Common Sense About the Common Good

There are still some people in public life who believe in the common good, however antiquated that may sound. In spite of the libertarian, market-intoxicated invisible hand that keeps clutching the holy grail of individual rights, some people see a bigger, more nuanced picture. They're out there with legislative and regulatory graders, trying to level the field so that everyone can play. These people are accused of the sin of supporting income redistribution. They come under blistering fire for harboring gasp socialist sympathies. I call them public servants. A few such women and men remain in Washington, despite the irresistible pull of greed that motivates most of their colleagues to get out of bed in the morning. Public servants sustain a vision that struggles to calibrate the rights of individuals against the well-being of the whole. It's like marriage or parenting on a grand scale. How do I get my needs met while paying attention to your needs? Elizabeth Warren brings that vision to the Senate.

Warren cleans up good. I first saw her in 2011 at the Itam lodge in Pittsfield when she was running for office. She was smart, but seriously wonky, in keeping with her career as a Harvard professor with the snoozy specialty of bankruptcy law. She stood behind a lectern in a dark outfit and delivered a well-crafted speech on the decline and fall of the American middle class. Fast forward to earlier this month when I heard her again at a Town Hall at Berkshire Community College. Elizabeth, in an orange silk jacket that seemed to illustrate the fire she was radiating, bobbed and weaved around the stage like a featherweight prizefighter, quick, on target and lethal. At 68, she is on the brink of seventysomething and she is not taking no for an answer. Not when it comes to healthcare, student debt or any other aspect of public education currently presided over by her nemesis, Betsy De Vos. Warren has even launched a website called De Vos Watch to keep us focused and informed about the rightwing seizure of our schools and the threat to opportunities to our grandchildren. She is unapologetic in her recognition that a society that refuses to educate its children or provide healthcare for its sick, its disabled, is a society that is already writing its own eulogy.

It's a big step for me to attach to Elizabeth Warren. Much easier to identify with outsiders. The women I've most admired throughout my life have been rebels, noisemakers, people who thumbed their noses at convention. Marge Piercy and Grace Paley, who immersed themselves in political activism even as they wrote luminous and idiosyncratic poetry and prose. My Aunt Julie, who never married, had a string of lovers when that sort of thing was frowned upon, and carried her prized possessions around in a duffle-sized handbag. These were messy women, maybe even nasty, certainly not camera-ready.

Sitting in the stands yelling at the umpire, generally raising hell, is sometimes easier than occupying a seat at the table where you have to show up every day and do whatever you can to actually solve problems. In the past five years, Warren has settled into her seat and made it her business to read the weaponized fine print that those in power use to squeeze the lifeblood out of everyone else. The minutia of consumer protection, student debt, financial services reform, and now, healthcare. Through it all, she talks about the social contract, the unwritten law that constitutes the foundation of our commitment to the common good and the irrefutable evidence that the foundation is cracking.

The social contract is frayed, she says, without sugar-coating it. If we don't see ourselves in the anguished expression of the overworked single mother next door, we are not seeing either one of us. We cannot continue to drive over the same structurally compromised bridge and expect it to last forever, or collapse under the other guy's car. If we do not even believe in the common good and do not care to contribute to it, then it's a given that the air will become more toxic for everyone, the water will become less potable for everyone. More people will suffer from poor health and be less able to afford medical care. More children will grow to adulthood without the most rudimentary skills that are needed to survive in 21st century America. Hearing Elizabeth Warren speak earlier this month reassured me that belief in the common good is an ailing, but not yet endangered species. We must protect it as if our lives depended on it.


seventysomething now has its own Facebook page. I will be posting the blog there as well as poetry and other work by wonderful artists. Please Like the new page. 

Please share seventysomething with other interested parties. I welcome your comments on email, Facebook or on this blog. If you do not have a gmail account, comment as Anonymous, but please tell me who you are in the body of the remarks. Click on comments (it will say how many there are), select Anonymous from the drop-down menu, enter your comment and hit publish. If you do comment, I will respond on the blog, so please check back so our conversation can continue.