Manufacturing Progress

Manufacturing Progress

In the Post-COVID Era

Nicholas Dionysius

Julius Storozynski

new degree press

copyright © 2021 Nicholas Dionysius Julius Storozynski

All rights reserved.

Manufacturing Progress

In the Post-COVID Era

ISBN

978-1-63676-842-7 Paperback

978-1-63730-200-2 Kindle Ebook

978-1-63730-286-6 Digital Ebook

To Bella. Carry the fire.

Contents

Author’s Note

Chapter 1

What Do You Think Are the Three Biggest Problems Facing America Today?

Chapter 2

Same Team

Chapter 3

Strategic Initiatives: Playing the Long Game

Chapter 4

Mauled by Blue Cross

Chapter 5

Welcome to the Jungle

Chapter 6

Conscious of Class

Chapter 7

Gilded Age Merry-Go-Round: The Big, Sexy Econ Chapter

Chapter 8

Split Down the Middle: Demand-Side Jesus

Chapter 9

What’s the Worst That Could Happen?

Chapter 10

Progressives as the Solution

Chapter 11

Do You Want to Win Arguments or Do You Want to Make the World A Better Place?

Acknowledgments

APPENDIX

Za naszą i waszą wolność

For our freedom and yours

—Tadeusz Kosciuszko

Author’s Note

There’s a growing consensus that something, or everything, in American politics is going wrong.

For those of us who were Obama Democrats, it seems this sand in the gears has just blown in. Sure, things have changed. You could credibly say this change started during the Reagan years, or that things started spiraling out of control with the Newt Gingrich-led impeachment and government shutdown, or that George W. Bush was the true end of America’s heroic world leadership. Ok, fine—some might say that things were good until opinion pieces like those by Bill O’Reilly or Sean Hannity began masquerading as news and ended civility in our national discourse. But definitely, absolutely, the last time things were on the rails was 2016. Promise.

There’s a great case to be made for each, so the one I would point to in casual conversation is usually the last one I was thinking about, in much the same way that my favorite Tarantino movie is whichever one I’ve seen most recently (currently The Hateful Eight). No matter which one we discuss, therefore, I would tend to agree.

For those further to the left than Obama-style Democrats, the belief is that this system was designed to run with sand in the gears. America was built on slavery and stolen ground, dragged its feet through Reconstruction, and didn’t pass the Civil Rights Act until peaceful protests turned to riots after Dr. King’s assassination, or so the argument goes. Or maybe it’s the system of capitalism itself, based upon the exploitation of the working class, and expanding across the globe for sweatshops in Asia, wars for oil in the Middle East, and coups in Bolivia to ensure dirt-cheap prices for the rare metals found in Tesla batteries.

Well, when you point out all the atrocities like that, it’s hard to disagree.

There’s an old saying that Someone who is nice to me, but not to the waiter, isn’t a nice person. For those people, America is a diner who insulted the waiter, left no tip, and then followed him out to the parking lot to knock him out and steal the gas money from his wallet.

Debating between one or the other is wasting time from implementing real change. It’s possible to admit that some things are built into the system and try to change them and to admit that things have gotten worse at some point in the last forty years. Thinking critically about which things have gotten worse is not only an important question unto itself but will speak to greater themes of injustice baked into the system. You can point to the fact that the War on Drugs targeted people of color, which is bad and then see a greater trend of racial injustice. You can point to the fact that cutting taxes on the wealthy leads to gross income inequality, which is bad, and then see a greater trend of economic injustice.

Let’s start by asking ourselves: What exactly is going wrong, and when did this start? What did the world look like before that was the case? For at least forty years following the 1940s, America had low unemployment, lower inequality, a big social safety net, a minimum wage equivalent to $22 an hour in 2020, and a president pushing for all Americans to have access to affordable health care. Hell, there was even a time when a Republican president said that any dollar spent on war and bullets was a dollar that could be used to feed a hungry child. How do we shift the Overton window back in that direction?

(For those who would throw the baby out with the bathwater because America was built on stolen land, there are problems inherent to capitalism:

1.I’m not a priest, but I don’t think you can give confession to an abstract notion like a nation.

2.I’m too shy to write a Revolutions for Dummies book but let me know how that goes.)

I started writing this book because I wanted to learn why liberals are so bad at talking about important issues and even worse at winning elections. I was frustrated by the fact that liberals didn’t have a big picture strategy capable of beating a reality TV show host and a slew of conspiracy theorists. It then evolved into a reflection on the most important questions facing us as a nation:

What does an America that works for everyone look like?

Writing helped to organize and gather my thoughts. Hopefully, it will make my worldview make sense to someone who doesn’t agree with me and change their mind for the better.

The title of this book is a reference to Manufacturing Consent by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. The main idea of the book is that the media serves in part to make people want things they wouldn’t normally want. In the lead-up to the Iraq War, for example, even the New York Times was writing op-eds and phrasing their articles in a way that made the war seem inevitable, which warms people up to the idea of going to war. Normal people didn’t really have anything to gain from going to war, but the media helped them to think that something bad was good for them. I want to do the opposite here and use my voice to help people realize they are allowed to demand better treatment. This is my small part to manufacture some progress in the right direction for our country. You pay your taxes, and you are allowed to want a government to work for you.

This book aims to hijack that same mechanism but by manufacturing support for progressive policies. We should be asking if $1,200 a month is enough to help our people or if we need to go to $3,000 a month. We should be demanding the money we use on missiles go to giving Medicare to all of our citizens. We should be holding our elected officials responsible for getting our money’s worth out of our tax dollars. That’s Progress.

So, here’s my attempt to talk about where we are as a nation, to stitch together where we can go forward. My audience aren’t wonks, partly because in-depth policy detail doesn’t change minds, but mostly because wonks throw terrible parties. My audience is people who vote, people who might vote but don’t, the heroes who talk to the first two groups of individuals, and people who might run for office or guide the conversation in those offices.

For people who vote: I will make a case for why these progressive policies aren’t as crazy as they seem and will improve your lives. Push your representatives toward these positions.

For people with different beliefs than I have: I will explain why I see the world the way I do and nudge you toward considering progressive voices. At the very least, I’ll have you laugh along at some (intentional) jokes.

For the politicos reading this, let me just say: Madame Speaker, what an honor! Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to have you run on these issues and guide the conversation while boosting your career.

Finally, for people canvassing or getting out the vote: I’ll share some lines and points I think might help you find success, as well as kiss you on the top of the head and tell you how proud I am of you.

Law is boring, and economics is boring, but they’re both too important to leave to the lawyers and the economists.

Let’s make it sexy.

Chapter 1

What Do You Think Are the Three Biggest Problems Facing America Today?

You can tell a lot about a person by the way they answer the question.

It’s a question of priorities and values. This is the simplest way I’ve learned to ask, What are your values as an American citizen? I ask myself this pretty frequently. It helps make sure you’re paying attention.

Obviously, there are going to be people on your Facebook feed telling you that the biggest problem facing America is somehow a social justice group like Black Lives Matter and assuring you that this group is a domestic terror threat on par with the Ku Klux Klan, only worse because it’s founded by George Soros and they just take that money and send it to the Democratic Party. These kinds of racist-flavored social media rants might make you regret considering the question.

But then again, it’s still a useful question because, in one sentence, you just found out that their number one American value is racism. How efficient!

In more normal conversations, you may get a very broad answer to an admittedly broad question. Trumpism, for example, seems to be an all-encompassing answer, ranging from The former president is an orange buffoon, to Our systems of law are being eroded, paving the way for fascism, to I’m not sure, I don’t usually pay attention to politics, but something about this whole situation is off. This is the kind of answer that requires digging deeper.

My first job out of college was a sales role at a large tech company. As a driven young man seeking success, I’d ask all kinds of people about their work and ended up with a very useful piece of advice from someone who worked at a car dealership:

Always clarify. Different words mean different things to different people. Take the word safety, for example. When someone comes in, and you ask what they’re looking for in a car and they tell you safety, that could mean that they want a tank of a car that will withstand any crash to something super sporty that’s fast enough in the hands of a good driver to avoid any collision.

While Trump is out of office, Trumpism seems like it has some staying power as senators adopt his rhetoric and QAnon conspiracy theorists have won races across the country. However, running against Trumpism didn’t guarantee Democratic down-ballot wins in 2020 and isn’t likely to do so in the future (Democrats lost seats in the House and in state legislatures).

Maybe fear of his legacy will actually solve all of the world’s ills, and we can get back to pretending everything is fine like we were in 2015.

I’m not hopeful, but you know. Maybe.

This isn’t to say that fears of authoritarianism and overreach aren’t valid. The January 6th riots at the Capitol let the genie out of the bottle, spurred on by sitting senators and members of the House. During Trump’s tenure, the Department of Justice used its lawyers to go after a woman who credibly accused Trump of rape in the 1990s. Bill Barr, head of the Department of Justice, used his office to downplay the Russia