On the eve of Barack Obama's historic assent to the office of president of the United States of America, I have a message for our new government and its people. You ask: "even the Senate?" And I answer: especially the Senate...but especially the House.
We realize that our society, and our economy, is in crisis, the problem is that we don't yet fully understand who we are, because it lies in such strident discord, with who we think we are...
We think we are free market capitalists; in reality we are aristocratic protectionists and arms dealers. Our military budget is eight times larger than China's. In 2003, it is estimated that the United States made up about 47% of all of the world's military spending. No part of the military budget can be considered anything but socialism, or fascism if you prefer. Let me repeat that: the military budget is socialist/fascist--it is not part of any free market--in fact, it could be considered an artificial market. After all, we don't need to be in Iraq, and in that sense, our military budget is chosen, as are our wars of recent.
Even in the larger sense, we are socialist, in that we rely on the redistribution of income from all to the rich. Most taxpayer dollars are spent on contracts given to private companies to provide a good or service. Ideally, contracts would be handed out to the lowest bidder, to the most efficient company; in reality, this is a system rife with fraud, backroom deals, and waste. Republicans, of course, are publicly horrified by this system, and it is one of the main reasons they lionize smaller government. However, again, there is a stark contrast between perception and reality, because recently it has been Republican programs and military adventures that have provided the greatest opportunity to abuse the system. Think: Halliburton, Bectel, Blackwater, or the $9 Billion of cash that simply went missing in Iraq.
In the end, who wins the contracts? Aristocratic business owners that have close ties (often campaign contributions) with those in government, both state and federal. So, even though we as a nation believe ourselves to be capitalists, in reality we are more than willing to socialize the costs of the military industrial complex, the prison industrial complex, and other construction projects.
What, for some reason, we are unwilling to socialize, are the most basic needs of our citizens, like Healthcare and Education. Why? Because it's not fair, it's socialism, it's wasteful, etc. One can pick out a dozen reasons that people will give you for opposing national health care or providing more money for education, but you could apply any of them to the egregious industries above and the criticism would be just as, if not more, tenable.
The difference is that the economic benefits of providing comprehensive health care or quality education are not immediately or directly observable. Sating our fears, on the other hand, is, and therefore, the need to feed the corpulent appetite of the military, the prison system, or bailing out the banking industry is begrudgingly accepted as inevitable, necessary.
We think we are a charitable, patriotic, and noble nation. In reality, we are selfish, hedonistic, and downright greedy. We say we value our children, we say we value education, but the fact remains that most Americans would rather spend their money at a sporting event or buying $3 latte's everyday than support a tax increase for schools. The fact that our school systems remain tied to an agrarian calender, that their starting and ending times are largely determined by bus scheduling, and that teacher's salaries lag far behind their similarly educated peers, collectively indicate an unwillingness by our society to truly reform education when we can instead pay it lipservice and get on with the tailgating.
The recent mortgage crisis perhaps best represents our collective greed. Everyone was in on it, from Wallstreet to the appraisers to the real estate agents to the investors to the buyers. All of them were willing to say that a house that had undergone zero improvement in infrastructure, was in the same neighborhood, with the same schools, in the same state, with the same weather, was somehow, magically worth $100,000 more than it had been two or three years previous. And now, instead of those "capitalists" eating the cost of their mistake, Wallstreet gets bailed out.
The problem is that in economics, you can't just avoid bad mistakes--you have to pay for them--and a quick fix isn't going to do anything but delay the inevitable. It reminds me of how our school system, concerned more with numbers and making things look pretty, will pass a student on from grade to grade, and finally to graduation, never mind that the student reads at a fifth grade level and can't pass algebra. Ultimately, the school escapes responsibility because, yes, the student did graduate. Unfortunately, it doesn't change the fact that he reads at fifth grade level and can't solve basic math problems.
So yes, we can bail out Wallstreet and stabilize the stock market for awhile, but it doesn't change the fact that we've lost our manufacturing base, the cost of living is as high as its ever been, and our society is buried in individual debt, whether it be a mortgage, student loans, or credit card. And when people are paying off debt, they can't very well buy new goods and services, so inevitably, the economy is going to reflect that unless something changes.
We think that we are a reasonable, middle of the road nation. My guess is that the remaining Republicans in the house and senate are going to try to assert this with an attempt to block any progressive legislation that comes their way. The fact is that we are no more reasonable than we are middle of the road. We are a diverse nation of individuals with a diverse set of positions, past times, and passions. What we need in reality is another p-word: pragmatism. Until we face the fact that we aren't ever going to totally eradicate terrorism until we eradicate poverty, that we aren't ever going to win the war on drugs, that we simply cannot afford to waste public resources on asserting morality or massaging ideologies, we are going to continue on our current downward spiral. Human society must advance toward progress or it inevitably free falls into chaos, barbarism, and violence.
In short, we cannot waffle our way out of our current crises, no more than we can compromise on issues like education and healthcare. Change can be frightening, but without it, our nation's demise is inevitable. And lets face it, at this point, we don't have much to lose.
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