THE OTHER REAGAN LEGACY

The Reagan years produced a culture in America in which political affiliation became unfashionably blue collar, and the American voter responded, in significant numbers, by abandoning both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, choosing instead to think of themselves as "Independents." Now instead of aligning ourselves politically with people with whom we share the same interests, we choose instead to identify with some abstract notion of who we will be when the trickle down trickles down.

The concept of a Trickle Down Economy was the love child of the Reagan Administration. It is the idea that what is good for the rich is good for the country. That at some point the wealthy will start leaving a little on the table for you, just because you're a team player. Trickle down is the idea that you can spend beyond your means as long as you vote in the interest of the corporate giants, on whom you depend to keep the furnace of the economy hot enough to burn the debt incurred. Americans elected law makers on the promise of promoting these ideas, and promote them they did, largely through deregulation of the activity of the oligarchy.

Now we are thirty years later. We are a divided, divisive, nation, so perfectly divided that it almost seems by design; how delicately placed, is the fulcrum upon which the balance of our social, political, and economic existence depends. And the thing most absent from the dynamics of modern American governance is a sense of solidarity.

I once had a college professor who liked to say, "If you sign your pay check on the front, vote Republican, if you sign it on the back vote Democratic." That is exactly the way it was the last time the middle class had any significant political collateral. Government is mostly about economics, and economics is about distribution of wealth, and so representative democracy works best when the electorate is lined up according to economic interests.

The two party system is not working as well as it has in the past because we have three parties; the Republicans, the Democrats, and the Independents. My Yoga Teacher often said, "If you stand for nothing you will fall for anything." That characterizes the Independent voter. He stands alone and so he is always up for grabs. Political campaigning has become largely about seducing the Independent voter.

All social change comes as a result of class wars. The middle class is increasingly unable to win these wars because their numbers are diminished by those who are enticed to desert their own in the hopes of becoming part of the other. As a result, law makers really don't know who they represent, so they represent themselves. As long as we remain divided and divisive there can be no mandate from the people, so lawmakers do what they want, and the safest thing to do is nothing.

Sat Nam

Yogi Bir Singh Khalsa