Reminder: conservatives are hoping to reverse a century of progress. We came out of the Great Depression with the beginning of a social safety net and a middle class. Cons want us to come out of this crisis without any of that. They see this as an opportunity....
#ableg
#ableg
... and they don't care what damage it causes. In Ab, Kenney pushed through a budget based on fantasy, because he NEEDS those government jobs gone. He needs those people brought low and desperate. He needs education and healthcare privatized. It's what he's being paid to do.
It's also what modern conservatism needs. A well educated population sees through the lies of trickle down economics, and sees through the racism that conservatism uses to rile up its base. When you hear cons talk about how educators are "liberal" this is what they really mean.
If they can destroy public education, where educators are mostly protected from ideologically pushy governments, they can rest easy, knowing that private schools will always favor the elites who pay them to educate their kids.
And if they can eliminate public healthcare, the average employee becomes beholden to their employer's health insurance plan. It will cow many, who become afraid to demand better working conditions, better pay.
These things help ensure that conservatives can mold government spending and policy in favor of their donors, because nobody is educated enough or secure enough to oppose them. They want us back in the Gilded Age, a sort of modern feudalism.
Yes, we're in a crisis. Yes, there are things that must be done to get us through it. However, if look the other way, conservatives will ensure that the world that comes through this crisis is one where nobody is able to oppose them because they're poor, sick, uneducated.
I hope for a different world, on the far side of this crisis. I want to see a world where we learn the lessons the crisis teaches....
A world where people choose leaders who understand science, and use it to make good decisions. Where the grifters and kooks who prey on people aren't given the time of day.
A world where we recognize that all work is essential, even store clerks and truckers, because they keep our day-to-day society running. They deserve respect: decent pay, the opportunity for a good education, childcare if they need it.
A world where the idea of healthcare being a profit industry is finally thrown into the garbage where it belongs. Where we recognize that a healthy populace is an engage populace, and we all benefit when everyone has the chance to be heard, and nobody is afraid to speak up.
We're already on our way to these things, but it's a slow grind. Far too slow. Conservatives see this crisis as the chance to push back that progress. We can't let them.
When this crisis is over, we need to remember what these conservative governments did to make it worse; cutting healthcare, creating mass unemployment by draconian cuts to health and education and everything else. And then creating massive deficits to justify more cuts.
In the end, we can come out of this much stronger. Or we can come out of it the way the conservatives want us to; weak, divided, cowed, fearful, sick, and poor.
It's our choice.
It's our choice.
