It's true, I don't find us as a very advanced civilization. I'm talking about the contemporary world. Not just because of the never-ending wars, the cheating and slander, the cruelty, the exploitation, the greed and the body scanners at the airports. But for two even worse conditions. First, because of the irrationality that force-feeds our collective imagination. It comes in ads and in sound bites. Every time I check to see what's going on outside, I hear the same narrative: can't get a car, can't get a house, can't get groceries, can't have kids, can't fly a plane, can't go to school, can't go to the doctor, can't go on vacation, can't explore space, can't do adequate research to cure our current diseases, can't create art, can't do an archaeological dig, can't clean up the pollution, can't run for office, can't fix the economy. The repetition is driving me crazy. So is the rationale behind the can'ts. It's always the same: can't do it, not enough money.
I can't help but suspect something inherently absurd, comic and tragic, at the base for this kind of thinking.
Reductio ad Absurdum
It makes so little sense to me, I hope I'm in some other dimension looking in on a me (yes, a me) in this dimension, one doing research on the irrationality of a civilization that stubbornly forfeits benefits to itself by clinging to an arbitrarily created stop and go sign, money. I hope I never see the benefits of this kind of stop sign. It will surely mean I have gone mad. Why would any social group not want all of its members maximum security and health, education and freedom in order to explore and excel without fences or prisons? Surely doing so could only improve the society, don't you think?
Why is it we believe that without money some of us can't get cured, can't get a house, can't own a library of books? Why is it we can't conduct medical research to the edge of what is possible, we can't individually set ourselves on a life long program of study without unwanted interruptions even though the materials to do so exist, we can't devote our lives to individual creative pursuits even though the materials to do so exist?
Why is it we can't travel the world easily even though the means of transportation exist? How frustrating for us as a modern civilization to invent a system in which all but a few must hold back from pursuits because they do not have the money to go forward. It seems to take no time to put up opportunity toll booths, It seems to take no time to maintain a wide network of intersecting toll booths that require everything one owns now and in the future. We are jammed packed at the toll booths, an invention of our own making. Worse, we are crowded into hundreds of them at a time. What kind of narrative to live out is that?
I'm trying to understand the benefit to maintaining a system of toll booth just inches apart. At this stop and go rate, I'll never get out of my neighborhood.
Maybe it's me. Maybe I'm the odd one out here.Maybe I should figure out a way to get everyone else's money and make it mine and mine alone.
My Dream
It goes back to my frequent recurring dream as a child, perhaps. It started very early, probably around nine or ten years old. Maybe even younger. The dream continued through my late teen years. Sometimes it still returns. I find myself in the middle of a highly structured environment in which everyone in some sense, which is unclear in the dream, is the same. I think in clothes. Everyone must wear the same clothes. Or live by some code that is imprinted in their lives in some way. Meanwhile, anyone not in uniform, so to speak, is on the list of people to find and redress. I'm one of the people on the list. Soldiers are scouring the city for people on the list. I don't think the soldiers are ordered to kill us. But to clothe us in some uniform, which then makes you passive. My first instinct is to get away, to find safety in the familiar families I know. I must get away from my parents, whom the soldiers have already clothed. I run to a friend's house for safety. But no matter whose home I run to for safety. It's always the same. The soldiers have already been there. The household is clothed in the uniform. What follows is also always the same. The families tell me the soldiers are coming for me, but I still have time to get away. So, I take provisions and leave. I go to the next place and find the same situation. My journey from family to family repeats itself until I awake. A few times I believe I was caught. But in those dreams I hesitated either out of sentimentality or out of uncertainty. Luckily, in the dream, I always manage to find a route out from captivity.
The dream now strikes me as my struggle to keep my imagination intact.
Obama's Compromise
So what does this musing have to do with Obama's latest signing, his tax cut for the rich? I'll get there by the end of this.
Like a lot of people I watched Obama's joy at being able to say he compromised in a bi-partisan manner as if the act of getting his signature on anything--a ghost pen of the health care reform--remained the goal without too much consideration for the content as long as it didn't backfire. He got his picture taken shaking hands with the republicans. The Washington Times called it a "a giant end-of-year victory." I guess when he said, during the campaign, he wasn't going to work on "Maggie's Farm no more," that he meant him personally. I thought he was talking about the country. I thought he meant the country wasn't going to work on Maggie's Farm anymore.--at least it seemed he wanted to try to swing the country in that direction.
So, now I wonder will Obama leave behind a legacy as the Compromist who Redefined Compromise?
I don't even know if we can really call the Obama compromise-like compromise Obamaesque. But I think it has something to do with the The Washington Times calling it a "giant end-of-year victory." If I recall, the Healthcare-like healthcare bill was billed as a giant victory, too. Maybe it's the "like" part that makes it Obamaseque. With all due respect, Obama seems like a decent persona who wants to please, wants to make history as the president that got the two major parties in Washington to shake hands. It's not a very noble goal but it's a goal to give meaning to his presidency.But is that what we need right now? Aren't there more urgent matters? That said, how can we say this tax bill is tax reform? How can we agree it's more helpful than harmful outside the chambers in Washington? Maybe the best headline we can give it goes something like Obama the Compromist Signs into Law a Very Obamaesque Compromise-like Compromise. Another Republican Victory.
I'm all for lower taxes. I'm all for less government in people's lives. I don't care about bi-partisanship. That sounds like more of a goal of a corporate board. What about balance? Movement that loosens the traffic jams at the toll booths? Most of these jams last a lifetime. It's insane. Here is another analogy. If there's too much water in one pail and not enough in the other pail, then use the water in the full pail to pour water into the near empty pail. I guess that makes me a rather simple thinker. But the truth is billionaires did not accumulate their billions alone. Moreover, most of it sits in pails being useless. Ironically, workers and consumers, jammed at the toll booths, made it possible for those fortunes. That alone should give a hint as to the best way to proceed. If the government is too timid to tax the very wealthy, then the workers and consumers should make the needed adjustment. And now I'm getting to the point about money.
The Con Job--Terms, Words, and the Quick Shift
How we define money and its value may be the greatest con job civilization has done on itself. Sometimes I wonder, is the con job abstract, out of our control, done by the vortex of history itself on the present? Or is it a con job by the few on the many? In either case, it's a disservice to the dignity of civilization. And the tax bill signed into effect sadly enables the con job. It keeps the money in the already full pail in the pail. It keeps millions of Americans unable to get through the toll booths to better their lives. Jammed at the toll booths.
Let me put this yet another way: What's the pathology of creating two pools of money in a single society in which one pool, the greater of the two, cannot be used for the betterment of the society that everyone shares--even though the money derived from the people who can't use it?
I'm talking about the massive pool (hoarded by 2% of our people). What genius came up with the notion that the money to better the society can only come from the tiny pool (held by the other 98%)? I'm trying to understand the deeply embedded irrational that governs the norm.
I thought everyone helped advance American society. I mean that in the strictest sense.
But there's something else. And here I seem to wander off again but I'll tie it in later. The passage of this particular tax bill seems very Presidentesque. It's in the word Compromise. Presidents get to redefine terms or words. George W. Bush got to redefine safety and national security because he was the president who ruled in the name of national security once he got into office. During his campaign he got to define the term or slogan compassionate conservatism because that's what his campaign promised. Kind of an oxymoron once we start looking for compassion in the decisions made by George W. Bush. But never mind, the slogan was only meant to propel him into the White House, where he would quickly get to redefine more crucial terms such as freedom, torture, war, privacy, patriotism, terrorist, etc. Like George W. Bush, Obama gets to carry on the tradition of redefining terms on his own terms to make his agenda work in his favor. Like candidate George W. Bush, candidate Obama had a campaign slogan he got to define : "change we can believe in." Most people know the connotations associated with Obama's slogan.
Bush is gone. And the term compassionate conservatism is buried in his campaign material. I don't remember if he ever used the term once he got into office. I think not. I think it rose from the ashes of the campaign and transformed into "you're either with us or against us." That slogan allowed for the redefinition of the terms national security, freedom, war, etc. Obama is our present presidentesque figure. He too had a campaign slogan. What happened to his campaign slogan, "change you can believe in?" Has it transformed into the slogan, "this is what compromise looks like"? That slogan allows for the redefinition of tax reform.
What is the Meaning of Compromise?
I think we can safely assume that the word compromise is undergoing a Quick Shift in connotative meaning. It's very presidentesque right now. If compromise means, "a middle way between two extremes," as it is generally thought of in negotiations, then the President and Congress did not engaged in a true compromise. Instead, they engaged in a compromise-like compromise. Clearly, there is no balance in the figures themselves if you create two columns and head one the Wealthy Ones and the other the Other Ones. The Other Ones get just enough to keep them from feeling discontent to rise up and take action against the imbalance. The Wealthy Ones get what they asked for. I guess these parcels represent the value of the two groups. And that gets back to this money problem we have.
Maybe it's me. Maybe I just can't see the sanity in the division of America into two economic classes in which one class, the smaller one, has the majority of wealth and power, and the other one, the one with the majority of people in it, has the leftovers in wealth. I just can't see the benefit in that kind of system.
Under the current ill system, I don't mind political compromising if higher principles are not compromised and if it doesn't cause hardship among the general population. I don't consider financial loss among the wealthy a hardship. I once gave private lessons to someone very, very wealthy. After she was robbed for over several million dollars worth of things that she kept in an uninsured bank vault, I felt alarmed at her violation. But when I noticed nothing in her personal world or even business world had changed let alone collapsed, I learned a lesson about money. She was emotionally distraught but not thrown into financial hardship by any definition. You could even call the things stolen spare change.
If the rulers of America want these two classes (the Wealthy and the Other) to remain fixed, then they should come out and say so. You have to say, America is made up of two classes, the Wealthy (who get privileges and an open arena to excel) and the Other (everyone else who get to sink or swim). While you can't call that democracy, you can make up some other term for it and revise the Constitution to include this fixed stratification of classes. You might then redefine the pursuit of happiness or equality as the right to move from one class to the other through economic status, and leave it at that. Once out in the open, maybe we can divide up the country, so those who want to live under this two-class system can do so under their own free will. Those who don't can gather together and invent some other way of living.
On the other hand, if you want a democratic system for all, you have to get rid of the two-class system. Why not start by redefining the value and use of money. If taxes won't do it. then maybe unions can help out. Cut the work week in half while increasing salaries 500% for all workers, which will help create jobs and security for all. Think of the robberies, suicides, scandals,and murders that single act could prevent. Use a lottery system, to give bank confiscated homes to people who don't have homes or who have lost theirs. That would get the stress pockets off the books of the banks. Think of all the flags that would wave. Trust me, the banks won't notice the loss in profits.
Another good start is to practice ethical behavior, as a country, according to the UN Declaration of Universal Human Rights of 1948. The United States agreed to follow the articles set forth, so I'll assume each administration knows the commitment America made.
We all know the narrative. We all know the conundrums chasing their own tails in Washington. We all know things can only get worse if we continue in the direction we are going, have been going for a very, very long time.
The Concession Compromise
But back to Obama. I regret his hope and his weakness. I regret the way he has missed the sinister motivations of the powerful group of Republicans, the ones who rule no matter which party is in office. I regret the wall he faces and can't free himself from. I keep thinking about that compromise Obama said he made. Obama made a point of saying "this is what compromise looks like." It was a very telling statement. Very presidentesque, for sure. The Republicans called it a victory, the Democrats didn't know what to call it. But for the rest of us, things aren't much different with its passage. It's true the unemployed get an extension. But the probability is high that they would have gotten it anyway--in some kind of emergency bill. If a president can send billions overnight to a war zone, it can send a few million to people who are stuck unemployed. No ruling group that wants to stay in office would allow millions of people to be thrown into the street for--yes--not having enough money.
ADDED MARCH 10: Things are getting very different since Obama decided to work with the Rupublicans. Wisconsin, for example, is now stripped, until further notice, of its union rights. In Michigan, things are worse. What does it mean to be a worker in the 21st century? Workers are the ones who should decide for themselves, and they should have the right to strike and negotiate on equal footing at the table.
The Redefiner
To say "this is what compromise looks like" is to define or redefine the term compromise to mean what you say it means and want it to mean. And to suggest that the act of compromise, even in this limitedly defined way, is good just because it exists on your terms, seems to bespeak Change without Change. Everyone must take the responsibility seriously for whatever position he or she is in at any given time. So, in presidentesque fashion, is Obama redefining the word compromise so that his change is change we can believe in? Either way, the people should be thinking about how to really restructure the money system so that we allow for, which we can today, abundance for all Americans.
EDITED FOR ERRORS 12-24-2010
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