Who Benefits?

Cassandra was a Trojan princess given the gift of foresight by Apollo who, since she rejected him, accompanied it with the curse of not being believed. I don’t claim Cassandra’s flawless pre-knowledge but at this point in my life and America’s history, I think I understand how she must have felt.

Let me picture her for a moment. She has offered the prophecy that Troy is going to fall to the besieging Greeks. She pleads with the Trojans to listen. They don’t of course—that’s her curse after all. Troy falls and she is doomed to live the rest of her short life as a Greek prisoner, trapped in the guilt that if perhaps if she had only been more persuasive, if she had only couched things in better terms, if she had only chosen different words, that perhaps she might have been heard and might have saved her city and family. Apollo indeed had his revenge.

We all live with what-ifs. When you’ve lived as long as I have and have been around power, as I was—on the sidelines admittedly but I could see there from where I was—most people develop a wise and seemly skepticism—or at least ought to.

One of the things you learn is that the ways things are spun are seldom the way they are. The wise person approaches every proposal with the question “Who benefits?” So often otherwise altruistic leaders succumb to the loudest voices among their constituents. Nothing then can get done unless somebody benefits and it is not always the people in whose name some contract or program is funded.

This principle applies as much to contracts to build schools and roads as it does to wars and nuclear-non-proliferation treaties. It particularly applies to groups wanting approval of constitutional amendments. Someone is benefiting. Is it whom you believe it to be? Find out and you find out what really is happening.

Eight years ago, I found myself faced with a presidential candidate appealing to patriotism and the “American Way.” My bull meter turned on. Who’s benefiting? The candidate wanted to lift all “interference” on business. He said removing all restraint would enhance competition and would create jobs. He promoted the ideal of a world in which business unimpeded by government would raise all boats.

I didn’t have to be Cassandra to predict what was likely to happen given the reality of human and corporate greed. He may have been wedded to the idea of a free economy but his supporters were committed to profit. Who benefited was every corporation and entity that could afford a lobbyist and wanted to feed at the public trough. I was perplexed and still am: how could anyone not understand the greed and public damage such a policy would inevitably arouse?

Through the years, I’ve learned to be skeptical. I’ve watched money change hands supposedly for some noble purpose but actually for personal ego and future favor. I’ve watched people not in the know think they have “won” some benefit without understanding how they have been pawns in some process far larger than they. Sometimes it’s been so obvious that I’ve had to conclude that people were being willfully ignorant.

Above all, I’ve learned that human nature doesn’t change. It was just as greedy and willful in Greece and Troy as it is today. Even the Church has had to reign in unruly human beings: the Ten Commandments are basic rules for people who have to live together.

As of October 2008, what frightens me most, though, is the possibility that the lessons of controlling human greed have apparently not been learned.

Cassandra today might tell us to move beyond phony idealism and old, comforting “truths” and accept that we are just as prone to error as the Trojans. She might challenge us to grow as a nation by allowing ourselves to recognize that pride is blinding us to those who cynically profit from it. We ought collectively to be able to look into the mirror and shudder at how we tolerate personal attacks, name-calling, appeals to emotion and prejudice, flag-waving, half-truths, and the artificial us-versus-them. On the contrary, we need to be clearheaded to recognize where the power really is and what it’s being used for.

Power is hard-edged, silent, and unemotional. I’ve seen it. It’s a coiled snake waiting for opportunity. It uses patriotism and vanity as the venom to remove its opponents. It never believes in intangibles like patriotism. It hisses with pleasure when people waste their time squabbling over lapel pins because they never ask the real questions. It shakes the rattle in its tail to panic us into feeding it. And until we as a nation are mature enough to confront and control this power, it will continue to distract us from our responsibility of determining and taking responsibility for our future.