A new year invites one to think about things … to reflect more deeply on those thoughts that daily crowd into my over taxed consciousness. Then again, musing is not difficult for me. I do it well, and often, usually at the sacrifice of tasks that ought to demand my attention … like cleaning up the toxic waste zone in which I live. Oh well, there is always next year for that. But first, some random musings!

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On starting this blog: How many blogs have I now written? 300 perhaps, even more? I have no idea. It all started when the good people at Facebook hit me with a third lifetime ban. The first banishment occurred when I had 30,000 followers, a number growing by about 100 newcomers each and every day at the time. I managed to get back on twice. Each time, though, I had to start over from scratch. I would quickly collect thousands of followers before being kicked off again. It had become a sinister pattern.

The final ban was, like the others, inexplicable. I posted a picture of Jesse Owens collecting one of his four gold medals at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. It so happened that another medal winner was giving a Nazi salute in that pic. The post, and my comment, had nothing to do with this third person. But apparently his presence alone was employed as an excuse to ban me once again. There was no conceivable rationale for their action unless an American hero who embarrased Nazi racial purity on a global stage is now a threat to the powers that be, an explanation not to be summarily dismissed. The other, and very likely explanation, is that their community standards program was an exercise in total incompetence. You pick one. For me, I was done with Facebook.

But I was not done with writing. When my late wife was declining with dementia, I had much time on my hands. I dove into a childhood dream of mine, the fantasy of being an author. I was driven to satisfy a query from a college professor of mine back at Clark University (so long ago I still had hair) after I confessed my interest in a future literary career. He asked: Can you tell a good story? I hesitated: Could I?

Almost six decades later, I erupted with an impressive output of fictional and non-fictional work over several years during my so-called retirement era. Finally, I concluded that I had answered my professor’s challenge … I could craft a good story!

There seemed little need to continue once that conundrum was satisfied. Besides, self- publishing can be an expensive hobby. In addition, seeking traditional literary fame and fortune would consume too much time and effort at my advanced age. That’s a game for the young and foolish. Besides, I no longer needed all that.

But I still needed to write. Some folks need to exercise. Others need nature and the outdoors. Still others focus on music or similar forms of self-expression. The least fortunate among us remain fixated on the continued accumulation of treasure, a shallow and silly pursuit to my mind. My enduring focus remained on self-expression through words. I should note that my university colleagues oft lavished praise on my professional writings … including the hard-ass economists.

For me, there is a beauty and a kind of solace associated with self-reflection, a solitary ritual that gives rise to creating these occasional blogs. This is especially true in the age of Artificial Intelligence (AI) where critical and imaginative thinking might well be sacrificed on the alter of AI platforms. Why think when you get immediate answers from your phone.

With age, I must admit that one’s world becomes smaller. The audiences that one can access become fewer and less important. But my mind remains as fecund, eclectic, and active as ever. Even writing for a small audience that hardly extends beyond myself remains a source of pleasure. Hell, I would get pleasure simply writing for myself. Besides, I have never forgotten the wisdom of one of my early professors … you really don’t understand something until you can communicate it to others.

So, it is likely I will continue to write, perhaps less frequently, if only for myself. I consider it essential therapy. And we need all the therapy we can get in these troubled times.

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I ran across a piece recently which talked about the Trump administration going after something called the Catholic Charities- Rio Grande Valley organization. This religious – based initiative, managed by an activist group of Catholic nuns, has run afoul of the latest guardians of our national conscience … the MAGA movement. These Catholic sisters (and their volunteer helpers I presume) have the audacity to help migrant families crossing our southern borders … people who risk their lives to flee oppression or seek new opportunities. According to our leaders in Washington, such charitable impulses must be crushed.

That got me thinking. I was attracted to Catholicism as it existed in my youth. I even spent over a year in a seminary while training to be a missionary priest (the Maryknoll Society). I quickly realized that this vocation was prompted by a sense of responsibility to my fellow man (and woman), not by a belief in a divine presence. My motives were sound but my subsequent vocational choice proved personally misdirected.

Still, a spiritual career path made some sense at that time. The Catholic Church in the 1960s was a big tent that embraced a robust arm of leftist activists. A movement grounded in what was known as liberation theology held currency within the church during that period. There were iconic heroes such as Father Groppi (racial justice) and the Berrigan brothers (anti-war activism) among many others. The missionary priests in the Maryknoll order were known for supporting peasants in Central and South America, many of whom suffered in the face of right-wing oppression. Some members of the order lost their freedom (and even their lives) when they opposed oligarchic oppression and authoritarian regimes.

That was a time when parts of the church reflected the core teachings of Christ … take care of those suffering and the most vulnerable. Reach out to the stranger and love your neighbor even if he doesn’t look or believe as you do. At some point, however, much of organized Christianity returned to its insular and provincial instincts by neglecting the best of the church founder’s inspirational teachings. Evangelical White Christian nationalists took command of most Protestant narratives while a conservative male hierarchy assumed control over the prevailing Catholic narrative. The hard right subverted compassionate spiritual missions to turn religion into a transactional political tool.

In a way, this was a mini-version of the old Orwellian nightmare. The world was turned upside down where up became down, black became white, war became peace. Most importantly, religion became a weapon to rationalize greed and racial animus while villifying and even attacking the very victims of institutional oppression. I can find nothing supporting such a perspective in the New Testament.

This is not surprising. Thoughout history, the narratives that govern our essential institutions (religious organizations being important examples) have reflected entrenched paradigms supportive of existing political structures. Religious orthodoxy tends to reflect and justify extent imbalances of both power and treasure. And so, it is not surprising when religious leaders gather around the most depraved piece of human garbage to live in the White House in order to heap egregious praise on our chief pathological narcissist.

Conventional religious leaders, in the main, do well when they reinforce popular prejudices, not oppose them. That is business as usual. Still, I am appalled when those who evoke the name of Christ the most simultaneously reject his core message with such considered ease. Odd, is it not?

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Another recent event caught my attention. The new democratic- socialist mayor of New York was sworn in recently. During his inauguration, he revisited an assertion made by former Democratic President Bill Clinton during his 1996 State of the Union address. Bill asserted that ‘the era of big government is over.’ This reflected his preferment for what was known as the third-way approach to politics and to governance. Bill thought there might be areas of compromise with the opposition even as Newt Gingrich was seeking total power for Republicans in an increasingly hyper- partisan political world. He sought to appeal to those purported to reside in the middle of the political spectrum. It was a noble, if futile, gesture.

This got me thinking. One successful aspect of the default narrative governing political thought in recent decades runs like this … bigger government means inefficiency and, more critically, the loss of personal freedom. That assertion seems reasonable but is it axiomatically valid?

I don’t have time for a complete argument here. But I will make one observation. President Reagan reframed our American approach to government by asserting some 45 years ago that government is not the solution to our problems, it is the cause.

Arguably, his argument was questionable. After all, there were many things of which America could be proud at the time. Our public debt was reasonable. Poverty and inequality were at historic lows. Our education and other essential systems were the envy of the globe. Most importantly, upward social mobility was feasible. I am an example of that and, trust me, if I could move up the socio-economic ladder then literally anyone could. However, that would be true only if the public sector offered opportunity-sets conducive to personal mobility, as it did in my youth.

The new paradigm introduced by Reaganomics was a cyclical and devastating pattern of starving public resources, then eroding the quality of the public services supported by these resources. Then, conservatives would blame the victims themselves for what amounted to a systemic rape of our service systems. The dissatisfaction with starved public services inevitably would be blamed on excessive spending and government incompetence.

The solution was always the same … even less government and more spending cuts. At the top of the response list to any crisis was a conservative favorite … cut taxes, especially on the wealthy. Trump’s tax cuts and the DOGE fiasco at the start of his second circus a year ago are examples of the latest rounds of such insanity.

Back to the original question, is less government better? Forget all the global metrics showing America is now lagging far behind its peers in handling poverty and inequality, falling behind in health and education outcomes, and now lagging in our long- touted national claim to fame of upward social mobility. To be even-handed, I might note that all is not negative. Less government, in fact, is very good for some … the uber wealthy.

A quick analysis … the top 400 Americans were subject to an effective tax rate of less than 24 percent by the end of Trump’s first term. At the same time, the typical U.S. tax payer was subject to a 30 percent hit on their income (all taxes). In fact, the richest 400 families paid less taxes than fully half of all their fellow Americans. Warren Buffet was correct when he noted that he pays proportionally less in taxes than does his secretary.

The weirdness of our situation becomes more striking when only federal income taxes are examined. The top 400 get hit with a meager 8 percent tax bill, well below the 13 percent paid by working class stiffs. If the uber-wealthy paid just the rate we impose on working Americans, we would collect well over $500 billion in needed revenues, with some estimates approaching a trillion dollars. Think how we could reduce the national debt if we restored a progressive tax system. Think how much we could invest in science, in education, in health, in our infrastructure, in emerging technologies with these added revenues.

So, does the average Joe enjoy more freedom with less government. Think about that proposition for a moment. Fewer services and public oversight permits an oligarchy to run things. Inequality in the U.S. has never been higher. It would be foolish, if not dangerous, to assume that the new economic titans who command ever more control over the essential institutions (media, justice, education, health, etc.) will function in the interests of the common man. I know of no examples where this fantasy has been a reality. Do you?

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I have more random thoughts, quite a few more, but I will stop now. I hope to generate more succinct statements in the future, starting now. That won’t always be easy since I suffer from a well-known affliction … diarrhea of the brain and fingers. But my intentions are good 😌.