Bigger Agendas

…reflections on the election and what comes next

Astral Graffiti, watercolor collage by Cliff Scholz. Photo Cliff Scholz.

It’s the day after the 2024 Presidential Election, and whether you’re celebrating, mourning, or indifferent to the outcomes, I offer this sobering thought: It’s not the points of disagreement between the two dominant political parties that represent the biggest threat to lives here in the U.S. and around the world, but instead their broad areas of agreement. 

Take a look at what gets funded, what gets passed into law. This is what the folks on both sides of the aisle basically agree on. Yes, there are certainly very legitimate areas of disagreement between the parties, and I do not deny that. But my sense is that these differences tend to get weaponized to distract and divide people and push through other agendas. 

Here are three:

1. Toxic Food and Medicine 

Observed agenda: Base your entire nation’s food supply on sick, chemically dependent crop plants grown in dead, toxic, impoverished soils. Make sure the farm animals that are fed those same crops are contained and sedentary. Presto! Point for point, your population will follow that model. People will be sicker, more toxic, more chemically dependent, more sedentary and easier to contain and control. Both major parties promote this deadly paradigm, and have for a very long time. And, as an added bonus from the point of view of big business, the growing numbers of children with chronic health problems associated with such a diet have the potential of being lifelong consumers of prescription medications. 

2. Universal Surveillance 

Observed agenda: Treat every citizen like a felon on probation who requires an electronic tether for monitoring. Build out a system of tracking and surveillance and increase its capacities with each passing year. The bonus here is if people can actually be convinced that their tethers are status symbols or fashion statements. Extra bonus points if your citizens become neurochemically and behaviorally addicted to these gizmos, as well as dependent on them for everything we used to do quite well without them for, including making telephone calls, sending notes and letters, taking pictures, finding our ways to places and making good on our purchases. Bottom line, information is power and it is inevitable that such power will be abused. Nonetheless, for decades now, both major parties have promoted the development and accelerated deployment of this infrastructure of techno-totalitarianism. 

3. War 

Observed agenda: normalize and proliferate wars and proxy wars around the planet. The war-as-a-first-resort international relations stance, and especially the pursuit of protracted, unwinnable military conflicts, will weaken the nation through fiscal irresponsibility and the ill-will generated abroad. This tends keep our own citizens either in a state that is either emotionally apathetic or tense while they pay through the nose at home and in body bags overseas, all while enriching political cronies to fund election campaigns. Such a deal. Also, killing people overseas and destroying their countries is the most effective method to create instant, highly radicalized enemies. Bonus! Since these enemies can represent real threats, that’s the perfect rationale needed to justify further military spending and escalation. Bombs, like heroin, are kind of ideal from the perspective of big business as a single-use manufactured item because the first use makes the next use all the more likely. Both major parties routinely fund and say yes to all of this.

Okay so that’s the list. At least, it’s enough for now. I’m sure there will be people who apologize for or rationalize each one of these longstanding policy agendas that span multiple administrations. So I’d like to at least touch on some of these imagined objections right here and now. 

Regarding food and medicine, for example, some might say we cannot feed the world on organic and we need to spray poison on our food crops. Okay, I can hear that, and as a person who has been talking to knowledgeable folks about this stuff for a while, I have to say, yes, my understanding is that it would take some time to transition, and yes, food might also cost more in the long run. That might seem like a bad plan given food prices and food insecurity these days, but as a farmer friend of mine quoted recently, if you think organic food is expensive, try cancer. To which he might have added diabetes, heart disease and so on down the list. All of these diseases have empty, toxic, pro-inflammatory food as a primary contributing factor. And right now, something like $1 of each $5 of GDP goes to the health care sector. How can that be a positive trend? I mean seriously, how’s that working out for us? Personally I think we should shift our spending away from pharmaceuticals and expensive medicine and toward farmers who are learning how to produce nontoxic, high-quality, nutritious food. 

Regarding agenda item #2, as far as the tech thing goes, that represents a very thorny issue because as it now stands, it’s just hard to get by without these cell phones and computers. The infrastructure is everywhere. Plus I think deep down a lot of folks in this country want to imagine themselves as characters in a Star Trek or Star Wars movie. Even without that cultural indoctrination, technological development has always been a hallmark of American cultural identity. And that’s a good thing. However, skepticism and suspicion of accumulating power are also strands woven into traditional U.S. cultural identity. So I’m hoping that somehow we can find a way of communicating with one another and navigating to our weekend parties and so on that is less intrusive, invasive, omnipresent, and opaque from the user side than what’s going on currently. 

Finally, as for perpetual wars with ever-climbing military budgets in a self-reinforcing feedback loop of horror, my understanding is that the popular consensus among ordinary people of all political stripes around the world is nearly always anti war. This is why the people who want to pursue war as a business proposition have historically had an uphill climb. Problem is, warmongers are highly motivated and well organized. This is not necessarily true of the general populace. And this is perhaps especially so when you have a general populace worn out by poor health, intentionally traumatized in all kinds of ways, distracted by electronics and working overtime to just to survive. That’s what we’re dealing with, and we didn’t get here by accident.

Still, I have hope for the future. The biggest thing is to shift our expectations of our political leadership, and I suggest the best way to do that is by reinvigorating our own. The folks in DC aren’t leaders so much as followers, and here’s the thing: that’s how it’s supposed to be. They are supposed to represent us. 

Next question to ask is: Who are we? 

I positively wince as I say this, but: Welcome to the run-up of the 2026 election! What’s worth standing up for between now and the midterms — and beyond? I ask because we really can’t expect politicians to be any more courageous on our behalf than we are. 

And honestly in the long run I don’t think it matters that much if you’re taking a victory lap right now or just starting a period of mourning. Do those things, yes. They may be necessary. But, condolences or congrats, wherever you’re at, the next step when you’re ready is to pick an issue that aligns with your values and start acting as if it really matters: learn, meet, talk, organize, and make some noise.* 

Here’s a famous quote from Frederick Douglass to finish on:

 “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” 

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*link provided here is to the short lead song on a 1965 LP release by singer-songwriter Tom Paxton. I believe the“Hazard” reference in the song lyrics is probably about labor actions involving mine workers in Hazard, Kentucky, which were fairly recent at the time.