I was born in the United States of America in 1963.
My father was a 4th generation Republican – the old school “fiscal conservative-socially liberal” Lincoln Republican. He died at the age of 92 in October 2018, still a registered Republican and still a moderate, rational human being. He wrote letters to the GOP frequently about how the Grand Old Party had abandoned its founding principles and was betraying its history and purpose.
Yes, as a 5th generation Republican in 1984, I voted for Ronald Reagan. I was naive. I apologize. Though Reagan’s Democratic opponent (remember Walter Mondale – yeah, no one does) may have been just as bad, the fact is Reagan was a disaster for the future economy and foreign policy of the United States.
Even at my young age of 21, I understood “trickle down economics” was a snow job disaster in the making to make the rich even richer — without having to earn that wealth. The new Billionaire Class did not “EARN” their financial wealth, they acquired it through manipulation of broken, unjust systems.
After 1984, I became an Independent voter, with a brief foray as a registered Moderate Republican in Alaska, to try to help get that party moving. Of course the Moderates fizzled out.
Of course the GOP just went further off the deep end. Now we have Trump and MAGA. That broke my father’s heart. He told me, not long before he died, that he “did not join the Marines in WWII to stop fascism in Europe and only to live to see it take hold in the United States.”
So I am still a moderate, a CENTRIST. We have little power in the United States right now. The two extremes, right and left have failed, but they continue to be heard, while those willing to compromise, think analytically, and have civil discussions with people of differing opinions watch in horror and silence as the nation falls apart.
Unfortunately, since the publication of this book in 2013, the U.S.A. has lost many opportunities to become that rational, cooperative, stable nation that we centrists hoped to create. With the election of Donald Trump in 2016, the U.S.A. proved its citizens were unable to come together to offer a better political option.
All the letters I wrote to my Senators, Representatives, the RNC and the DNC, and the White House were for naught. All that did was put me on lists to hit me up for donations.
Whenever, I expressed my sincere concerns to friends, they brushed me off. They continued to trust in the sanity and intelligence of the American people and in the institutions and laws put in place that were supposed protect the U.S.A. from taking the same path as Nazi Germany.
And like the citizens of pre-Nazi Germany – THEY WERE WRONG!
After two years of living under Trump 1.0, I saw that the rule of law was broken. The worship of the rich and powerful was too entrenched in the systems of government and in the culture of the people. I mean “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” – WTF.
So what can people – who still have empathy, compassion, and a working brain – do to create a better world? It starts with learning how and why the world got so screwed up and to try to work around that while protecting ourselves from the raging stupidity that has taken over so many facets of our lives.