Don’t be afraid.
That’s it, really. You don’t need to be afraid of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is…fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1932
The conservative media may have painted them as big, bad, scary socialists, but they’re not. In fact, for progressives like me, they’re way too conservative. They’re not in the least bit socialist, which is a bit disappointing for we who support democratic socialism.
If you’re afraid of everybody getting health coverage, you don’t have to worry about that. While I may want it, Biden and Harris aren’t likely to upset the status quo and upset their corporate backers. Universal healthcare isn’t something they necessarily believe in, much less are willing to fight for in the next four years
Don’t be afraid that they’ll be coming for your guns, either. While they may not be crazy about the fact that there are 393 million firearms in private hands in the U.S. (that’s 1.2 for every person, including babies and folks in nursing homes) and that nearly half of the world’s private weapons are American, they’re smart enough to know that genie is out of the bottle. They might propose some common-sense legislation that would limit the sale of assault-style weapons, for example, but even that won’t have much effect. There are already tens of millions of “modern sporting rifles,” as some gun rights organizations prefer to call them, out there, too.
Don’t be afraid for your faith, either. They’re not anti-religious. Biden is actually a practicing Catholic. He goes to church … something the current resident of the White House has never seen a need to bother with.
Perhaps you’re afraid that Biden is going to seek retribution for Trump’s outrages of the past four years and take it out on Trump’s supporters? That may be the kind of thing Trump would do, but it’s not Biden’s style. He’s always been the kind of politician who will seek to negotiate deals, not raze the battlefield.
What’s likely to happen?
Well, eventually the economy will bounce back and resume the curve that it started under Obama-Biden and which benefitted the Trump regime, too. It will take the pandemic winding down for that to happen. That may be helped by having a national strategy on the pandemic, something we haven’t had yet.
Biden will reinstate some environmental controls and address climate change, but he likely won’t go far enough. Climate change is the biggest challenge facing our country right now, but we don’t have the national will to address it any more than we’ve had the national will to deal with the pandemic.
Biden and Harris will reestablish connections with the world community that Trump burned. America’s standing in the world will start to rise again. That’s not a bad thing.
Probably more than anything, they’ll return stability, rationality and professionalism to government. After the past four years, that will be a relief.
So you can continue to fret, rage or fear. You can buy into fiction-based news sources like The Western Journal, Breitbart or, for the most part, Fox News. You can let corporate-financed think tanks like the Heritage Foundation ratchet up your fear levels. Fear is what Republicans have run on for years now.
Or you can relax and give the new administration a chance. Consider reaching across the aisle in your own day-to-day life or your social media activity.
What have you got to lose?
— Elmer Ploetz