I am still thinking about the almost incomprehensible contempt for government that we have all around us. It stuns me! How is it possible for any normal person, who has any understanding of what it is to live in society, to have contempt for what it is to live together? Government is nothing more than the way we organize our lives together. It might be a monarchy, or a commune, or a Wild West with pistols and saloons and cattle and sheep, but it has to be something.
It occurs to me that what is happening now is almost devoid of sensible debate about what we want our country to be, what we want our cities and neighborhoods to be. We have so much contempt for what our politicians do when they get into office that we look around for someone running for office who promises to do even less. We don't debate about kind of health care system would serve the nation best, or how to deliver it: we ask someone to do less. We don't talk about what an optimal educational system might be, or how to achieve it: we ask someone to do less than what is being done now. I cannot recall a genuine debate about what role the U.S. ought to be playing in Africa, or Asia, or the Mid-East: we flail about. It is mindless anger. We behave as if we all had road rage. Shout at each other! Honk! Politicians say the damnedest stupid things, but if they are as angry at "Washington" as we are, we elect them. Then they become "Washington". Thoughtful people on "both sides of the aisle" admit that we need immigration to maintain our vitality, to pick crops and build new neighborhood businesses and to invigorate our schools and universities, and we say we ought to build a Berlin Wall from the Caribbean to the Pacific, and maybe across our northern border, too. We want to deny Drivers Licenses to migrants, as if we really believed people would not then have to drive without passing a test. Does it make any sense, at all, to keep people ignorant, to keep them out of school? How can it possible benefit a nation to allow some people not to have access to health care; to the best health care possible? What is to be gained by not maintaining our sewers and highways and park systems? Do we really not care whether retired people can have decent lives, or even have a chance to retire? Is it possible not to care whether people have food, or a home; whether children have a chance?
We talk, sometimes, as if General Motors or Wells Fargo Bank or Hank the Honest Used Car Dealer, or maybe the Jesus is Coming in the Morning to Fix Everything Church, can do everything that needs doing; that "Government" is the problem. The guy who is trying to convince us that if we give him our pension money he will make sure we all have condos in Miami when we reach retirement is not interested in whether old people have food and clothing and health care: he is interested in getting his hands on the money.
There are things people need to do together. Working together is what government is. When we are lousy at working together, when we cannot talk and debate and finally agree what to do, together, we have a lousy government, in all probability with a bunch of scheisters in charge. (It comes from the German: look it up! I once heard a German pastor, who had accidentally dropped his plate of food say, in front of the whole congregation: "Scheiss da der Hund darauf! ) The incompetents ought to be thrown out of office, but it makes no sense to send people in their place who have contempt for the job that ought to be done, but that is what we are doing. And throwing out everybody is stupid: we need to talk first about what it is we want to accomplish.
Sometime--I hope soon--perhaps we will recognize that mindless rage is self-destructive for a civilized society, and that we do need better schools, and better health care, and new blood in the whole system. Some day--I hope soon--we might agree that it is destructive to our society to allow one percent of the people to control ninety percent of our wealth (or whatever the actual figure is: it is astounding!). Our middle class is being destroyed: that is the cause of a good part of our road rage; of our almost mindless contempt for politicians and for governing ourselves.
Close down government? Did we really do that? We did. That is why so many of us limp as if someone had shot us in the foot: we did.
Sometime--I hope soon--we need to stop talking mindless crap, and talk about what kind of a society would be good for all of us. All of us. I do not believe that most of us really believe that if we have ours, that is all that matters.
It occurs to me that what is happening now is almost devoid of sensible debate about what we want our country to be, what we want our cities and neighborhoods to be. We have so much contempt for what our politicians do when they get into office that we look around for someone running for office who promises to do even less. We don't debate about kind of health care system would serve the nation best, or how to deliver it: we ask someone to do less. We don't talk about what an optimal educational system might be, or how to achieve it: we ask someone to do less than what is being done now. I cannot recall a genuine debate about what role the U.S. ought to be playing in Africa, or Asia, or the Mid-East: we flail about. It is mindless anger. We behave as if we all had road rage. Shout at each other! Honk! Politicians say the damnedest stupid things, but if they are as angry at "Washington" as we are, we elect them. Then they become "Washington". Thoughtful people on "both sides of the aisle" admit that we need immigration to maintain our vitality, to pick crops and build new neighborhood businesses and to invigorate our schools and universities, and we say we ought to build a Berlin Wall from the Caribbean to the Pacific, and maybe across our northern border, too. We want to deny Drivers Licenses to migrants, as if we really believed people would not then have to drive without passing a test. Does it make any sense, at all, to keep people ignorant, to keep them out of school? How can it possible benefit a nation to allow some people not to have access to health care; to the best health care possible? What is to be gained by not maintaining our sewers and highways and park systems? Do we really not care whether retired people can have decent lives, or even have a chance to retire? Is it possible not to care whether people have food, or a home; whether children have a chance?
We talk, sometimes, as if General Motors or Wells Fargo Bank or Hank the Honest Used Car Dealer, or maybe the Jesus is Coming in the Morning to Fix Everything Church, can do everything that needs doing; that "Government" is the problem. The guy who is trying to convince us that if we give him our pension money he will make sure we all have condos in Miami when we reach retirement is not interested in whether old people have food and clothing and health care: he is interested in getting his hands on the money.
There are things people need to do together. Working together is what government is. When we are lousy at working together, when we cannot talk and debate and finally agree what to do, together, we have a lousy government, in all probability with a bunch of scheisters in charge. (It comes from the German: look it up! I once heard a German pastor, who had accidentally dropped his plate of food say, in front of the whole congregation: "Scheiss da der Hund darauf! ) The incompetents ought to be thrown out of office, but it makes no sense to send people in their place who have contempt for the job that ought to be done, but that is what we are doing. And throwing out everybody is stupid: we need to talk first about what it is we want to accomplish.
Sometime--I hope soon--perhaps we will recognize that mindless rage is self-destructive for a civilized society, and that we do need better schools, and better health care, and new blood in the whole system. Some day--I hope soon--we might agree that it is destructive to our society to allow one percent of the people to control ninety percent of our wealth (or whatever the actual figure is: it is astounding!). Our middle class is being destroyed: that is the cause of a good part of our road rage; of our almost mindless contempt for politicians and for governing ourselves.
Close down government? Did we really do that? We did. That is why so many of us limp as if someone had shot us in the foot: we did.
Sometime--I hope soon--we need to stop talking mindless crap, and talk about what kind of a society would be good for all of us. All of us. I do not believe that most of us really believe that if we have ours, that is all that matters.
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