Category Archives: Random Blogging

All of Life’s a Circle?

A verse in an old folk song by the Limelighters’ claimed “All of life’s a circle, sunrise to sunset.”  I’m afraid they may have been right.

We do seem to be revisiting the historical era known as The Age of Ideology.  Napoleon’s defeat ushered in a thirty-year period of turmoil and unrest, described by historians as a battle between Enlightenment science and secularism on the one hand, and various forms of Nationalism and religion on the other.

The problem with clashing ideologies is that reason and evidence take a back seat to a priori beliefs. People can no longer communicate, because they have different worldviews, different mental paradigms. They literally occupy different realities.

Evidence of such a disconnect is everywhere–in Congress, in the Indiana legislature, on the internet, and in what is left of the news. Politics is no longer concerned with governing in the public interest; it has become wholly a struggle for the power to use government to impose the “right” ideology. Those of us who lived through the Cold War often noted the similarity between communism and religion–both were matters of faith. Ideologies do have a lot more in common with religion that with policy analysis.

Historians also note that ideological passions rise in times of uncertainty and social change, just as nationalism and parochialism rise during financial downturns. So perhaps the current levels of ideological rigidity and bigotry shouldn’t surprise us. On the other hand, understanding how we got here is cold comfort for those of us who find the current environment incompatible with the sort of rational, civilized environment that makes human progress possible.

If all of life’s a circle, I hope this one turns pretty soon.

Better to be Thought a Fool than to Open Your Mouth and Remove All Doubt

Donald Trump. Need I say more?

Trump has actually trumped the buffoonery displayed by his birtherism. Today, he is being quoted as saying that President Obama wasn’t smart enough to go to an Ivy League school. This is a none-too-thinly veiled attempt to paint Obama as the beneficiary of affirmative action. (Perhaps he was worried that the racism of his prior attacks had been too subtle?)

The most depressing thing I can say about contemporary America is that it includes a not-insignificant number of people who actually take gasbag self-promoters like The Donald seriously.

Comments

Seeing What We Want to See

I’ve decided that people don’t really read for information–instead, we (and I include myself in that “we”) read for validation. We look for evidence that supports what we already believe. It is one of those all-too-human tendencies we need to fight.

We see this selective approach most clearly in the way people read the bible. It amazes me how often we hear about men ‘lying with’ other men, and how seldom we hear about caring for the poor or ‘least of us,” although the ratio of the latter to the former in the actual bible is something like 30 to 1. We also see it in the ways people approach the Constitution–it never ceases to amaze me how many people are ‘purists’ when it comes to the Second Amendment but are perfectly willing to ignore, say, the Establishment Clause.

Currently, the left and right are again doing battle over Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged. The left fails to recognize the context of Rand’s philosophy; she was reacting against the excesses of Stalinism and Marxism that she had experienced first-hand. Her anger with the injustice of a system where everyone was supposed to live for the proletariat led her to exalt a somewhat exaggerated individualism. Viewed from our own time–where individualism, greed and selfishness have run amok–her prescriptions can seem excessive and inhuman.

But it is the selective reading of Rand by the right that is most instructive–and amusing. As Martin Marty recently pointed out in his newsletter, Sightings, the right has embraced Rand’s unrestrained capitalism and conveniently overlooked the fact that she was an equally ardent pro-choice atheist.

Rand created a world with two types of human: productive supermen, and venal looters. She didn’t deal with the foibles of real humans, who tend to be neither. What I find ironic is the number of people who think they are John Galt (productive superman) when Rand–with her pitiless, black-and-white worldview– would rather clearly have categorized them as James Taggert (‘sniveling looters’).

Comments

Something Old, Something New…

Reading the news lately, I was reminded of the old rhyme for brides: “Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue”

Something old? This morning’s Star had a story about the nearly three million dollars in fees being paid by the Ballard Administration for services in connection with the ill-conceived fifty year lease of Indianapolis parking meters. This may have been a bad deal for the city, but law firms and mortgage bankers did quite well. I believe this gets filed under “blessed are the deal makers, for they shall inherit the goodies” or perhaps the even older “he who has, gets.”

Something new? I vote for the absolute brazenness with which the current Indiana legislature has favored the haves over the have-nots. Although people who can afford to make contributions and pay lobbyists have always had an edge, this year the majority has been absolutely shameless.  The rhetoric has been about “shared sacrifice” at a time when money is tight. So they reduced corporate tax rates and made up the difference by requiring “shared sacrifices” from the most vulnerable: eliminating dental coverage for most Medicaid recipients, cutting the number of children who will be eligible for CHIP, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (despite the fact that 75% of that money comes from the federal government), increasing co-pays for infants and toddlers with developmental disabilities, and depriving poor women of desperately-needed healthcare by de-funding Planned Parenthood.

Something borrowed? Citizens Action Coalition issued a news release yesterday about legislative approval of higher profits for utilities, allowing shareholders of those utilities to “borrow” from the school corporations and municipalities–and ultimately the taxpayers–that will have to pay higher rates. That’s small change next to the smoke and mirrors that accompanied the Ballard Administration’s deal to sell the water company to Citizens. The deal allowed the administration to get a big up-front payment it could use to pave streets and make infrastructure improvements. That “saved” tax dollars, which will have to be “borrowed” from rate-payers later.

Something blue?  Indiana citizens.

What Happens on this Blog Doesn’t Have to Stay in this Blog…..

This isn’t Vegas, folks.

I began blogging regularly when I stopped writing for the Indianapolis Star, but for the same reason–I want to be part of the discussion around policy issues facing the city, state and country. So while I am deeply appreciative of requests to reprint something I’ve posted, those requests are unnecessary–I’m delighted if you want to disseminate something I’ve written.

In fact, I hope readers will re-post, tweet, send to your crazy uncle–whatever. It absolutely validates the effort, and it makes me feel useful!