Joel Berg - America, We Need to Talk

Copyright 2017 by Joel Berg

Excerpts from Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates 2015 by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Used by permission of Spiegel & Grau, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

Excerpts from The Price of Inequality: How Todays Divided Society Endangers Our Future by Joseph E. Stiglitz, copyright 2012 by Joseph E. Stiglitz. Used by permission of W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.

Excerpts of this book previously appeared in City Limits Magazine and in a Progressive Policy Institute report. Permission for re-use granted.

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FOR MY GRANDPARENTS
Pauline, Harry, Ethel, and Louis, who shed the tongues, friends, and customs of their birth countries, and who rewarded their children and grandchildrenand their adopted nationwith the gifts of their sacrifices.

Their advice, both heeded and unheeded, could have filled a Library of Congress-sized warehouse of self-help books.

a My paternal grandfathers original surname was Berkowitz, but he changed it to Berg soon after arriving at Ellis Island, because he thought Berg sounded more American.

AMERICA, WE NEED TO TALK.

Yes, that kind of talk.

I know its after midnight, and I know you have to go to work early in the morning, but this just cant wait.

I dont know how to say this, so Ill just say it: I am deeply unhappy with this relationship and I have been for years. I love you, but Im no longer in love with you, America.

This just isnt working for me. Im hurt and Im angry. Youve betrayed, ignored, and humiliated me. Youve lied to me and cheated on me.

My knee-jerk reaction is to leave you. But we have so much shared history. We have children together. I like your taste in music. Plus, its in our economic and social self-interest to stay together. And besides, I hate hockey and Cline Dion songs, so Canada is out of the question. ABBA and pickled fish make Sweden unlivable, despite its advanced social programs.

Both you and I know that I wontI cantleave you. I cant ignore all that youve given me in the past. You and I are destined for each other. I cant live happily without my own country and you cant continue to exist without me as your happy citizen.

And, despite all your flaws, America, you are still one of the most diverse, welcoming, and freest nations on the planet.

So thats why Im going to stay with you and fight to make this work.

Youre asking me what you did wrong? Youre kidding, right? You must know. How could you screw up as badly and frequently as you have and think this day would never come? How could you have ignored the signs of my growing unhappiness?

(Long pause. Deep silence. America shuffles its feet and glances at the TV.)

Oh come on, you mean to tell me that you havent noticed that youre seriously broken? Youve totally lost your senses. You are so far off-track that youre beyond derailed.

Well, what do you have to say for yourself?

(Another long pause. America turns off the TV and sighs.)

If you dont know, Im not going to tell you.

(A pause that seems longer than Gone with the Wind. A silence quieter than a monastery. A nervous cough. An exaggerated sigh.)

But then again, if I dont tell you, this book wont exist and we have no future together. Are you ready?

(Sheepish nod.)

Okay, here goes. Lets start with this: does the name government shutdown mean anything to you? Dont play dumb. Dont act like you dont remember. Dont even make me take out my massive scrapbook of news clips.

Yes, that government shutdown. You know, the one in which you allowed a handful of extremists, in a rabid hissy fit, to padlock your entire government, supposedly to protest paying the bills for things that those very same extremists previously voted to fund? Oh, now you remember? I thought so. You have a pretty short attention span, so I also hope that you recall that the shutdown closed national parks, shuttered medical research facilities, idled Alaskan fishing fleets, delayed flights, and furloughed nearly a million workers.

Do you remember when a fanatical, right-wing congressman, Randy Neugebauer, who forced all government facilities to close, then went to DCs World War II Memorial to stage a media stunt in front of visiting veterans in which he berated a park ranger for shutting down the very same memorial that he, the fanatical, right-wing congressman, Randy Neugebauer, forced to close? America, do you remember that Standard & Poorsnot exactly a leftist institutioncalculated that the shutdown took $24 billion out of your economy? Yes, it was a $24 billion political temper tantrum. Oh, so its all coming back to you now, is it? Our political system is now as dysfunctional as Italys, but with far less tasty food.

And then in the 2014 midterms, you totally lost your mind, America. Even though you were furious at the gridlock and knew deep down that the Republicans caused most of ityou actually voted to give those same Republicans still more power. You went apeshit, angrily tossing your car keys to the same people who just totaled your new car, yelling at them, You wrecked it, assholes, so now its yours. Yes, out of a twisted spite, you gave our country to those who harmed it most.

By 2016, America, you let the anger boiling within many of your residents be channeled into an even crazier, even more self-destructive force by handing over the presidential nominationand complete control overone of the nations two great political parties to mega-wealthy and mega-buffoon reality TV star Donald J. Trump, who was more laughably/dangerously unqualified for the jobbased on skills, experience, temperament, and every other possible criteriathan any major party nominee in US history. Now get this: tens of millions of working class people were conned into believing that very worst exemplar of the self-serving crony capitalism that shafted them for decades was the very savior needed to Make America Great Again. You shredded both your soul and your mind at the same time, America. I couldnt recognize you anymore.

Also in 2016, not content to simply shut down the executive branch, the Senate GOP effectively dropped the curtain on the judicial branch as well, refusing to so much as consider any Obama nominee to fill the Supreme Court seat of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, even after the President nominated Merrick Garland, a highly moderate, impeccably credentialed jurist. Fulminating that Obama was a lame duck who didnt deserve to select a justice, conservatives ignored the fact that Democrats had previously unanimously confirmed Reagan appointee Anthony Kennedy to the Supreme Court in an election year. Republicans would surely excoriate any coach whod quit a game at the start of the fourth quarter, but they openly quit their Constitutional responsibility to review judges at the start of Obamas fourth quarter.