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For those of you who aren't from the Midwest or don't have an agricultural bent, seed corn is the promise for the next year, the grain that you set aside to plant next year's crops, the grain that is your commitment to the future. The only reason you eat your seed corn is because you are beyond starving, because it is the only thing that stands between you and dying.
For decades, starting in the thirties, our country arranged our affairs so that we never needed to touch our seed corn. In fact we were so prosperous that we set aside even more seed corn, year in, year out. We made, and kept, promises to not just our children, but to our elderly, disabled and poor as well. Literacy levels went up, life expectancies lengthened, poverty levels went down, commitments were demanded, and given, for a more equal society, one in which a person was indeed judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin, who they chose to love, or what their sex was.
I remember this time vividly, because I grew up in the culminating years of this era, the sixties and seventies. Progress, and a liberal spirit was in the air, and anything seemed possible. As a society, we were working towards fulfilling our commitment towards everybody. Were these ideal times, no, I'm not trying to wax nostalgic about some mythical past when all was wonderful. But the fact of the matter is that progress was being made, our society, our country was moving forward. We weren't eating our seed corn.
Yet somewhere during the late seventies, early eighties, we changed direction. People in power, whether corporate power or civic power, became greedy, and started sneaking a bit of our seed corn into their own pockets. At first, it wasn't noticeable, at least not on a national scale. The local Zenith plant closing up and moving to Mexico didn't make national headlines, though it was a blow on the local level. The shoe factories that dotted Midwestern small towns, closing up and moving on, didn't seem important, except to the small town locals, but it was a bit of seed corn gone here, a bit more gone there.
Under the Reagan administration, lots of seed corn was taken away from us. Rollbacks in regulations, cuts in civil rights, and society becoming more focused on the individual over the group started becoming prominent features of life in these United States. Sure, there was progress that was still being made, there was still a large contingent of people in this country that were devoted to the old dream, and devoted to making a reality, a country that was a land of opportunity for all, a country that was devoted to making everybody's life better.
But increasingly the ethos of promoting the individual good over the collective good were ascendant. Instead of caring for the poor among us, they were demonized. Instead of seeing it as a welcome duty to care for our elderly and disabled it came to be seen as a burden instead. The seed corn of our country became, somehow, seen as the birthright of certain, already wealthy, individuals instead of being the birthright of all. Trickle down became the mantra instead of the collective good raising all boats.
We have watched as the pace of this change only increased. Corrupt, greedy corporate heads supplanted fighters for the civic good as the heroes and role models in our country. The philosophy of Iacocca supplanted that of Martin Luther King. Greed went from being one of the Seven Deadly Sins to becoming Good. Sadly, our laws, our business practices, our ethos followed down this path as well. Our stock of seed corn started being parceled out to those who already had plenty, and if you dared to point how unfair this was, you were demonized and dismissed.
Now, here we are, deep in the midst of gorging on our seed corn. With tax rates on the rich and corporate at an all time low. With our dreams of providing certain basics, such as food, healthcare and shelter to all now dust, a cruel joke. With our children living in poverty, with our schools becoming corporate indoctrination institutions, a society where the penultimate ethical rule is every man for himself.
Not every person subscribes to this vision, perhaps not even a majority. But the forces arrayed against us are large, and more importantly they are vastly powerful. They have seized the reigns of power from the people and appropriated them for their own use. They have corrupted our politics, our political parties, our civic institutions, even our culture to the point where those of us who still remember and fight for the old dream are now marginalized, to the point where that old dream is, at best considered to be an old fashioned relic being promoted by those dirty hippies, at worst it is considered a threat to the very well being of this country. To the point where "liberal" and "common good" are concepts that are shunned and mocked across the political spectrum, a political spectrum that has, in the mainstream of our political discourse, been narrowed to some point just to the right of Eisenhower and just to the left of Hitler, depending upon which party is in power.
This thirty plus year binge on our seed corn has taken its toll. We have fallen desperately behind in the areas of education, health care, poverty, the vast canyon of wealth inequality, the list goes on and on, and all of those indicators show that we are a country in serious, precipitous decline. We have a sitting President who tacitly condones the idea of cuts to Social Security and Medicare. We have one of his potential opponents for the WH who wanted his state to secede and doesn't believe in basic science.
We aren't so foregone however that we can't turn this tide around. There is still a large minority, if not a small majority, of people who hold on to that old dream. But it is going to take all of us, working together in the old grand tradition, in order to achieve the reversal of fortune that we seek. It is also going to require us to form new alliances, create new collective vehicles to convey our power, for the old ones are sadly corrupted and broken. They have been bought out and hollowed out, leaving a shell that is unsuitable for our work.
So I urge you, the time is now, to get together with your friends, your family, your community. Form your own local, regional, and even national organizations and groups to start fighting back the tide. There is power in numbers, strength in the group, but we must join together in order to exert that power. The time is short, our stock of seed corn is becoming alarmingly low. It is time to rise up together and take back the reigns of power.
It is time to plant the seed corn, time to see it flourish and grow, and time to reap the bountiful crop it will bring, a crop that is not only large enough to feed our society, but also large enough to pass on an ever larger amount of seed corn to future generations.
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