There's a simple reason the democrats have no agenda. They see the edge of the cliff and they know they will lose if they are honest. There are times in history when honesty won't work. There were many Americans of all hues who knew slavery was hideous and immoral from the beginning. They lamented and spoke out, some of them. When the change came with Lincoln's election it was deadly beyond reckoning and we are still in the aftermath of that conflict.
Collapsing economy
The change we face is the collapse of the global economy. It can happen peacefully or not.
The conservatives are content with things as they are and will stay with fossil fuels and oil wars and Islamophobia until the last drop is gone. Democrats either have to swallow and go along or make believe that with a few issues that might work for them, like health and guns, they are the future, Obama avoided the truth and so do they. They have no answer to the future of work or sprawl or our mass consumption of junk.
To move forward Democrats need to do two things. The first is to achieve clarity about values and what they imply. The second is an acknowledgment that the age of an expanding economy that rides on cars and oil is over.
The values
Tolerance, democracy, helpfulness and freedom of thought are values that should be affirmed by all democrats, applicable universally.
These values should underlie politics and be the basis of education. The GOP is intolerant, undemocratic and unhelpful and it is precisely on these points that Democrats can frame a winning debate.
The decline of oil and automobile
30 blocks of Broadway will be car-free later this month https://t.co/D7gYFuMSNA
— Stephen C. Rose (@stephencrose) April 7, 2017
We are moving past the automobile age, the commuting economy and even the notion of owning our own home as the American dream.
When we reach environmental sanity we face the necessity of a sustainable world. This gives rise to the thinking proposed by the concept of cybercommunities. We can achieve a remaking of the world to reduce violence and militarism and create a basic income for every living person. These ideas are past anything Democrats seem willing to consider at this point.
The future can be good or grim
The problem is not that Democrats are not with it, on the cusp of the future. The problem is that there is such immersion in the current illusory world that we do not see what is plain as can be. Once the truth of the analysis is broadly understood progressives will embrace and run with it.
We need a global democratic revolution, general disarmament, and Basic Income to replace today's sprawl economy with one that builds on the ideas of cybercommunities. Not to do so will lead us to the end of the present illusion, too late to move to a sane and realistic alternative.
