The eternal wisdom of “Hee Haw”
By
Jim Hightower for Creators.com
"Gloom,
despair, and agony on me
"Deep,
dark depression, excessive misery
"If
it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all
"Gloom,
despair, and agony on me"
For
many Americans in 2020, that lament could be the anthem of our national
despondency, expressing our dismay and exasperation at humankind, which has
seemingly gone mad:
—Fanatics
in "Make America Great Again" caps rabidly cheering a tyrannical,
lying — and clearly insane — president.
—Avaricious
corporate executives and reckless public officials spreading and prolonging the
coronavirus by rushing employees into infected workplaces, thus knowingly
sickening and killing thousands of them.
—Viciously
xenophobic U.S. government officials cruelly separating impoverished refugee
families at the border, incarcerating their terrified children — even babies —
in cages.
—A
militarized police system that won't stop targeting and murdering innocent
Black people and then beats, shoots and arrests the outraged citizens who
protest the killings.
—Corporate
profiteers who routinely poison people and our planet have no fear of being
stopped or jailed for their rapacious immorality, routinely poisoning people
and our planet.
—A
supposed "democracy" that produces plutocratic, kleptocratic
governments by autocratically rigging the rules to block millions of eligible
voters from casting ballots.
—
Roving gangs of goofball Proud Boys strutting around in militia costumes,
puerilely proclaiming themselves heroes for beating and shooting protesters
whose politics they dislike.
—A
new cadre of wackadoodle extremists who advocate political violence by
promoting the group hallucination that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is secretly
leading a takeover of America by a fiendish Democratic cabal of child sex
traffickers and cannibals.
And
... holy crap. What is wrong with people? Has the savagery, selfishness and
raw, animal hatred within the human species finally come out of the darkness to
devour our society?!
Undeniably, 2020 has been despair-inducing — and there are still a few dicey weeks left! Indeed, Trump is still contesting November's national election results — which will either somewhat alleviate or dramatically exacerbate the sense of gloom permeating the progressive community. So, instead of speculating about either outcome,
I'm offering up some TIMELESS TRUTHS ABOUT HUMANITY that will apply
however Trump's Lawsuit-palooza turns out. These little-discussed maxims might
help all of us get a grip, step back from hopelessness and push ahead in our
political work with a fresh perspective on what is possible.
Warning!
These truths are so contrary to present-day conventional thinking — and so at
odds with our recent sojourn through the dark jungle of Trumplandia — that when
some people are first exposed, their brains get whiplash. So, brace yourself.
Here goes:
No. 1 Truth: Most people are fundamentally fair-minded, kind and generous.
No.
2 Truth: The basic human instinct is not dog-eat-dog selfishness but social
cooperation and sharing.
You
might holler in disbelief, "How can such happy 'truths' jibe with that
litany of horrors above? Well, although there are obvious exceptions to the
rule, decades of behavioral studies, recurring surveys, in-depth conversations,
cultural histories, real-life experiences and every other kind of group
observation have by and large produced the same finding: The great majority of
people are guided in their daily actions and relations by deep values of
fairness and sharing.
Unfortunately, these days, the small minority that rejects those democratic values for the meaner spirits of elitism, avarice, narcissism, privilege and self-aggrandizement tend to be wealthy 0.1 percenters — plutocrats who own and run nearly everything from the economy to the political system.
Having
deliberately and relentlessly maneuvered in the past half century to attain a
controlling level of wealth and power in our country, those moneyed few are now
doubling down to grab even more wealth and power at our expense.
And
while that is distressingly negative, the countervailing positive is that we
progressives have far more potential than generally realized to build our
majority in politics, the workplace, legislation and social programs. We ought
to be ardently appealing to the public's innate preference for a society that's
equitable and cooperative.
Yes, the established order assumes We the People are, at heart, wicked beasts who must constantly be constrained, lest we return society to kill-or-be-killed barbarity. But the preponderance of real-life evidence exposes that ideological precept as an elitist canard. In fact, it turns out that humankind is, well, overwhelmingly kind.
Jim Hightower is
a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the books
"Swim Against The Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With
The Flow" (2008) and "There's Nothing in the Middle of the
Road But Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos: A Work of Political Subversion"
(1998). Hightower has spent three decades battling the Powers That Be on behalf
of the Powers That Ought To Be - consumers, working families,
environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks.