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.