Dark Blue
I’m feeling, well, dark blue, after yesterday’s deep blue tsunami. My friends might wonder why. After all, I’m a moderate, a light blue, and cringe at some of Trump’s missteps.
I guess the main reason is that here in Oakland/Berkeley, one of America’s deepest blue bastions, I had long felt isolated as a light-blue guy. Now, I feel more isolated than ever, having seen such evidence of how leftward we’re moving, not just here but nationwide.
Less selfishly, I worry that we haven’t learned from many countries’ experiments with socialism and communism. Countries from Angola to the Soviet bloc, Cuba to Venezuela, should have given us pause. And the socialist experiments with national health care in France, the UK, and Canada, especially as I’m getting older, scare me. All three are well funded by the taxpayer yet are near-broke and some Canadians, afraid it will take too long to get care, let alone quality care, travel to the U.S., at least they have until now.
Even more broadly, I worry about the economy. Taxes and regulation of business will rise, encouraging businesses to automate even faster and flee to lower-cost states or even domicile abroad. All that means job loss in an America in which the ostensibly low unemployment rate already belies the lack of good, ethical, sustainable jobs. Yes, government jobs will grow, but that rarely increases employment en toto, because increased taxes must pay for those government hires, which decreases net employment: individual and business taxpayers have less money to spend and to hire.
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Those lost jobs aren’t a mere statistic. Most affected people and their families get worried, maybe scared, and must literally or metaphorically decide if they can afford both tomatoes and toilet paper this week, or whether they should cut their medication in half to make it last longer. Many homeowners worry about losing their homes. Fear, worry, and suppressed anger are likely to increase further, yet there’s social pressure not to express doubt let alone anger at the incipient socialist revolution lest we be seen as selfish, elitist, privileged, perhaps white-male-privileged.
And then there’s the Jews. My parents, both Holocaust survivors, warned me it could happen again. I pooh-poohed it despite millennia of antisemitism from the ancient Romans destroying Jerusalem to The Inquisition in which Jews were forced to convert or die, to the Pogroms in which Jews were raped, robbed, and homes decimated, of course, to the Holocaust, and to today’s double-standard by which Jews are judged — Epstein, Weinstein, Madoff remained front-page forever while, for example, Black Lives Matters leaders who absconded with millions remain virtually anonymous. Can you name even one? And Israel, the Middle East’s only democracy, indeed with Muslims in senior government including its Supreme Court and Arabs stably at 20% of the population and with full rights of citizenship? Despite all that, Israel is the Left’s relentless prime target, which the voters embraced yesterday. Meanwhile, Muslim countries are largely given a free pass for forcing women into burkas, performing clitorectomies, expelling all Jews from their countries, and killing LGBTs. Indeed, yesterday, the electorate selected a number of demonstrably anti-semitic candidates, most visibly Abdul El-Sayed, who blames Israel for high food prices in the U.S.
Most people here in the Bay Area are celebrating today. And as someone who has spent much time in the media and seen its acceleration from reporter of the news to amplifier of Leftist rhetoric and candidates, I know that most in the media are particularly celebrating and crediting themselves for the deep blue tsunami.
Me? Emotionally, I’m dark but not deep blue, which would imply it’s harder to climb out than I feel. My sadness derives primarily from feeling like an even more isolated light-blue person who believes that the long-term good most likely accrues from a meritocracy and lightly regulated capitalism. For now at least, I’m retreating to my career counseling clients, gardening, doggie, and writing stuff like this.
I read this aloud on YouTube.
Marty Nemko is a career and personal coach, and author of 36 books including How to Do Life. You can reach him at mnemko@gmail.com
