Now It Is Future To The Back, Not Back To The Future.

I have had the following quote printed out and stuck on my old wooden filing cabinet for so long, it is yellowed and crinkles when I take it off to copy it in my blog to make a point.  It is from Paradise Lost, II, John Milton.

                              On the other side up rose

Belial, in act more graceful and humane;

A fairer person lost not Heaven; he seemed

For dignity composed and high exploit:

But all was false and hollow, though his tongue

Dropped manna, and could make the worse appear

The better reason, to perplex and dash

Maturest counsels:  for his thoughts were low:

To vice industrious, but to nobler deeds

Timorous and slothful: yet he pleased the ear,

And with persuasive accent thus began:… 

In my mind I’m thinking, “…up rose Belial,…” every time I hear a right-wing radical start talking about the “job creators”, and how we must cut their taxes, or how they are tired of hearing about raising the minimum wage – that what people need are not higher wages but opportunities to get ahead, while at the same time educational programs are cut, student loan interest rates are burdensome to the new graduates, and food supplement programs are cut back, and head of household jobs are scarce. 

After WWII, taxes were progressive.  The more you made, the more you paid.  It was apparent to almost everyone that not only did we have to pay for that war, but that we needed to make sure that the returning veterans had every opportunity for an education or job training.  That their medical needs were taken care of through a then pretty functional Veterans Administration.  Veterans were given priority in hiring, with very few if any complaints.  After all, they had saved us, literally, from a fate worse than death.  They were never displayed for political, commercial or religious purposes. 

An education was readily available for anyone who wanted one.  If a student didn’t have family to chip in, it was possible to work and be able to pay for tuition, books, and living expenses.  One didn’t live high end, but had the hope of doing so with that degree.  All of this was paid for with taxes, and because we all knew that when it came our turn to pay the taxes, we would be willing to do so for the next generation, and to pay back what we had used.  There was a sense of we’re all in this together.   

Some of the downfall of that era can be attributed to the overreach of Lyndon B. Johnson, who tried to fight a war overseas (Vietnam), and a war on poverty, as he called it, here at home.  He was completely optimistic about the resources of the country.  We simply could not sustain such economic drains on the national economy.  Jimmy Carter reaped the seeds that Johnson had sown, and thus the groundwork was laid for Ronald Reagan and his “Morning In America”.  Because of the lingering sense that we were “all in this together”, it didn’t occur to the majority of people that Reagan was only talking to those who could profit off of his, “We have to get government off the back of business”.  At the time I remember thinking of my very small childhood years when the mantra was getting business off the back of the American people, and were we going into that cycle again. 

Well, we have.  And because of the smooth-talking, smooth acting of politicians like Reagan, the Bushes, and now Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, Darrell Issa, Scott Walker, Rick Scot, John Kasich, Chris Christie, et al, it all seems so very reasonable.

               “On the other side up rose Belial…”