in no time.
If not now, when?
Do they ever complicate political life! Buddhism demands that we begin with ourselves as we simultaneously strive to improve society. This article, however, is not about individual introspection.
The old adage that political power corrupts has become a cliche because it is so true. Another adage is just as true: citizens get the government they deserve. Both of these maxims help us understand the current nadir of political life in America. Powerful special interests have turned many current politicians into "mouth heroes"--they say things many voters want to hear, but their hearts lie elsewhere. Corrupt politicians are one matter; a more important question, however, is why do representatives who only represent a minority get elected? Good government demands educated citizens; the average political sophistication in America is quite low. Education is undervalued and underfunded; entertainments keep us bemused; That toxic combination didn't work out well for Rome, and it's not working out well for us.
Is the current level of greed, hate, and delusion in today's political arena unprecedented ? It definitely feels that way. It is the subject of this essay.
Greed
Trump is the president of his base, not the president of the nation as a whole. His base, however, is so ill-informed that they imagine that he is for the little guy while the Republicans, with his support, continue to make inequality worse.
There is perhaps no better example of this than the so=called Tax Cuts and Jobs Act; a reconciliation of both House and Senate versions will surely pass and be signed into law by Trump, most likely by the end of the year. The new tax structure is without a doubt a net transfer from the poor and middle class to the wealthy, especially to the very wealthy. The irresponsibility of this bill is staggering; since the mid-seventies wages have been stagnant, while the proportion of national income received by the top 1% has doubled form 10% to 20%.
A major blot on the Republican Party is that it only represents the rich. The vast majority of Americans are considered "other"--in much the same way that nationalists deem foreigners to be categorically different from themselves. This attitude has been clearly expressed by the Republican senator Chuck Grassley who recently said, in regard to the tax bill, that it is a good thing that the rich are given the breaks because they are responsible; the rest, if they get more money, will spend it on "booze, women and drugs."
This is not the place for a detailed analysis of the tax bill, but I will provide a brief list of how this inequality engine will chug along from poor neighborhoods to the secluded mansions of the rich. Cutting the corporate tax, eliminating the federal inheritance tax, reducing the tax on pass-through income, etc. will benefit the wealthy and increase the burden on nearly everyone else; the elimination of the mandate for the Affordable Care Act will increase the number of those without health insurance by thirteen million, resulting in 42 million people without heath insurance--Criminal! Elimination of the income tax deductions of state and local taxes, which will hit blue states especially hard, will almost surely result in program cuts that benefit the poor.
What is perhaps most distressing is that the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the proposed tax legislation will balloon the deficit by 1.3 trillion dollars by the end of the next decade. Once the Republicans, (who now apparently now have no desire to lower the deficit), get their tax bill, they will metamorphose from deficit doves into deficit hawks. Their aim is to "starve the beast" of government in order to cut popular and progressive programs such as Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare.
Greed, Greed, Greed!
I will end this section with an analogy. I am a retired pediatrician. One day, a young man came into my office and presented with weight loss, increased hunger, and increased urination, all clinical signs of diabetes. I performed a blood sugar level in the office; the diagnosis was confirmed. I thereupon had him admitted to a hospital for diabetic education and to determine the proper insulin dosage, since he was now insulin-dependent. He did well.
Let us suppose that his high sugar level was analogous to the high income inequality in the United States. What if I hadn't sent him to the hospital and, instead, told his mother that from now on he would have to have candy and lollipops for breakfast, cotton candy for lunch, and cake and soda for dinner? The patient, already ill, would have become much worse. The Republican tax bill is cotton candy for the poor. Let hard candies dissolve in unfortunate mouths while their eyes stare into a fine restaurant where the rich feast on Peking Duck--According to the Grassleys and the Hatches of the world, this is how it should be.
Greed, Greed, Greed!
2. Hate
Trump is an explicit racist, many Republicans are implicit racists; no doubt about that. I will provide only a few examples of Trump's racism, there are far too many to include here.
In 2015, before he was elected, Trump tweeted the following racist tweet.
This was Trump's Willie Horton moment. It is wildly inaccurate as well. For instance, whites killed by blacks account for 15% of murdered whites, not 81%. The chart makes no correction for class and education level. It almost sinks to the level of anti-Semitic diatribes during the Nazi era. Disgusting.
Another example: before he was elected, Trump published a full-page ad in the Daily News, claiming that the five people of color, (four blacks and one Hispanic), accused of a brutal attack on a jogger in Central Park in 1989 should be "made to suffer." He referred to them as criminal misfits. When it was later proven that the men, boys at the time of the attack, were coerced by the police into making false confession and that DNA evidence indicated that they were innocent, Trump still insisted that they were guilty and should not have been released from prison.
Since he's been elected, there have been numerous examples of racism as well. For instance, his hesitation to condemn the racist march on Charlottesville and his assertion that there were "good and bad on both sides." Other examples include his severe condemnation of black athletes who have knelt during the National Anthem in protest of police brutality, and his false assertion that immigrants are "pouring across the border" and increasing the crime rate, etc, etc.
A recent especially egregious example of his racism is his tweeting of vicious anti-Muslim videos.
Trump's base is overwhelmingly white. Why ?
Delusion
Trump, a malignant narcissist, cannot accept criticism, only praise. If facts don't gratify him, they are not facts but "fake news." Hillary Clinton won the popular vote; oh, no she didn't--it only appears that way, since five million illegal aliens voted for her. The largest crowds at a inauguration occurred when Trump assumed office; never mind proof to the contrary. Now he has been telling others in private that Obama was born in Kenya after all, and that the voice on the Access Hollywood tape might not have been his. His lies and delusions have increased to the extent that many believe he is mentally ill. I never doubted that, and do believe that the stress of office and the looming corruption investigation are making his instabilities worse. (The fact hat a stiff opposition is troubling the waters in which Trump sees his great reflection is obviously bothering him--Fatter and sadder and madder, Narcissus is suffering--and, since he is still our president, so are we).
The assertion by a member of his own party that the White House has become "an adult day care center" is truly unprecented.
Conclusion
The Three Poisons of Buddhism have been poisoning us all. It has seeped down into the groundwaters of democracy. Will true patriotism be able to filter out much of the poisons and return them to acceptable levels?
This isn't Putin's Russia; ours is till a system of checks and balances. I am therefore cautiously optimistic that the pendulum will soon swing in a more progressive direction. I recall a line from Schiller's William Tell, regarding a prison being built, in which political prisoners are to be confined: "What hands build, hands can take down." Trump's little hands have been smudging our democracy since they assumed power; if the working class, black and white, join hands, the mess could be cleaned up in no time.
If not now, when?
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