It's hard to believe it was only a year ago at this time that our nation was on the verge of something special. We were only a couple weeks away from electing our first black president, quite a feat in a country with such a mixed racial history, a country that held on to the peculiar institution of slavery longer than anyone save Brazil, but that also produced the civil rights movement of the 1950's and 60's. But more than the historical aspect of this election, it was an exciting time for a people who had been beaten down by eight years of divisive politics and disastrous policies delivered by the Bush administration. The times they were indeed a-changin'.
Or were they? And have they? Here we are a year later, and now over 9 months into the new Obama administration and what of this change we all had so much hope for? We are still bogged down in two questionable wars, one in Afghanistan with no end in sight, and another in Iraq that while no longer on the front pages is still keeping well over a hundred thousand of our soldiers away from their loved ones and lives back home. Obama's plan for Afghanistan is so far much like the rest of his political ideas, painfully undefined and non-committal. While our new president fiddles, soldiers continue to die by the scores, and all we get are the usual promises of how things will be different this time, and if we just give it a little longer, well, you've heard this song and dance before from the last administration. I wonder how many more sons and daughters, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters will perish before he comes out with the decision we all know is coming anyways, a nebulous commitment to more troops to fight a war with no real strategy or realistic chance at success.
How about the health care reform that had us fired up and ready to go? Our new leader showed anything but leadership in turning over such an important policy to the Congress, a body with a proven track record of getting nothing productive done, regardless of which of the two parties holds the reigns. One would think that a man supposedly as intelligent as Obama would have learned from the debacle known as the stimulus package, which followed on the heels of the misguided bank bailout, not to trust the legislative branch with the keys to the kingdom, but there he went again. What will come out of this is still up for grabs, but only the most optimistic of kool-aid drinkers can still have hope for any meaningful reform.
Ditto on the environment, where all our new president has managed is a watered down and ineffective energy bill that is akin to getting the foxes to promise to do a better job of guarding the hen house, which is exactly the same thing we are getting as it pertains to reform on Wall Street. Education reform is about as prevalent as coverage of serious issues on cable news. All the while the deficit continues to expand like Keith Olbermann's waistline or Glen Beck's fat head.
Every four years the candidate of change sells us the same line about changing the culture of Washington and ending politics as usual. The guy in office is a bum and the challenger is our white knight riding to rescue us from our own lesser angels. But every time we get sold the same bill of goods, and I can only wonder when we'll stop buying the same old song and dance and demand a new tune.
My belief in the relevance of electoral politics and the efficacy of civic participation is just about exhausted. The optimist in me wants to say that Obama needs more time, that this time things will be different, that incremental change is better than nothing at all. But the realist in me, which as I approach my fifth decade of life is increasingly kicking the optimist's rear end, tells me otherwise. I realize that my vote is but a drop of water in the ocean, and like our actual oceans, is becoming more polluted all the time. The thing is, I'm not disheartened or bitter at all, I have great anticipation and high expectations for the second half of my life. There is so much that I encounter and learn every day, the wonders of this world and the small pleasures never cease to amaze.
I just don't expect that those wonders will include political change I can ever believe in, or a politician who isn't cut from the usual cloth. Perhaps one day there will be someone worthy of my vote, but it will have to be a re-election campaign, because I am done putting my dime in the jukebox until I've heard the tune. Show me the money. If not, I'm more than happy to go about my life in search of real truth, wisdom, and enlightenment, and leave the political decisions to those who still think it matters one way or the other. I'm very close to coming to the realization and acceptance of the fact that it really doesn't, which isn't the end of the world as we know it, and yet I still feel fine.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Sunday, October 11, 2009
The Joke is on Us
A great recent novel, "The White Tiger" by Aravind Adiga starts out with this captivating opening line, "What a f-ing joke." The protagonist is referring to Indian politics, but the line might as well refer to our own vaunted and highly overrated system of democracy. After much back and forth on the matter, I have come to the inescapable conclusion that our system, like much of our culture in general is indeed a big joke, and the joke is on those of us who have bought into it for so long.
Barack Obama was my last hope. His campaign and unexpected election was supposed to be the game changer in American politics, ushering in a new era of civility, intelligence, and efficacy. Despite what the Nobel Peace Prize committee, another joke, has determined, none of this has occurred and isn't likely to materialize. Obama is a disappointment at best, and a spectacular failure at worst, time will ultimately tell. He may indeed be a well meaning individual, he certainly is easy on the eyes and has the gift of gab, but as a leader thus far he has proven to be ineffective and surprisingly lacking in practical intelligence.
From the bank bailout, which he didn't preside over but supported strongly, to the fiscal stimulus bill, which he allowed the Congress to control to the detriment of our economy and federal budget deficit, to the Afghanistan War, which he is apparently still in the process of determining how to proceed with, his policies have been an utter failure. The health care debacle is the latest manifestation of his inability to lead with the force and determination required of a great president, and is also sadly an indicator of his inability to learn from past mistakes.
But Obama should not bare the brunt of the blame for our failed system alone, there is plenty of burden to go around. The Congress is perhaps the biggest rouse of all, claiming to be the representative of the people while representing merely their own selfish desire to maintain their power at any cost and is completely beholden to the the entrenched interest groups that allow them to achieve their main goal. The health care bill being debated, and I use that term loosely, is a perfect example of why meaningful legislation will never occur in our system. It could be argued that the last relevant piece of legislation to emerge from Capitol Hill was the landmark civil rights laws, the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965. And this only because we had a president, LBJ, with the guts to push forward with something that he knew would cost him politically. His famous line uttered after signing the bills was that this probably cost the Democrats the South for a generation. It is pretty hard to imagine a leader today, in the White House or in Congress, having the guts to pull the trigger on something knowing those consequences. He was right by the way, not that it is a great loss.
The Democratic Party is more disappointing to me as a liberal than the Republican party. With the Republicans you know what you are going to get, a blend of social conservatives who care more about unborn fetuses than actual living human beings and who want to ram their warped version of Christianity down our throats, mixed in with fiscal conservatives who think tax breaks for the well-to-do are the panacea for all of our economic ills, with a good mixture of war mongering hawks who want to destroy all our enemies, real and perceived with brute force.
But the Democratic party is supposed to be the party of common sense and justice for the little guy, the party that looks out for the ordinary Joe. I suppose at one time they were, if you harken back to the days of FDR's New Deal and LBJ's Great Society. All we have gotten since are Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and a bunch of blowhards in Congress who give us the old wink and a nod while they proceed to please their benefactors at the expense of the people they are in theory representing.
So what to do? There isn't much to do actually, there is no savior or political messiah out there who will deliver us from the tyranny and oppression of a system that is ineffective at best and corrupt at worst. Many of us thought that Obama would be the man for the job, a modern day Moses leading us out of the desert across the Sinai peninsula to the promised land. Perhaps it was naive to put so much stock in one man, perhaps we expected miracles where none were realistic or even possible. Perhaps we are looking for answers in the wrong places, politics is no longer capable of solving the issues that vex us, if it ever was. I would suggest that by looking for external solutions we are going about it in the wrong direction.
Most of us know what we ought to be doing, how we ought to be treating each other, and what types of policies we should support and pursue. We have the answers within us if we care to go through the process of self-reflection and introspection that are required. I'm unsure how we go about putting this knowledge into play, but I know that it won't come about by sitting back and waiting for the so-called political leaders to guide us. Those of us who have it within us must reject the ignorance of the politicians, the shallowness of the punditry, and the short-sightedness of the media. All we can do perhaps is work on bettering ourselves and the lives that we lead in hopes that the cumulative effect will eventually transcend our politics and our mainstream culture. It may or may not have the intended impact, but at the least we will be living more relevant and humane lives in the way that we were intended to live. I for one think that is quite enough.
Barack Obama was my last hope. His campaign and unexpected election was supposed to be the game changer in American politics, ushering in a new era of civility, intelligence, and efficacy. Despite what the Nobel Peace Prize committee, another joke, has determined, none of this has occurred and isn't likely to materialize. Obama is a disappointment at best, and a spectacular failure at worst, time will ultimately tell. He may indeed be a well meaning individual, he certainly is easy on the eyes and has the gift of gab, but as a leader thus far he has proven to be ineffective and surprisingly lacking in practical intelligence.
From the bank bailout, which he didn't preside over but supported strongly, to the fiscal stimulus bill, which he allowed the Congress to control to the detriment of our economy and federal budget deficit, to the Afghanistan War, which he is apparently still in the process of determining how to proceed with, his policies have been an utter failure. The health care debacle is the latest manifestation of his inability to lead with the force and determination required of a great president, and is also sadly an indicator of his inability to learn from past mistakes.
But Obama should not bare the brunt of the blame for our failed system alone, there is plenty of burden to go around. The Congress is perhaps the biggest rouse of all, claiming to be the representative of the people while representing merely their own selfish desire to maintain their power at any cost and is completely beholden to the the entrenched interest groups that allow them to achieve their main goal. The health care bill being debated, and I use that term loosely, is a perfect example of why meaningful legislation will never occur in our system. It could be argued that the last relevant piece of legislation to emerge from Capitol Hill was the landmark civil rights laws, the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965. And this only because we had a president, LBJ, with the guts to push forward with something that he knew would cost him politically. His famous line uttered after signing the bills was that this probably cost the Democrats the South for a generation. It is pretty hard to imagine a leader today, in the White House or in Congress, having the guts to pull the trigger on something knowing those consequences. He was right by the way, not that it is a great loss.
The Democratic Party is more disappointing to me as a liberal than the Republican party. With the Republicans you know what you are going to get, a blend of social conservatives who care more about unborn fetuses than actual living human beings and who want to ram their warped version of Christianity down our throats, mixed in with fiscal conservatives who think tax breaks for the well-to-do are the panacea for all of our economic ills, with a good mixture of war mongering hawks who want to destroy all our enemies, real and perceived with brute force.
But the Democratic party is supposed to be the party of common sense and justice for the little guy, the party that looks out for the ordinary Joe. I suppose at one time they were, if you harken back to the days of FDR's New Deal and LBJ's Great Society. All we have gotten since are Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and a bunch of blowhards in Congress who give us the old wink and a nod while they proceed to please their benefactors at the expense of the people they are in theory representing.
So what to do? There isn't much to do actually, there is no savior or political messiah out there who will deliver us from the tyranny and oppression of a system that is ineffective at best and corrupt at worst. Many of us thought that Obama would be the man for the job, a modern day Moses leading us out of the desert across the Sinai peninsula to the promised land. Perhaps it was naive to put so much stock in one man, perhaps we expected miracles where none were realistic or even possible. Perhaps we are looking for answers in the wrong places, politics is no longer capable of solving the issues that vex us, if it ever was. I would suggest that by looking for external solutions we are going about it in the wrong direction.
Most of us know what we ought to be doing, how we ought to be treating each other, and what types of policies we should support and pursue. We have the answers within us if we care to go through the process of self-reflection and introspection that are required. I'm unsure how we go about putting this knowledge into play, but I know that it won't come about by sitting back and waiting for the so-called political leaders to guide us. Those of us who have it within us must reject the ignorance of the politicians, the shallowness of the punditry, and the short-sightedness of the media. All we can do perhaps is work on bettering ourselves and the lives that we lead in hopes that the cumulative effect will eventually transcend our politics and our mainstream culture. It may or may not have the intended impact, but at the least we will be living more relevant and humane lives in the way that we were intended to live. I for one think that is quite enough.
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