|
Rant. Muse. Eat. Sleep. Recycle. |
|
Previous Posts
Fellow Bloggers
Links |
Friday, December 09, 2005 Is the U.S. still a "good" nation?
It's the people that squirm, not the architects of our discontent.
One of my pet rants - race - goes hand-in-hand with class and I believe that it is a primary motivator for African Americans to have chosen the Democratic party as its lesser evil. But, our current state as a nation (fearful, divided, mean-spirited) is a much deeper situation than can be described using only the context of race. I can't help but believe that eventually, the people will let their discontent flow back upstream. But, in the meantime, with the sophistication of America's governmental apparatus, we are able to affected almost individually: IRS audits, FBI surveillance in-country, wiretaps, CIA surveillance when we're out of the country, medical and financial records basically anyone can access. In a nation of 300 million, that is no small feat. We are right to be afraid, because they can come for us. Is that the new American paradigm -- Argentinian disappearances? While we are busy discussing political ideology, the people in charge (and there ARE people in charge), are talking about practical applications of the tools they hold. They wield software that watches your every keystroke and redflags any words such as 'Al-Quaeda,' 'bomb' or 'arms dealer'; they have roving wiretaps that allow them to listen in on you even if you've never committed a crime; they can follow your movement by the use of your credit card and track your location by your cellphone signal. Our money now has a magnetic strip that can be read from a distance and our products are beginning to be filled with RIFD sensors that will allow your toothpaste to serve as a homing beacon. And, for the coup de grace, the remote-operated Predator plane can blow you out of the sky or off of the street as easily as playing a game of Donkey Kong. An anecdote: Traffic engineers are very familiar with the 'Australian Method' of traffic control. It means holding red lights longer than green lights; it means 'no turn on red' signs in visually unobstructed intersections. Its purpose is to discourage people from driving in what those engineers consider to be congested areas. The description I just gave is pretty straightforward -- it doesn't even touch on the emotional by-product of what the Australian Method creates: frustrated drivers. That, to me, is a microcosm of how we have empowered the people who control our government to work with us - by coercion. Damn the emotional by-products, control our actions. It comes down to money, time and fear. Those are the big sticks in government's arsenal. They threaten us with jail or court (time); fines or seizures (money) and tell us all Muslims want to kill us and all Mexicans want to take over our country (fear). Do liberals try and scare us to get into office? Absolutely, just the same as conservatives. But, as Olive so eloquently put it -- and I am poorly paraphrasing -- I trust conservatives less. Forget skin color, a man like Tom DeLay, for instance, is bad news for his fellow white people. The lens I look through is one of personal pragmatism. If DeLay, who has no use for African Americans, can screw over people who look like him, he is not a trustworthy human being in my opinion. The old saw about the CEO who knows the names of and has a kind word for every janitor in his building is interesting to me, because it assumes that a CEO shouldn't know such things. That social expectation ties in with our political expectations. We create an caste system of undesirables. And, occasionally, the American Public is forced to do something it collectively doesn't want to do because, "we can't be trusted." And, in one-to-one interactions, we tend to "round off" our estimates of how certain people should be treated. Black crackhead? We round down. Cute girl, young and white? We round up. Malcolm Gladwell described it as: 'Fundamental Attribution Error.' By that, he means we tend to ascribe our impression about one personality trait of a person to that person's whole being. Ergo, George W. Bush, once he is deemed as trustworthy by a person, will almost certainly be seen as trustworthy again by that same person. And, if he acts in an untrustworthy manner, it is viewed as out of character. My concerns is that as we squirm about abortion, racism, sexism, homophobism and all our dividers, we attribute only good motives to our government (I'm oversimplifying). Does our present goverment deserve it? We don't remember that the government is run by people who are counting on us to fight among ourselves and feel warm and fuzzy when we see the flag. A question we should be asking is: 'What is the character of our government?' Are we endorsing a government that has become bad for humanity? That is a hard question, but it is a patriotic one to ask. I have an idea (pie in the sky, I know) for a crazy protest for all of us squirmers. We put a moratorium on 'polls.' If any pollster calls, whether you are Dem, GOP, Green, Independent, Communist, you tell her to hit the road. No information. Just Say No to polls and let the politicians figure it out blindly. Polls are crutches that allow them to point to some amorphous 'other' with no accountability. Bad things will certainly happen and the bad actors will make themselves known. There are such small differences between most of us, but those difference keep us from holding those in control accountable. Why? We're busy fighting each other over ideologies. That discussion of our differences needs to continue, but it's the oldest trick in the book to say: 'Look over there, there's [someone you disagree with].' It's called misdirection and we are getting the brunt of it. In our favor is that the current band of thieves is so corrupt that they've pointed us in a series of directions that led in a circle - back to their misdeeds. So, we've got that going for us. 4 Comments:
Want to Post a Comment? |
