Andrew Yang’s Band-Aid Solutions
On Tuesday, Exeter alumnus and Democratic candidate for president Andrew Yang came to inform our community about his bid for the presidency. When I first heard his name tied to the words “presidential candidate,” however, I was honestly confused. It was 2018, and I hadn’t paid close attention to the election. Even when I thought about the term “presidential candidate,” names such as Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris came to mind instead. After Googling Andrew Yang and listening to his speech at assembly, I began to learn more about what he represented and what ideas he puts at the forefront of his platform. His talk made me reflect more on the upcoming 2020 presidential election.
Yang, with his relative youth and lack of political experience, is part of the worldwide trend of leaders who proudly call themselves “anti-establishment”—a group that includes powerful leaders spanning the political spectrum. Their campaigns have one common feature: ill-formed plans with more shock value than anything else. For Trump, this means the Mexican border wall; for Macron, it means radical reduction in regulation and taxation for the rich. For Yang, it is “universal basic income”: giving everyone a steady income every month, regardless of whether they make no money or millions. Every candidate presents their issue like it is the panacea which will cure America of its ills. Again and again, we are told that all we need to do is lower immigration, make the rich pay and give everyone more money.
This is what I would call fake populism—a tool used by candidates of the system to distract Americans from the issues which truly confront our nation.
What, then, are those issues? Why would “the system” want to ignore them?
A key issue, in my opinion, is the “military-industrial complex”—a term which refers, in a loose sense, to the link between the interests of multinational corporations and the U.S. political and military elite. It’s why we spend more than any other country in the world on our military and accumulate trillions of dollars in debt to topple a foreign leader who is not an immediate threat to our country at all.
This complex is the closest thing to a root illness in our country today. If we analyze the hot button topics on the news, we can see that most, ultimately, lead back to the military-industrial complex. Take the recent debate about funding Trump’s wall. Yet, every day, we spend billions of excess dollars on military spending, including toilets in the Defense Department that cost hundreds of dollars or arbitrary foreign aid to the Zionist regime. Another example is the issue of Trump’s “travel ban.” President Obama and other top Democrats accused Trump of discriminating against Arabs and Muslims, and these concerns are valid and legitimate. However, it was surprising that President Obama was suddenly concerned about Arabs and Muslims given his wanton authorization of drone strikes which killed innocent Arab civilians at will. This same hypocrisy applies to the self-proclaimed “fiscal conservatives” who refuse to fund welfare yet vote in support of every huge Defense spending bill.
What makes this even more interesting, and obvious, is the complicity of top politicians on these issues. Figures like Bernie Sanders, who was an anti-interventionist activist for many years, suddenly became silent about the need to take on the military-industrial complex. And this includes Trump, who expressed support for limiting military intervention and reducing aid for the Zionist regime, immediately caved to the foreign policy establishment within the Republican party.
In 2020, we might have the opportunity to finally break that cycle of silence. Politicians like Tulsi Gabbard, a congresswoman and candidate for the Democratic primary, have begun to express the anger of many Americans and challenge the military-industrial complex. In order for true change to arrive in America, we need a candidate who is willing to confront the system head on by offering a true alternative that goes beyond mere demagogic speech. A candidate like that will be hard to find, but if we don’t find one, our country could be irreparably harmed.