Sid and I exchanged our presents early this year—it was hardly even December but this seemed to be an appropriate moment, perhaps because we needed to cheer one another up. There are simply times when it doesn’t seem good to be alive and with the economic meltdown and the violence in India, I’d say this is one of them.
I don’t want to over exaggerate the difficulties—after all, it’s hard to find people who lived in a time that wasn’t desperate. The various groups who spread across Europe—Celts, Gauls, Norse, Germanic, Romans among them—didn’t occupy the land without inflicting harm on the previous inhabitants. Even when the various tribes had settled into their areas, there were continuing disputes over boundaries, trade, religion, and power. Asia and the Steppes have had an unquiet history as have the various regions of Africa.
More recently, our parents and grandparents lived through two world wars, a major depression, a police action in Korea, whatever it was in Viet Nam, followed by two gulf wars, and this doesn’t even begin to include various hot spots. Fact is that the human species occupying the planet is as restless as the planet itself.
Even given all that, though, I find the current upheavals profoundly depressing. In WWII, at least, there was a relatively clear purpose and everyone was involved in one way or another, if only collecting scrap at home. Korea was further removed, but by the time of Viet Nam (when I first started teaching college English) things were murky indeed. Afghanistan seems more clear to me, but our decision to go into Iraq seems to have been based on whatever justification someone thought might work: Hey—if you don’t like the reason for this war, wait five minutes and I’ll come up with another one.
What sets this age apart, I think, is the understanding that much of it has descended into mindless and random violence. Consider the confusion about knowing who’s responsible for the explosions and rockets and bombs that fill our newspapers. Strange new hybrid groups spring up, detonate something (often themselves), and then disappear into the crowd. In Mumbai, the gunmen sought people with US and British passports (I would have been shot twice), but for what reason since most of the people they killed were Indian? It seems someone believes the greater the number of people killed, the more serious the purpose behind it, except that the purpose is sometimes not even clear either.
When I was in college some eons ago, I had an assigned reading on relativism. It disturbed me. It wasn’t that I minded different cultures and different beliefs (no—I don’t justify cannibalism just because it’s practiced in New Guinea--that, after all is not good manners to the person being subject to it). I objected to the lazy, intellectually bereft offshoot that claimed that something was right if it felt right at the time. I could accept different viewpoints as long as they were based on self-analysis and a modicum of respect and compassion. In today’s violence, I’m not seeing anything beyond the raw expression of passion and misogyny masquerading as purpose, perpetrated by a group of people who have raised personal vendetta to political philosophy. Don't they realize this is how Sicily managed to depopulate itself?
What scares the hell out of me, though, is not the violence, terrible as that is—but what will follow it. Even if all the perceived injustices in the world were to be removed: the kashmirs, the Palestinian state, Zimbabwe, and Sri Lanka among them—I am afraid that our species will just find other reasons to justify violence. Once this chain was begun, I truly see no end. I hope I am wrong, and I hope that someone will come forward with a magic way to end this cycle while we still have a planet left.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Monday, November 24, 2008
Meltdowns and Indian Summer
The two may be related if one assumes that the economy market has had something to do with global warming: an overheated financial world of profit at any cost producing an overheated planet busily choking itself with careless consumption. Or at least until recently.
I find it ironic that once people start conserving and saving, we’re told that we can’t stop the financial bleeding unless we buy the latest gas-guzzler or LCD television because we need to create jobs. Huh? I’m curious where will these jobs be. In China? We don’t create anything much in this country anymore. Our manufacturers found it cheaper to get the stuff made abroad. Now they wonder why we don’t have the money to buy their products.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I seem to remember that not too long ago spending was supposed to be our road to prosperity: those who could (and some who couldn’t) were to spend themselves mad for the sake of the economy with no thought given to where the money was coming from, except for tapping the equity in our houses. Someone must have figured that all that capital tied up in our houses was just sitting there, not really making money except for the homeowner. How wasteful when a buck could be made. Bye bye equity.
Someone could go insane trying to figure out all the ironies and inconsistencies.
Now it is Detroit with its hand out. Sorry. I don’t feel very loyal or sympathetic. We had one of the lemons from the 1980s. Even with proper, recommended care, the US made car self-destructed at 82,000 miles. The Toyota Camry we got next chugged along uncomplaining to 208,000 miles. I can do the arithmetic. Not even patriotism or Consumer’s Reports will make me buy an American car again. Fool me one, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Besides, I have the memory of an elephant when it comes to being taken. I can’t help feeling that with further bailouts the people in power—the carpetbaggers—are taking one last dip into the national till before it snaps shut on their fingers.
But it’s not just the national players being ugly. I read in the paper today about homeowners “considering” whether to make their mortgage payments either because they owe more than the house is worth (right now) or because they think they can become eligible for a handout after ninety days of non-payment if the government relief program kicks in. Everyone wants something for nothing and as quickly as possible.
Why should I be surprised by this behavior? This is how the corporate world and the government has operated—my mother called it behaving as if there is no tomorrow.
AOL has a slide show right now on its homepage about nineteen big-time crooks (Kenneth Lay, Milliken et al) and where they are now (in jail for the most part). What an example they set.
There are times when I feel like the woolly mammoth revealed by unseasonable melting in the arctic. I’m frozen in a situation not of my making, but I’m going to be paying the price of the meltdown along with everyone else.
I find it ironic that once people start conserving and saving, we’re told that we can’t stop the financial bleeding unless we buy the latest gas-guzzler or LCD television because we need to create jobs. Huh? I’m curious where will these jobs be. In China? We don’t create anything much in this country anymore. Our manufacturers found it cheaper to get the stuff made abroad. Now they wonder why we don’t have the money to buy their products.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I seem to remember that not too long ago spending was supposed to be our road to prosperity: those who could (and some who couldn’t) were to spend themselves mad for the sake of the economy with no thought given to where the money was coming from, except for tapping the equity in our houses. Someone must have figured that all that capital tied up in our houses was just sitting there, not really making money except for the homeowner. How wasteful when a buck could be made. Bye bye equity.
Someone could go insane trying to figure out all the ironies and inconsistencies.
Now it is Detroit with its hand out. Sorry. I don’t feel very loyal or sympathetic. We had one of the lemons from the 1980s. Even with proper, recommended care, the US made car self-destructed at 82,000 miles. The Toyota Camry we got next chugged along uncomplaining to 208,000 miles. I can do the arithmetic. Not even patriotism or Consumer’s Reports will make me buy an American car again. Fool me one, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Besides, I have the memory of an elephant when it comes to being taken. I can’t help feeling that with further bailouts the people in power—the carpetbaggers—are taking one last dip into the national till before it snaps shut on their fingers.
But it’s not just the national players being ugly. I read in the paper today about homeowners “considering” whether to make their mortgage payments either because they owe more than the house is worth (right now) or because they think they can become eligible for a handout after ninety days of non-payment if the government relief program kicks in. Everyone wants something for nothing and as quickly as possible.
Why should I be surprised by this behavior? This is how the corporate world and the government has operated—my mother called it behaving as if there is no tomorrow.
AOL has a slide show right now on its homepage about nineteen big-time crooks (Kenneth Lay, Milliken et al) and where they are now (in jail for the most part). What an example they set.
There are times when I feel like the woolly mammoth revealed by unseasonable melting in the arctic. I’m frozen in a situation not of my making, but I’m going to be paying the price of the meltdown along with everyone else.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Silly Me
Silly me indeed! I thought that once the election was over that we’d have a patch of peace. Apparently not. If anything, the diatribes against Obama and the Democrats have notched up to a level of hatred that scares me. Obama has not yet been sworn in and not yet faced down the horrendous economic problems he has taken on, and yet we already have Republicans offering themselves as candidates for 2012. This doesn’t make me believe anything they have to say about bipartisanship.
I also don’t get it. What part of dumped are they struggling with? Eight million more people thought that Obama would provide better leadership than McCain. The whole country said much the same at the last election when Democrats gained control of Congress. Why didn’t the Republicans get it then? People were sick of them. The electorate spoke and the people elected whom they believed. Calling Obama a socialist and a communist only makes me, for one, wonder if these people have any idea what the words mean. We have come closest to a dictatorship with the current administration, yet these people feel morally outraged at having been voted out?
I’m reminded of a Durer print depicting an outraged artist showing his painting that has just been turned down for a major art show. He’s pointing to a very nondescript painting of a candlestick and saying “This the fools rejected.”
It would be funny if not so tragic watching the Republican leadership not learning from this election. “Reaganomics is still a good idea,” the head of the Colorado Republicans was quoted as saying. Well, not very much has trickled down anywhere. We have a class of obscenely rich people who aren’t trickling anything except into their bank accounts and dividends—unless of course buying $12 million houses in Aspen or Beaver Creek can be considered trickling.
What’s troubling me most, though, is not just the wrongheadedness of not hearing what should be obvious, but the actual refusal to accept the will of the people. Some of the vituperative commentaries being spat out at the public through media such as FOX could be seen as inciting violence. Do they really want to see race and class warfare in the streets?
At a time when we should be joining together in a coordinated effort to get this country back on its feet, we are instead hearing just more of the same “petty-mindedness” and “mean-spirited” attack (to quote a would be presidential candidate in 2012). Is this what passes for political dialogue in the red states?
Please. The election is over. The winners won. The losers lost. Let’s get on with doing the work that has to be done and support the man we have chosen to do it.
I also don’t get it. What part of dumped are they struggling with? Eight million more people thought that Obama would provide better leadership than McCain. The whole country said much the same at the last election when Democrats gained control of Congress. Why didn’t the Republicans get it then? People were sick of them. The electorate spoke and the people elected whom they believed. Calling Obama a socialist and a communist only makes me, for one, wonder if these people have any idea what the words mean. We have come closest to a dictatorship with the current administration, yet these people feel morally outraged at having been voted out?
I’m reminded of a Durer print depicting an outraged artist showing his painting that has just been turned down for a major art show. He’s pointing to a very nondescript painting of a candlestick and saying “This the fools rejected.”
It would be funny if not so tragic watching the Republican leadership not learning from this election. “Reaganomics is still a good idea,” the head of the Colorado Republicans was quoted as saying. Well, not very much has trickled down anywhere. We have a class of obscenely rich people who aren’t trickling anything except into their bank accounts and dividends—unless of course buying $12 million houses in Aspen or Beaver Creek can be considered trickling.
What’s troubling me most, though, is not just the wrongheadedness of not hearing what should be obvious, but the actual refusal to accept the will of the people. Some of the vituperative commentaries being spat out at the public through media such as FOX could be seen as inciting violence. Do they really want to see race and class warfare in the streets?
At a time when we should be joining together in a coordinated effort to get this country back on its feet, we are instead hearing just more of the same “petty-mindedness” and “mean-spirited” attack (to quote a would be presidential candidate in 2012). Is this what passes for political dialogue in the red states?
Please. The election is over. The winners won. The losers lost. Let’s get on with doing the work that has to be done and support the man we have chosen to do it.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
November 5
And now it starts—the taking back of America from what someone has called “the monster of the Republican Party.” Obama has won in a landslide. It was time.
The country that I took citizenship in is not a country of belligerent selfishness nor of hypocritical self-righteousness. The avenue that the country has traveled down in the last decade is not the America I knew—and for some time thought was gone. But it has survived and was just waiting to be reawakened.
Despite the thunderings of religious bigots who so often proved themselves to be the gays or adulturers that they denounced; despite the posturings of free-market zealots who had their hands in the national till all the while; despite the cynical manipulators of patriotism and national pride who sent us into a war that has claimed over 4000 of our young people and countless thousands of the people we were supposedly “saving”—despite all this, America has come back. We have elected someone who seems to have the steady hand and the composure to sort out the lies and tell us what we need to hear and not what America’s vanity might prefer.
In the weeks ahead, I hope that Obama brings us a message of sacrifice and working together. We need to hear it. I was touched by the poll that showed that a majority of people earning over $200,000 said they expected to pay more taxes and that it was all right. America has been good to them. It is fitting that they pay something back. For too long we have all been sipping from the public trough.
Obscene CEO compensation has been merely the tip of the ice berg. We’ve all had tax rebates. Defaulted credit spending has helped drain national capital. We have systematically dismantled our self-sufficiency by sending our manufacturing overseas. We were told to spend, spend, to keep the economy going. But, as my late husband used to say—it’s not possible to spend yourself rich.
Everyone was involved. Short-sighted local governments, dazzled by visions of increased income and an unwillingness to look for the long-term downsides, granted permits to developers to throw up more and yet more of development houses that borrowers could not afford and are now in foreclosure, leaving everyone else, including those who did not default on their mortgages, with devalued houses.
Everyone had a hand in this and everyone will suffer regardless of whether they were financially prudent. That’s not the American ideal—but it is the American reality.
It was one hell of a party with everyone coming dressed as some form of greed. Now it is morning and the room stinks of corruption and last night’s booze.
Anyone who thinks that this election was about abortion and “values” and supporting the military has watched too much FOX. It was about the economy and about the final waking up of the electorate to the fact that we’ve been had.
So, I say to Obama—put us on diet, make us be frugal, remind us about the lessons of prudence and cooperation, and try to get us beyond the easy self-serving answers that require no thought. We need to think more than ever.
Above all, though, I would say to him: I am delighted that your generation—the one we have stuck so cruelly with the bill for the party—has the chance to take the leadership away from the people who have messed up so royally. Go for it! But I also send you my most ferevent hope that you be safe from those who fear you and the change you must bring us.
The country that I took citizenship in is not a country of belligerent selfishness nor of hypocritical self-righteousness. The avenue that the country has traveled down in the last decade is not the America I knew—and for some time thought was gone. But it has survived and was just waiting to be reawakened.
Despite the thunderings of religious bigots who so often proved themselves to be the gays or adulturers that they denounced; despite the posturings of free-market zealots who had their hands in the national till all the while; despite the cynical manipulators of patriotism and national pride who sent us into a war that has claimed over 4000 of our young people and countless thousands of the people we were supposedly “saving”—despite all this, America has come back. We have elected someone who seems to have the steady hand and the composure to sort out the lies and tell us what we need to hear and not what America’s vanity might prefer.
In the weeks ahead, I hope that Obama brings us a message of sacrifice and working together. We need to hear it. I was touched by the poll that showed that a majority of people earning over $200,000 said they expected to pay more taxes and that it was all right. America has been good to them. It is fitting that they pay something back. For too long we have all been sipping from the public trough.
Obscene CEO compensation has been merely the tip of the ice berg. We’ve all had tax rebates. Defaulted credit spending has helped drain national capital. We have systematically dismantled our self-sufficiency by sending our manufacturing overseas. We were told to spend, spend, to keep the economy going. But, as my late husband used to say—it’s not possible to spend yourself rich.
Everyone was involved. Short-sighted local governments, dazzled by visions of increased income and an unwillingness to look for the long-term downsides, granted permits to developers to throw up more and yet more of development houses that borrowers could not afford and are now in foreclosure, leaving everyone else, including those who did not default on their mortgages, with devalued houses.
Everyone had a hand in this and everyone will suffer regardless of whether they were financially prudent. That’s not the American ideal—but it is the American reality.
It was one hell of a party with everyone coming dressed as some form of greed. Now it is morning and the room stinks of corruption and last night’s booze.
Anyone who thinks that this election was about abortion and “values” and supporting the military has watched too much FOX. It was about the economy and about the final waking up of the electorate to the fact that we’ve been had.
So, I say to Obama—put us on diet, make us be frugal, remind us about the lessons of prudence and cooperation, and try to get us beyond the easy self-serving answers that require no thought. We need to think more than ever.
Above all, though, I would say to him: I am delighted that your generation—the one we have stuck so cruelly with the bill for the party—has the chance to take the leadership away from the people who have messed up so royally. Go for it! But I also send you my most ferevent hope that you be safe from those who fear you and the change you must bring us.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
I Just Want it Over
Anyone else as sick of this election as I am? I can't even remember when this all started. I just remember an array of people in both parties putting each other down. Then the ridiculous sight of candidates behind a row of desks on stage trying to answer stupid questions intelligently (anyone else think of the Miss America pageant?). Then the barbs sent from one front runner to whoever appeared to be the competition. Now the last ditch efforts at name-calling and trying to dredge up scandal to convince the "undecided." Undecided?? Pullease--are these people just waking up from comas?
Come on. Enough already. Most of us have known for weeks if not months whom we're voting for. I want this thing over. I'm worn out with hanging up on recordings and muting the political ads. I've voted already. I just want some peace.
But even as I say that I realize that peace may be elusive. I read the other day that Ms. Palin is thinking about announcing her candidacy for the presidency in 2012should John McCain not make it. Does that strike fear into anyone else's heart besides mine? If she starts running the day after the election, we can look forward not only to an election season that never ends--bad enough--but to four more years of the wink and the smug anti-intellectualism.
The anti-intellectualism really troubles me because it seems to make a triumph of not thinking just at the time that we need to think harder than ever. The Puritans brought anti-intellectualism to American life. Thinking was counter to God, the pulpits thundered, and if you want to know the wages of thinking, just look at the lost Eden. It shows up now and then usually promoted by authoritarians, people who don't want others to think. Intellectuals are often the bad guys (for the religionists, it's the humanists)because they think, want proof, and aren't docile. They generally speak out when someone is just blowing smoke.
I'm an intellectual (if I don't sound too arrogant) and a pragmatist. I measure success by outcome and not by whether it makes me feel good that I am forcing someone else to conform to my personal set of beliefs.
I voted for Obama (early voting) because I want someone calm at the wheel and not the continuing bunch of carpetbaggers who have destroyed the economy. Sometimes I shake my head in disbelief as I listen to people. Can't they get beyond abortion and "palling with terrorists" to look with cool eyes on where this country is headed? Can't they get beyond emotion to see the policies that have led to the economic melt down? Can't they become informed partners in running the country and not rely on politicians who promise anything to get elected? This race shouldn't even be close.
When I taught writing to college freshmen, I used to warn them about "primary certitude." This is when you believe you have the absolute truth on something and refuse to listen to any other arguments. When you raise your voice and yell vehemently that you are right, you are generally falling into it.
There's been a whole lot of primary certitude--too much for my books--of it this election. I just want it over.
Come on. Enough already. Most of us have known for weeks if not months whom we're voting for. I want this thing over. I'm worn out with hanging up on recordings and muting the political ads. I've voted already. I just want some peace.
But even as I say that I realize that peace may be elusive. I read the other day that Ms. Palin is thinking about announcing her candidacy for the presidency in 2012should John McCain not make it. Does that strike fear into anyone else's heart besides mine? If she starts running the day after the election, we can look forward not only to an election season that never ends--bad enough--but to four more years of the wink and the smug anti-intellectualism.
The anti-intellectualism really troubles me because it seems to make a triumph of not thinking just at the time that we need to think harder than ever. The Puritans brought anti-intellectualism to American life. Thinking was counter to God, the pulpits thundered, and if you want to know the wages of thinking, just look at the lost Eden. It shows up now and then usually promoted by authoritarians, people who don't want others to think. Intellectuals are often the bad guys (for the religionists, it's the humanists)because they think, want proof, and aren't docile. They generally speak out when someone is just blowing smoke.
I'm an intellectual (if I don't sound too arrogant) and a pragmatist. I measure success by outcome and not by whether it makes me feel good that I am forcing someone else to conform to my personal set of beliefs.
I voted for Obama (early voting) because I want someone calm at the wheel and not the continuing bunch of carpetbaggers who have destroyed the economy. Sometimes I shake my head in disbelief as I listen to people. Can't they get beyond abortion and "palling with terrorists" to look with cool eyes on where this country is headed? Can't they get beyond emotion to see the policies that have led to the economic melt down? Can't they become informed partners in running the country and not rely on politicians who promise anything to get elected? This race shouldn't even be close.
When I taught writing to college freshmen, I used to warn them about "primary certitude." This is when you believe you have the absolute truth on something and refuse to listen to any other arguments. When you raise your voice and yell vehemently that you are right, you are generally falling into it.
There's been a whole lot of primary certitude--too much for my books--of it this election. I just want it over.
Saturday, October 4, 2008
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.
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.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
America's Political Super Bowl
With the Wall Street bailout debacle going on, I feel like a failed lemming who doesn’t know which cliff to jump off. I have no idea who to believe: the group that is predicting that we will all lose our jobs through lack of available credit, or the one that says this is just another rip off. I’m not invested in the stock market precisely because I don’t pretend to understand it. All I know is that someone—make that a whole lot of someones—failed in their jobs.
The Washington Post says that a major part of the problem was not the usual culprits we’re hearing about but instead was the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac who decided their role was profit and they used their money—our money—to hire lobbyists to tear down any regulation imposing controls on them. I suppose grab and run sums up corporate philosophies these days. I sure hate to see them rewarded by further mortgaging our children.
This whole affair, coming as it does with that period of insanity known as the election, provides a double whammy, meaning that there’s no one left to trust. Everyone’s become corrupt and a special interest—even organized religion. I am left to wonder what it is that I am watching.
The closest I can come to describing the spectacle is to call it the American Political Super Bowl. This seems appropriate because people are not choosing candidates—they are choosing sides, and they are prepared to defend their team with flag waving and loud shouting that says absolutely nothing except “Go Team.”
On the one side, we have Team America. They are known for loud foot stomping while chanting USA, USA. They wear American flag pins. They want things to remain as they were: comfortable and predictable and flattering to their vanity. They do a lot of talking about values (their own), standing on their own two feet and not taking hand-outs, and building fences to keep out illegal immigrants. They still want to dominate the world through military force (“Americans love a war,” said General Patton, the team owner of Team America), and they love to kick butt. Corporations love them because Team America believes in the almighty (although now devaluing dollar) and tries to remove all restraints on raising that buck. They tend to look on minorities as mostly illegals, encroaching on the American dream, and better off out of the country if they aren’t willing to work for less than minimum wage. Their hero is Ronald Reagan, the head coach and author of trickle down economics.
On the other side, we have Team Future. These are people who are chanting “Cut us in. Cut us in.” They distrust corporations because they are making money and not offering benefits. They like to picket Wal Mart because they think it doesn’t pay its workers enough. They may be part of America’s growing minority future and have an attitude problem toward Whitey or the Man or Gringos, or whatever they call the shrinking Caucasian population. They are likely to favor Affirmative Action programs but get resentful if someone suggests that they or anyone else might not have succeeded without them. They like to blame lack of opportunity for their lack of progress and talk a lot about raising the minimum wage. Many of their parents look back with nostalgia to the days when unions meant something. They like social programs and are more likely to favor choice when it comes to what they call reproductive rights. John Kennedy is the owner of this team and its coach is Ted Kennedy.
Trying to referee, somewhere in the middle of the field, is a bunch of Independents who are endlessly courted by either team and who stand, like me, dazed in the glare of the headlights of the two on-rushing groups. These Independents are something of a mystery to the two teams who either feel that if they aren’t part of the solution they’re part of the problem, or that they should either love America or leave it. While the teams line up along the sidelines and the cheerleaders kick up their thighs to loud cheers, the Indies are likely to be in the end zones and wondering what the hell is going on.
What IS going on? In the end it is only a game, after all. Presidents can’t do that much without majorities in Congress. Bush’s trouble was that he had a Congress in which his party had the majority in both houses. He might have been a more successful president if he had encountered opposition and been forced to defend his policies. I see him now as a tragic figure as Aristotle described that figure in The Poetics: a man who does what he believes is best and is destroyed by it, destroying others around him in the process.
Personally, I would like to see both teams cool it a bit. All the cheerleading, the name-calling, the posturing, and the ticket selling is turning me off—and I’m one of the people in the middle so supposedly I’m desirable. I want both sides to quit telling me they are absolutely right. I want them to talk about issues rather than spin me slogans. And I PARTICULARLY want them to stop sending me passionate e-mails that are false, misleading, and full of crap. Do they think because I’m independent I am also stupid?
I nominated myself for Vice President because I was tired of this nonsense. I want someone to come forward who is not an ideologue, not zealous, and not a messiah.
I want someone to acknowledge the fact that dealing with Middle East has no easy answers because there are thirty-five hundred years of history that most Americans don’t bother to learn before they rush in with fix-its such as democracy. These are people who live two thousand years ago as if it is yesterday. Now we are part of what they will remember in another 2,000 years.
I want someone who will understand that governments balance and protect for the sake of fairness and the national interest; they do not promote one group over another except in exceptional cases such as ensuring fairness and civil rights, which are part of what this country prides itself for.
I want someone who will understand that the rule of law is not something to be manipulated to someone’s pet point of view. Either we have a nation of laws or we have a nation of constitutional amendments that serve special interests.
My God—what I really want in a president is intelligence, objectivity, judgement, education, and compassion. Does such an animal exist? I hope that America is the winner when the referee calls, “Play Ball.”
The Washington Post says that a major part of the problem was not the usual culprits we’re hearing about but instead was the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac who decided their role was profit and they used their money—our money—to hire lobbyists to tear down any regulation imposing controls on them. I suppose grab and run sums up corporate philosophies these days. I sure hate to see them rewarded by further mortgaging our children.
This whole affair, coming as it does with that period of insanity known as the election, provides a double whammy, meaning that there’s no one left to trust. Everyone’s become corrupt and a special interest—even organized religion. I am left to wonder what it is that I am watching.
The closest I can come to describing the spectacle is to call it the American Political Super Bowl. This seems appropriate because people are not choosing candidates—they are choosing sides, and they are prepared to defend their team with flag waving and loud shouting that says absolutely nothing except “Go Team.”
On the one side, we have Team America. They are known for loud foot stomping while chanting USA, USA. They wear American flag pins. They want things to remain as they were: comfortable and predictable and flattering to their vanity. They do a lot of talking about values (their own), standing on their own two feet and not taking hand-outs, and building fences to keep out illegal immigrants. They still want to dominate the world through military force (“Americans love a war,” said General Patton, the team owner of Team America), and they love to kick butt. Corporations love them because Team America believes in the almighty (although now devaluing dollar) and tries to remove all restraints on raising that buck. They tend to look on minorities as mostly illegals, encroaching on the American dream, and better off out of the country if they aren’t willing to work for less than minimum wage. Their hero is Ronald Reagan, the head coach and author of trickle down economics.
On the other side, we have Team Future. These are people who are chanting “Cut us in. Cut us in.” They distrust corporations because they are making money and not offering benefits. They like to picket Wal Mart because they think it doesn’t pay its workers enough. They may be part of America’s growing minority future and have an attitude problem toward Whitey or the Man or Gringos, or whatever they call the shrinking Caucasian population. They are likely to favor Affirmative Action programs but get resentful if someone suggests that they or anyone else might not have succeeded without them. They like to blame lack of opportunity for their lack of progress and talk a lot about raising the minimum wage. Many of their parents look back with nostalgia to the days when unions meant something. They like social programs and are more likely to favor choice when it comes to what they call reproductive rights. John Kennedy is the owner of this team and its coach is Ted Kennedy.
Trying to referee, somewhere in the middle of the field, is a bunch of Independents who are endlessly courted by either team and who stand, like me, dazed in the glare of the headlights of the two on-rushing groups. These Independents are something of a mystery to the two teams who either feel that if they aren’t part of the solution they’re part of the problem, or that they should either love America or leave it. While the teams line up along the sidelines and the cheerleaders kick up their thighs to loud cheers, the Indies are likely to be in the end zones and wondering what the hell is going on.
What IS going on? In the end it is only a game, after all. Presidents can’t do that much without majorities in Congress. Bush’s trouble was that he had a Congress in which his party had the majority in both houses. He might have been a more successful president if he had encountered opposition and been forced to defend his policies. I see him now as a tragic figure as Aristotle described that figure in The Poetics: a man who does what he believes is best and is destroyed by it, destroying others around him in the process.
Personally, I would like to see both teams cool it a bit. All the cheerleading, the name-calling, the posturing, and the ticket selling is turning me off—and I’m one of the people in the middle so supposedly I’m desirable. I want both sides to quit telling me they are absolutely right. I want them to talk about issues rather than spin me slogans. And I PARTICULARLY want them to stop sending me passionate e-mails that are false, misleading, and full of crap. Do they think because I’m independent I am also stupid?
I nominated myself for Vice President because I was tired of this nonsense. I want someone to come forward who is not an ideologue, not zealous, and not a messiah.
I want someone to acknowledge the fact that dealing with Middle East has no easy answers because there are thirty-five hundred years of history that most Americans don’t bother to learn before they rush in with fix-its such as democracy. These are people who live two thousand years ago as if it is yesterday. Now we are part of what they will remember in another 2,000 years.
I want someone who will understand that governments balance and protect for the sake of fairness and the national interest; they do not promote one group over another except in exceptional cases such as ensuring fairness and civil rights, which are part of what this country prides itself for.
I want someone who will understand that the rule of law is not something to be manipulated to someone’s pet point of view. Either we have a nation of laws or we have a nation of constitutional amendments that serve special interests.
My God—what I really want in a president is intelligence, objectivity, judgement, education, and compassion. Does such an animal exist? I hope that America is the winner when the referee calls, “Play Ball.”
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