If I had a dollar for every time I have read or heard “Bush has put us in this mess” (or whatever variation) over the last four years, I would be retiring to Curacao in about a week. To a degree, I completely understand why people have this view because it is the exact same line of reasoning why sports teams hire and fire coaches: when the team is winning the coach is a genius, but when they are losing the coach is responsible for every flaw. President Bush is very much our embattled head coach of whatever metaphorical sports team you wish to assign; a team or a school would have fired him by now. It is easy to see this example and apply it to what is really going on in Washington at the moment but, well, let’s see here, one is a metaphor and the other is real life and just because you can draw a line between the two does not mean that you have arrived at an actual point.
Watching the latest Chris Rock HBO special last weekend (which was genuinely funny most of the time), I could not believe how many times Rock said with a straight face that Bush and his Administration is unquestionably and personally responsible for things like the cost of gas and our economic woes, and that Obama represents an answer that will undo almost all of the destruction wrought upon us unsuspecting victims at the hands of Bush & Co. This is more than disconcerting, especially given how much applause this garnered (the special was more or less a highlight compilation from shows in New York, London, and Johannesburg) and that Rock is essentially echoing what has become a unanimous mainstream view.
It is disconcerting because we are now looking at our society in much the same way people looked at the Church when it yielded near-absolute power over the world—with unabashed laziness and a willingness to allow other people to speak for us without demanding a rebuttal.
The main thing that separates human beings from every other animal alive and that has ever lived is our ability to reason. The human brain is capable of learning anything, whereas all other animals still rely on instinct and simply cannot deviate from it. A wild cat must train its young how to kill; if it does not, everyone dies early. A human being can choose how to raise its young in any manner within the bounds of morality and legality. Our brain and our ability to reason and our ability to apply learned moralities is our, for lack of a better word, essence. Or, as Howard Roark put it:
“Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon. Animals obtain food by force. Man has no claws, no fangs, no horns, no great strength of muscle. He must plant his food or hunt it. To plant, he needs a process of thought. To hunt, he needs weapons, and to make weapons—a process of thought. From this simplest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and everything we have comes from a single attribute of man—the function of his reasoning mind.”
We have willingly subverted our minds in the name of being able to assign blame to others. Could Bush, the Senate, and the Congress done a better job in preventing what has happened? Absolutely, but pointing out their faults and engaging in doomsaying while offering nothing makes those same people seem like they would just as quickly compromise blindly on matters than the government officials they are trying to tear down. Does it drive you nuts when a politican says they are against something and then votes for its approval? Sure it does, but why bother following up on it when the press will make you forget for you.
We are currently under this mistaken spell that choosing a leader is a noble virtue that will be rewarded if decided on carefully. America, for all of its faults, founded its government on three very sound and simple things: that the government would protect its citizens from foreign attacks (form an organized army, etc.), that it would protect a citizen’s private land from being taken causelessly (legitimize owning land), and that it would protect citizens from each other (creating state and federal laws to discourage robbery and murder, and building prisons, etc.). Look at our government now: its scope extends far more than those three things. In fact, you could say that our new leader probably has to worry about roughly two hundred high-priority things on a monthly basis and that is probably being conservative. So, if that is the case, why am I dismissing this election’s importance? Because the problems of our country cannot be solved by our leaders, they can only be solved by us and us alone—for when we show a willingness to fix things, only then will our leaders become great because they will no longer be able to defraud us to our faces.
For every “bad” piece of news that keeps coming out: unemployment rates going up, price of fuel costs, outsourcing, economic bailouts, etc., keep in mind that another significant statistic also keeps going up: every year, more people choose not to join or form civic associations. If you are truly enraged about our political atmosphere, do something about it above just voting or complaining loudly. And if you are merely bothered by our current atmosphere then solidify your home life.
I will be the first to admit that our country’s long-term forecast is probably not rosy but there is genuinely and literally nothing I can do about it. I do not want to become an activist. I do not want to form an association that promotes awareness about a political topic. I do not want to vote. What is the point? The minute Obama walks in to the White House all of the media will follow him and the reporting world will invoke a “Democrats are right, Republicans are wrong” rule.
And if you are thinking to yourself, “Wow, what a cynical asshole” I have some questions for you. If you think deregulation is bad, are you now okay with the government–a government for whom you probably barely trust—now dipping its hands even deeper into our financial and banking sectors? If you feel that oil is the death knell of our society, are you prepared to wipe away all of its benefits too? Because, let’s face it, oil has played a huge role in the positive modernization of every continent on this earth. If you feel that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are becoming too laboring and intensive, what is the best way to go about moving away from them? Do you feel that a democracy in Iraq is as unsolvable as the dismantling of the U.S.S.R. was? If we were to persist in destroying the Afghani-Pakistani terrorist pipeline is it worse that we would ultimately destroy it, or worse that we may ultimately lose one thousand of our own soldiers throughout the course of it? If it is the latter, would it be because: A) the sheer body count is unacceptable, B) war is to only be used as an end to a means, C) the situation in Pakistan does not warrant intervention, or D) the current Administration is simply wrong? If you feel that our society is in ruins mostly because of “villains” with last names like Lay, Bush, Rove, Cheney, or Ebbers, then why do the people who spend money absent-mindedly on things like a gutter robot or decorative wicker pet homes get a free pass? If you feel that the economy is in shambles why aren’t you pissed off at the normal people, not the CEOs and government “leaders,” who have enabled all of this?
This is my ultimate point: it is farcical to expect our leaders to be the patron saints of hope, objectivity, and morally correct business acumen when we keep subverting ourselves. Of course the lying congressman or senator will lie to your face: he or she knows that that is what you want to hear because, up until this point, there has not been a mass gathering of people demanding otherwise. Of course the corporations are going to keep quiet on things you find reprehensible while paying off politicians to protect them because you were asleep for too long to do anything about it. Whether you want to believe that Corporations or the Government are the villains you need only to switch your mirror around on the rest of America.
When you read and hear about the amounts of credit debt the average consumer has piled up and how many people entered into truly outrageous mortgages under their own volition, what is to be gleaned from that? Each and every one of those people probably thought to themselves in some respect, “I’ll make sure it doesn’t get out of hand. I’ll have it paid off in a few years.” Except that it did get out of hand. Now, what do you think our current government officials and latest ilk of corporate board members think we they engage in risky behavior? Probably “It won’t get out of hand,” or “If we stick to the plan laid out it will be manageable.” To be sure, the culture surrounding our board rooms and government buildings needs to change but how does that change? First, let’s look at the business world.
It was only a few generations ago that saw men trying to develop ideas into businesses whose sole purpose to engage in survival of the fittest. My product is better than yours, is cheaper to make than yours, and I have more contracts than you do with more companies so, therefore, you should either go out of business quicker than me, or you will have to come up with a better product so as to make my client companies decide that my product is no longer of use. Nowadays, however, it is the losers of the game that come out ahead and they do so by simply becoming copycats. Is steel becoming too expensive to incorporate into your product? Ask the government to ease trade restrictions so that you can use slave labor in Asia. Or, you could always create a cartel too.
Government and business can co-exist together nicely so long as there is no fraud being perpetrated. If a young man or woman wants to get into a government office solely for the sake of power and being able to distribute favors on a whim, then what good does that person bring to the table? Likewise, what good becomes of the man or the woman who starts a business with no clear directive at actually making anything beneficial, but rather uses their business as leverage to get into politics? These are the questions that, I believe, need to be answered. What made people post-WWII forget about keeping these checks and balances in place? Was it prosperity? Are we feeling the residual effect of greed? Maybe, but I think it goes deeper that that.
I think we have become too conditioned to give everyone second chances and to pretend that public speaking is somehow either completely genuine or totally disingenuous depending on what side you are on and that no middle ground can now exist. It is time for rational egotism to become part of our blood once again. We need to believe again that innovation and money is inherently great but only if it is made from the mind and not of fraudulent handoffs.
We need to ditch the culture of clinging to passing whims: De-regulation is the best solution but if our government won’t convict the frauds who destroyed small chunks of our economy then it becomes undermined; elections only matter if the playing field is level—so why such passion about Obama and McCain while congressional candidates are allowed to re-district on a whim?; our economy is functionally broken right now but the money shows, magazines, and news are doing nothing other than blurring the lines of reality because our country is still fundamentally stable and this cycle shall too pass.
If you are pissed off at something take it head on—after all, this is what our country was based on. We did not want to pay taxes so we decided we were not going to anymore. But, given these times that we are in, it is foolish to believe that votes will change anything. The nature of the game has to be reversed and that starts with every non-government-holding citizen deciding to call out what you think is wrong.
The future of America does not rest on Barack Obama or John McCain or Sarah Palin. It rests on the kids who will grow legitimate businesses and develop legitimate innovations while also refusing the government’s assistance. Basically, nothing will change until we decide to use our minds again and see the media and our politicians for who they really are: a group of people who have a hand in shaping our opinion but who are in no way an integral part of our daily life. If they do become part of our daily life, is that not communism or the socialist government of the Orwellian universe we were all supposed to be conditioned to hate and fear?