For 242 years we have been a nation of wannabe do-gooders, the offspring of those who sought to escape remnants of the European church/state alliances under the will and the tyranny of the Inquisitions and the Reformation. Our first European settlers landed in ignorance aboard the Mayflower. Fortunately, they found themselves among friendly natives who taught them how to grow crops and how to survive in a wild new land. Since then, we have blithered and blundered in our objectives first mistreating, stealing from, corralling, and making Native Americans outcasts in their own land; thence, we moved on to engaging in human trafficking while tearing Black families apart and trading them like cattle; then onward to taking land from Mexicans while erecting borders to keep them out of the land they owned before we imposed our illegal annexations on them. We defeated them in an unjust war, then we took 1/3 this land from them. To the victor go the spoils is hardly a mantra for freedom lovers. We brought in enough Chinese laborers to build our railways westward to the Pacific while letting them starve and die from disease and neglect. And then we put Americans of Japanese descent into concentration camps because they looked like the enemies we were fighting in WWII. Still, we muddled through while alternately demonizing different groups of would-be immigrants: the Irish, the Italians, the Germans, the French, the Greeks, the Turks, the Poles  and now the Muslims. It has been a highly spotted past in which we asserted we were God’s chosen people, marching under the banner of “Manifest Destiny,” a proclamation from Providence that this land was our land from sea to shining sea. On our calmer days and among those with clearer consciences, we were a “work in progress,” a melting pot of many racial and ethnic groups working together in search of freedom and a life worthy of our principles.

Today is a new day. We are all survivors—from those against whom we sought refuge, from international terrorists and warmakers, and from those who shunned the hand of friendship extended to us. We are also survivors from ourselves and our mistreatment of others. Meanwhile, the battles, the lies, and the achievements have continued, although our conditions of life have changed. From arable lands, temperate climes, navigable waterways, an abundance of natural resources and superb brainpower among the many, we flourished into a nation to be reckoned with on the world stage. Our wealth numbers have risen such that we now claim the number one position among all nations.

Today, however, a new enemy looms large. He is quieter, not often seen. He lives in seclusion, partakes of the good life wantonly. Through secret dealings and manipulation—and a myriad of laws in his favor—he has amassed fortunes in corporate stocks, bonds, and personal real estate. He builds walls around his living quarters; he protects himself and his property with guards; he uses surveillance devices to stand guard while he orders his underlings to do his bidding. He is the ultra-right wing conservative, and he practices his ideology with all the fervor of a satanic cult leader.

During the past 35 years or so those who aspire to ascend to the inner sanctum of the ultra right within our ranks have been busy dissembling America from its foundational values of equality, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and reassembling it into a confederation of wealthy dynasties permanently separated from its vassals. The new structure rejects meritocracy and upward mobility among the brethren, seeks a minimalist government and total allegiance to the wealthy by carefully vetted court justices; a central bank under its direction; and a standing army with complete loyalty to the aristocracy. Even the inept Trump administration has nevertheless accelerated this agenda by locking in several of the key components: the elimination of the inheritance tax; putting a majority of loyalists on the Supreme Court; installing a conservative lawyer as head of the Federal Reserve; and the installation of utterly incompetent loyalist heads of education, the EPA, HUD, DOJ, CIA, FBI, to name but a few.

They have also made gerrymandering of voting districts such a common practice that few free- minded journalists even bother to mention it nowadays. Becoming registered to vote has gotten more, rather than less difficult. Propaganda is the informational medium that controls and emanates from the White House; fake news and dumbed-down Tweets have replaced civil discourse, and due process is the governing mantra for misogynist little boys who can’t keep their hands, minds, and underwear in their own drawers.

At the head of this movement is a small but very wealthy band of elitists. To name them Is to know them, so shallow are their minds, hearts, and objectives. They love the life of opulence. Just read from a list of the 100 wealthiest individuals in America. Eighty of them are in this group.

So here we are today: The richest country in the history of the world with the most unequal distribution of wealth of all the top 30 countries in the world. The bottom 50 percent has no wealth at all, the next 40 percent has but 10 percent of the wealth, and the top 10 percent has 90 percent of the wealth. And with each passing day that inequality gets worse.  Techo-giants have emerged while consolidating power concurrent with de-regulation, thus allowing them more control. More and more tax cuts to the ultra wealthy mean higher and higher budget deficits for the rest of us thus putting all safety net programs at risk.  Putting together the method and means for changing this state of affairs will take a monumental effort the likes of which this world has never seen. Thus far, the best and the brightest from among us have yet to develop such a plan.  But do it, we must.  This and the next essay will only sketch the outline of such a plan.

To begin, we need a statement of objectives. To be even more specific, we need a grand vision of the future that lays out in the clearest terms what it is we want to achieve,

A Grand Vision of the Future

Our guiding principles are clear:

• The four principles stated so eloquently in our Declaration of Independence are still our guiding stars. They are equality, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Every policy, every statement of purpose, and every action we take must be grounded in those principles. Any that subtracts from them, is unworthy of our efforts. There can be no exceptions.

• The Lady in the Harbor is our inspiration and our silent sentinel: Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me; I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

• Our resolve is set forth in the final words of our Declaration of Independence: And for the support of this Declaration [vision], with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

Our specific goals are:

• Our economic goal is to roll back the inequality measure by 50 percent, from a Gini Coefficient of 0.88 to 0.44. This level is consistent with world standards that show the great majority of the conditions of poverty will fall as a nation moves away from gross inequality to tolerable inequality that allows for incentives to those who are more creative and produce more.

• Creating more prosperity means we must create more opportunities for all able-bodied men and women in this land. That means we need more economic growth, more jobs, better paying jobs, more tax revenues, and less debt. We also need to move away from resources and methods that pollute our lakes, streams, and the atmosphere, and toward a cleaner future. We can achieve them all with more robust and fairer economic policies, and with a set of human values that are worthy of our nature.

• We know that social ills such as crime, illiteracy, incarcerations, and drug usage are conditions of poverty. But even as these conditions improve, many who are caught up in them will still need help in their recoveries. We will need to concentrate on helping those who are too entrenched in poverty.

If we can agree on these elements of prosperity, and on lives that are free from the social ills that are by-products of inequality, then we can focus our efforts on how to achieve much more quality in the lives of everyone.

[Next: Specific actions needed to defeat the ultra-right agenda]