Three Quick Things

Ranting and raving. That seems to be the state of discourse today. Everybody’s got something to say, most of them are angry, and even if they aren’t all that perturbed, working up a head of steam is good business because sensationalism is what sells. The ideal is a car wreck and we all are bystanders who can’t look away. Blood and gore is so compelling, especially if we don’t see it too clearly in detail but rather just imagine it as we pass by. Kind of a glancing participation is what we can accept.

Passion, right! That’s our story. We’re really worked up about this issue, pissed off in fact and you bet you’re gonna hear about it because we, um, care. Really! If we just had the time, we’d dig deep into the matter and let you have a furious barrage of fact and irrefutable data, but life is so busy and there simply isn’t space to wedge another cause into our day, not in detail anyhow. It’s quicker and easier just to yell. Louder and longer might get it done and you’re not likely to pay all that much attention anyhow.

Rumination as a bumper sticker, something pithy and easy to say, whether or not it makes any sense. The essence is not what you say but rather that you said it. Then you can move on. Things as we all know are complicated and who possibly has the energy to sort through all the aspects of these concepts and considerations. Better to be quick and clean, make a statement about whatever so we know you actually exist and then let you gather your strength for the next equally inane encounter.

Truth be told, we’ve been doing a bit of ranting and raving ourselves these last few TQT newsletters, talking the failures of healthcare and the economy, and the illusion of exceptionalism that still colors every aspect of the USA at age 250. We wonder what this nation’s Founders would think of where we are as a country and what we’ve become as a society. We wonder why it is that we continue to cherish the American conceits of our uniqueness when it’s only our economy the world envies any more.

We have the big bucks, of that there’s no doubt. All the financial measures tell us so. What they don’t say, at least not clearly, is our powerhouse economic system benefits so few at the cost to so many. When we were a manufacturing nation in the post-War years, we had a middle class. Since we evolved a service economy toward the end of the last century, we all became servants of the well to do. The middle class continues to shrink away, homelessness swells, and the One Percent grows ever richer.

Above it all, of course, is that fabled One-tenth of One Percent, that multi-billionaire group of families, few in number, who collectively hold more wealth than all the rest of us combined. Period! It is perhaps the proof of concept that free enterprise elevates the cream to the top. That it never seems to curdle, no matter how close to the sun it comes, is a marvel. That they accumulate this staggering amount of money without circulating much of it and paying taxes on very little of it marks their mastery.

What if it wasn’t so? What if we did things differently? What if we quit believing all the propaganda the media feeds us, the lies the politicians sell us, the canards those wily titans of industry beat into our brainpans from the day we’re born. If we finally realized that none of this stuff we’re doing is making anybody happy and very, very few of us rich. What if we said, here’s what we want and here’s what it will take to have it? And then we bravely put the systems in place that deliver those solutions. We can do it.

There are stirrings in the political system, despite the weight of all the money put there to corrupt it. There are young people coming of age with a clear vision of just how unappealing and empty their prospects are. There is no end to angry folks who might finally find the courage to direct their anger at the powerful people who burgle their lives rather than the others like themselves who are feeling despondent and lost. There are big possibilities to explore if we quit being bought off by the profiteers.

It will take political candidates who are willing to lose, who will speak truth to power over and over again until they break through the fog of avarice and corruption that plagues politics today. It will take a focus on justice and equity, building a just social contract that frees all of us by first supporting the least of us. Alexander v. Humboldt said 200 years ago, “Before being free, we must be just, and without justice there can be no lasting prosperity.” Then perhaps we will dial the anger down and move ahead.