Everything is turned around. Two-thirds of Americans think
our country is upside down. The result of the current presidential election
won’t change that.
Election Day will come and go. The winner will be inaugurated
although despised by a majority. Voters will continue relying on the
post-factual views of their cable TV network of choice, leading to faulty
public policies and continued deadlock on matters critical to the republic. You
and I have to think deeper.
I am one of those who believe this country is upside down. What
would right the ship? My list starts at home.
Wyoming would be “The Equality State.” The legislature would
enact hate crimes and anti-discrimination legislation and end the gender wage
gap. Political, religious, business, and other community leaders would demand a
Cowboy-culture where burning a Quran is as unacceptable as refusing to stand
for the singing of Cowboy Joe at War Memorial Stadium.
Talk about upside down, the Equality State is the only state
refusing to sign a refugee resettlement agreement, alone among a “basket of
deplorables” like Mississippi, Texas, and Arkansas. A “right-side up” Wyoming
would welcome immigrants.
UW’s athletic program would return the millions of dollars received
from the legislature last year, saying, “If we’d known that to give us this
money, you’d have to cut programs for the disabled, elderly, and poor, we wouldn’t
have asked for it in the first place.
Wyoming would make a serious commitment to public health.
Tobacco taxes would be increased because it’s those taxes, which result in
higher priced cigarettes, not parental lectures that prevent kids from starting
to smoke.
Instead of one more bucking horse sculpture, monuments would
be built honoring progressive icons like Mariko Miller, a courageous advocate
for civil rights who was among the first to warn the country about Vietnam.
There’d be statues of people like Keith Henning and Paul Johnson whose strong voices
led the Wyoming workers’ movement in the middle of the last century.
In a country headed down a better path Barack Obama could
run for a third term, Edward Snowden would be pardoned and traveling the
country warning about threats to privacy. Bankers causing the 2008 subprime
mortgage crisis would be tried in the courtroom next door to the one in which
Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were being tried for war crimes.
People would stop reading the Bible literally and start
taking it seriously. They’d quit worrying about other who others love.
Americans would remember they learned to speak truth to power when they evolved
from hating to admiring Muhammad Ali and apply those lessons to Colin
Kaepernik. Isaiah would get his wish. Swords would be beaten into plowshares.
John Lennon’s “Imagine,” would be sung during the seventh-inning
stretch at baseball games where there’d be no designated-hitter rule and record
books would have an asterisk behind Barry Bonds’ name because he really didn’t
break Hank Aaron’s home run record.
The U.S. would join the rest of the world adopting single-payer
health insurance, there’d be a Palestinian state, the U.S. House and Senate
would become democratic enough to actually allow the majority to rule, and gun
owners would realize the NRA has been lying. Nobody is coming to take our guns.
Wyomingites would update stereotypes about the poor,
admitting people are not poor because they are lazy, but because the rigged
economy profits from poverty. Medicaid and food stamps are subsidies to
employers who won’t pay livable wages. We’d admit that, adjusted to today’s
dollar, minimum wages are lower now than those Pharaoh paid the Hebrews before
Moses led them out of slavery.
People voting for Donald Trump because he might nominate Supreme
Court justices would remember that while those appointments might occupy a few
days of his administration, he’d be President for four long years.
My list is longer but there’s a word limit. Let’s all just
work to change what we can, accept what we can’t, and humble ourselves enough
to recognize the difference. Then the world will right itself.
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