I’d like to ask what’s “radical”? A lot of our political conversation is about what is and is not “extreme” or “radical.” That’s about policy and it’s important. But what does it mean?
Should we avoid being radical by behaving like everyone else? Would we avoid being radical by falling over the cliff like lemmings because other lemmings are doing it too? Is average OK because everyone around us must know what they’re doing? People do things in groups they would never do on their own. Forgive me, but that’s the psychology of mobs, which made storming the Capitol on January 6, 2021; rioters were surrounded by others urging them on. It’s why social media can be poisonous, feeding people steady diets of the violent radicalism they’d already shown interest in. If we are going to survive, we have to do better.
Here’s what I think is radical:
Radical is the environmental change that’s coming if we don’t have a Green New Deal – and fast. It will kill and embitter not only our lives but our children’s and grandchildren’s.
Radical is the racial and ethnic nationalism that threatens to tear this country apart, tear apart the business, infrastructure, labor force, science and education that we’ve been living off and building on.
Radical is letting our health systems fail in the midst of global pandemics. And since climate change feeds and spreads illnesses that a cooler climate used to keep far away from most of us, we will keep having pandemics.
Radical is refusing to defend ourselves from infectious diseases because some people think they know more than scientists who’ve spent their lives studying how to control infectious diseases, even after scientists developed vaccines at “warp speed” that could have saved the lives and health of millions of Americans.
Radical is letting our water systems fail us, so the water isn’t fit to drink, or so that we and our crops are parched by droughts, like the droughts in other countries we’ve sent relief to, except there’ll be no one left to help us here.
Radical is a Supreme Court that won’t lift a finger to guard democracy from politicians intent on defending themselves from the voters by creating voting districts they can’t lose. Radical is a Supreme Court that closes its eyes to the threat of firearms to ourselves, our children, our neighbors and our democracy. Radical is a Supreme Court that considers nothing more sacred than blocking every attempt we make to save ourselves and our country.
Are Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders radical? Many of their proposals, like the Green New Deal, are an effort to conserve what we’ve had and help us build better lives. Is that radical? Or is letting deadly problems fester radical?
The reason why some countries have suffered so cruelly from natural disasters, is that they turned against themselves, fighting each other instead of drought, disease and climate change. If we’re so wrapped up in fighting each other that we can’t address the threats to our very existence as people, families and nation, then we’ll disappear like ancient civilizations without so much as gravestones. Are we better than that? Can we deal with our problems? Or are we just preparing to fall off the cliff so the vultures can pick the dead flesh off our bones?
Steve Gottlieb’s latest book is Unfit for Democracy: The Roberts Court and The Breakdown of American Politics. He is the Jay and Ruth Caplan Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Albany Law School, served on the New York Civil Liberties Union board, on the New York Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in Iran.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.