Dear Friends,
The United States is a nation at war, gas tops $3 a gallon deficits will amount to $5 Trillion over the next decade. Faced with that, society asks everything from the military and nothing from us but to spend out tax cuts. Thats predictable, perhaps, when politicians provide us permission-even in wartime or days of disaster. to view taxes not as a way of protecting the welfare of fellow citizens and the homeland, but as simple theft that must end.
The belief that taxes are unnecessary remains a political persuasion and not a delusion so long as we pretend to see no link between spending and services. Our roads, for example, are completely incapable of dealing with whats to come; yet many would chew through their seat belts in gridlock rather than pay an additional penny in taxes.
We will, however drive on these same overburdened roads to save that same penny at a big box dispensing cheap goods from foreign factories off shelves stocked by workers whose wages dont begin to reach poverty line. Somehow, we fail to connect those shopping jaunts and the disappearance of U.S. manufacturing jobs, or the renewed march of poverty, or the fact that a record breaking millions cant afford and dont have health insurance.
Americas growing and certain affection for social Darwinism reaches its apex in the nations hospitals and doctors offices. The US health care system is enormously expensive and increasingly uneven, but we cling to it as if its perfect. The rest of the First World reaps the economic and social benefits of universal healthcare while America sows instead national bankruptcy. Rocketing costs are increasingly visited only on those who need care, an abrogation of the social contract when its needed most.
For a nation founded on hope, how did we become so brutal in our social calculus, so cynical in our national conversations, so incapable of believing in good intentions or the common weal?
Some fast growing industries are devoted to expanding divisions along racial lines, along income lines, along philosophical lines, even when tragedy should erase them. Disagreement is a requirement of a healthy democracy, but the modern breed of politician-liberal and conservative, professional and amateur-doesnt debate so much as declare holy wars.
The ongoing divorce of Americans from America is suspended occasionally for immense tragedy. But if history is any indication, that spirit will fade too soon, buried in culture wars, by character assassinations, by a million petty differences others employ to divide us and fatten their wallets.
It would be easy to blame the nattering classes, in the media and in the halls of government for that and for the sorry state of American discourse and democracy. But were the ones who listen, even as we dont vote, and dont demand better.
Theres another way. In a few corners, away from the ranting and railing, reasoned discourse continues, even flourishes. You see it on a few blogs, in most newspapers, and occasionally of TV and radio. Mostly, you see it wherever Americans listen instead of shout, debate rather than declaim.
That is where hope lies.
The fading American social contract can be renewed with every thoughtful effort to understand our differences and similarities. Thats where our duties to society become clear, where the blaring operatives and divisive politicians grow silent and irrelevant. Thats where, in the end, we realize that we owe todays instigators nothing, and owe each other everything.
The United States is a nation at war, gas tops $3 a gallon deficits will amount to $5 Trillion over the next decade. Faced with that, society asks everything from the military and nothing from us but to spend out tax cuts. Thats predictable, perhaps, when politicians provide us permission-even in wartime or days of disaster. to view taxes not as a way of protecting the welfare of fellow citizens and the homeland, but as simple theft that must end.
The belief that taxes are unnecessary remains a political persuasion and not a delusion so long as we pretend to see no link between spending and services. Our roads, for example, are completely incapable of dealing with whats to come; yet many would chew through their seat belts in gridlock rather than pay an additional penny in taxes.
We will, however drive on these same overburdened roads to save that same penny at a big box dispensing cheap goods from foreign factories off shelves stocked by workers whose wages dont begin to reach poverty line. Somehow, we fail to connect those shopping jaunts and the disappearance of U.S. manufacturing jobs, or the renewed march of poverty, or the fact that a record breaking millions cant afford and dont have health insurance.
Americas growing and certain affection for social Darwinism reaches its apex in the nations hospitals and doctors offices. The US health care system is enormously expensive and increasingly uneven, but we cling to it as if its perfect. The rest of the First World reaps the economic and social benefits of universal healthcare while America sows instead national bankruptcy. Rocketing costs are increasingly visited only on those who need care, an abrogation of the social contract when its needed most.
For a nation founded on hope, how did we become so brutal in our social calculus, so cynical in our national conversations, so incapable of believing in good intentions or the common weal?
Some fast growing industries are devoted to expanding divisions along racial lines, along income lines, along philosophical lines, even when tragedy should erase them. Disagreement is a requirement of a healthy democracy, but the modern breed of politician-liberal and conservative, professional and amateur-doesnt debate so much as declare holy wars.
The ongoing divorce of Americans from America is suspended occasionally for immense tragedy. But if history is any indication, that spirit will fade too soon, buried in culture wars, by character assassinations, by a million petty differences others employ to divide us and fatten their wallets.
It would be easy to blame the nattering classes, in the media and in the halls of government for that and for the sorry state of American discourse and democracy. But were the ones who listen, even as we dont vote, and dont demand better.
Theres another way. In a few corners, away from the ranting and railing, reasoned discourse continues, even flourishes. You see it on a few blogs, in most newspapers, and occasionally of TV and radio. Mostly, you see it wherever Americans listen instead of shout, debate rather than declaim.
That is where hope lies.
The fading American social contract can be renewed with every thoughtful effort to understand our differences and similarities. Thats where our duties to society become clear, where the blaring operatives and divisive politicians grow silent and irrelevant. Thats where, in the end, we realize that we owe todays instigators nothing, and owe each other everything.
VIEW 4 of 4 COMMENTS
discourse, debate, discussion, consensus, minority needs, ext. They ARE all wonderful conceptually, and the skills needed to follow through seem to be more and more limited amongst the population (just look at what's going on in new orleans, and the way the politicians are acting). But let me say this, at what point does a change become a mutation? That mutation thus limiting one's ability to "return" to a prior self?
I think this society is mutating, it's "evolving" into something new. It is trading in the concepts above so that it can get a quick fix, and a president that speaks like he's at the NASCAR tracik.
So what do you do when those in charge, and their majority backing, have mutated so much that they no longer understand the concepts traditionally used in represantative societies?