Welcome to the blog!
This country clearly experienced some sort of dissociative event earlier this month, and now we communally face four years of fact-fighting and Twitter tantrums as a result. We can’t know at this point what his actual governance will look like, but early signs suggest continued nods to our ruling class and a hanging fog of cloudy nepotism (just as he promised, right working class whites?). The mission here at DOD is to share information on this spectacle, occasionally evangelize, and invite you to contribute.
Our President-elect won on a campaign promise of making the country “great again” (you may have heard). Setting aside the lazy emptiness of that platitude, I would ask you to consider as you visit DOD what it is that makes America great. There’s no doubt that our merit-based system bestows any individual with the right skills and commitment the opportunity to make Trumploads of money or achieve peak levels of success. On paper, that system is designed to extend that same tabula rasa to each of us, regardless of the circumstance of our birth (see Obama, Barack H.). That possibility is – in a word – great. But the country’s esteem must extend beyond the unrestricted capacity to earn or ladder-climb it affords us. It’s a topic that will get revisited often here at DOD, but today I’ll simply suggest we remember our unique ability to make good government. I acknowledge that we’ve abused this ability, and our system has been broken for quite some time. But each of us has a voice, and the opportunity to organize, influence, and educate. We get to determine who represents us and drafts our legislation, and to hold them accountable to do so equitably. My father used to say that those who didn’t vote relinquished the right to complain. Perhaps we’ve entered a new phase in history, where our responsibility extends beyond an annual trip to the ballot box.
While it will always be fun to highlight the President-elect’s ridiculous daily assertions and/or the embittered white victims he’s emboldened, DOD won’t be all politics all the time. There will be levity. There will be snark. There may be gratuitous pictures of food. For example, I made phillies last night:
So good.
Anyway, please come back. These are hard times. Let’s do it together.
I agree with you that America is a great country, but I see that slipping away. We are surpassed by many countries in the areas of education, healthcare, childcare, workers’ rights, equal pay and social responsibility, in general. We need look no further than the Nordic countries as a prime example. I disagree, however, that all individuals, regardless of the nature(and expressly not nurture) of their existence can achieve peak levels of success. Tell that to the kid living in Cabrini Green squalor who is more worried about getting food on the table than attending school. Additionally, I understand why our founding fathers made us a republic and not a democracy, however maybe we need to revisit that system and its applicability to today’s world. Because, while each individual has a voice and a vote many young people chose to stay home November 9. And in closing, my dad, like your dad gave me voting advice as well, he used to tell me that if I didn’t educate myself on each candidate, I had no right to vote.