A jaundiced look at the world we live in.
I remember having a conversation about some intellectually limited legislators with a friend a few years ago; she said (somewhat bitterly) “the problem with the legislature is that it’s representative.” Her point was that we elect people who represent all of us–informed and not-so-informed, bright and not-so-bright.
If things were bad when legislative bodies were representative, they’re appalling when only some of us are being represented.
CommentsThe Guardian recently reported on a speech in which a senior Iranian cleric blamed “women who wear revealing clothing and behave promiscuously” for earthquakes.
If that sort of crazy were a feature only of theocratic or third-world countries, we might chuckle and ignore it. Unfortunately, however, the amount of lunacy right here at home suggests a wider problem.
A few examples:
A conspiracy theorist named Larry Klaymon insists that the fertilizer factory explosion in West, Texas, was an act of Islamic terrorism, and that the government under Obama (“the Other”) is engaged in a wide-ranging cover-up.
Speaking of Obama, in the wake of his re-election, Matt Barber of the Liberty Counsel explained that that the election result was a “communist takeover” of the United States, and that the IRS will start throwing pastors in jail, invading churches and shooting parishioners.
Then there was the Republican candidate for the Arkansas legislature who wrote a book about the proper biblical approach to child-rearing. And I quote:
“The maintenance of civil order in society rests on the foundation of family discipline. Therefore, a child who disrespects his parents must be permanently removed from society in a way that gives an example to all other children of the importance of respect for parents. The death penalty for rebellioius children is not something to be taken lightly. The guidelines for administering the death penalty to rebellious children are given in Deut 21:18-21:
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This passage does not give parents blanket authority to kill their children. They must follow the proper procedure in order to have the death penalty executed against their children.”
Well, yes, I think procedural safeguards before killing one’s children as God decreed are probably appropriate…
Just this month, in the year 2013, the Missouri legislature voted to ban a sustainability program because sustainability is part of the nefarious plot that is Agenda 21!
The Missouri House of Representatives on Monday passed a ban on the United Nations sustainability plan Agenda 21 after a spirited discussion of space aliens and how Walmart could avoid zoning laws to build more stores.
The Republican-controlled House voted 110-40 to ban local governments from adopting the Agenda 21, a broad outline of planning goals and sustainability targets. Agenda 21 was passed by the U.N. in 1992, but has not been ratified by the U.S. Senate and does not contain the force of law in the U.S.
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Agenda 21 opponents argue the U.N. document would seize private property and force people to live in walkable communities with a potential end to golf and scuba diving.
Your elected representatives at work, protecting your nine-iron….
I assume psychiatrists have theories to explain what seems to be a vastly increased prevalence of paranoia, hysteria and irrationality. Or perhaps there has always been a significant percentage of lunatics in our population, and the Internet has simply brought them to our attention–although I don’t recall a time when we have had so many elected officials who either inhabit an alternate reality or keep going off their meds.
How do you talk to someone who thinks short skirts cause earthquakes? How do you get lawmakers who actually believe that President Obama is a covert Muslim Communist and the Anti-Christ to focus on solving the nation’s problems? How do you get people who think Adam and Eve saddled up dinosaurs to understand climate change? How do you get lawmakers who think women’s bodies can “shut down” rapist sperm to respect women’s right to equality and autonomy?
More important: how do we get the sane folks who have thrown up their hands and withdrawn from the political process to wake up and reclaim the country?
CommentsA friend of mine who lives in Wisconsin sent me a link to a story in his local paper, reporting on a study about hormone levels in the waterways.
“All over the country, chemicals known to disrupt or act like hormones seem to have permeated the waters and may be harming wildlife — or people.
‘The more you know, the more scared you are,’ said Kimberlee Wright, executive director of the Wisconsin-based nonprofit law center Midwest Environmental Advocates.”
Just one more example of our human interdependence and individual powerlessness–an example to join with random terrorist attacks like the most recent example from Boston, industrial accidents like the one that leveled much of a small Texas town last week, the periodic outbreaks of e coli caused by contaminated foodstuffs….the list goes on.
In a country and culture that has always emphasized individual responsibility and self-determination, the increasing evidence of our individual impotence is particularly disorienting and destabilizing. We are forcibly reminded that we have few alternative to collective measures–government measures–to protect us. We have to trust that those we entrust with responsibility for public health and safety are doing their jobs properly–that police and OSHA investigators and FDA inspectors are well-trained and honest, and that there are enough of them. In our complex modern world, the only alternative to that trust is withdrawal from the human “grid”–retreat into the woods somewhere, and a life without modern amenities.
No one likes feeling impotent. I have a hunch that much of the “crazy” we see around us–the anti-government “patriots,” the conspiracy theory wackos, the stereotypical angry old white guys–is a response to those feelings of impotence. The notion that we actually have to rely upon our common institutions, the constant reminders that our common lives are complicated and interwoven, and that we require a social infrastructure upon which to “stand on our own two feet” is particularly galling to people who grew up in a less interdependent time. It’s one more element of the dizzying change that confuses and infuriates them.
The reality is, in today’s world, we can’t afford to make government small enough to drown in a bathtub. As unwelcome as that truth is, we need agencies with the authority to require safe factories, to prevent harmful discharges in our waterways, to ensure the food at the supermarket is uncontaminated…Instead of starving government, we need to make sure that it is doing what it is supposed to do–and only those things–and doing them well.
Warning: if you are in a good mood, skip this post, because I’m finding it very hard not to be depressed by the constant reminders of of American institutional dysfunction.
Everywhere you look, there are people who should know better engaging in self-defeating behaviors and magical thinking, fiddling while America burns. I’ve tried to examine the unease I’ve been feeling–the growing anxiety that I’ve been experiencing. Until yesterday, however, I couldn’t put my finger on it–couldn’t find an analogy that fit.
Yesterday, it came to me: we’re on the self-destruct countdown.
Those of you who are Star Trek fans will understand the reference. Spaceships in science fiction always come equipped with a self-destruct sequence, to be used as a last resort to keep the ship from falling into enemy hands. Typically, the captain and first officer will enter their codes into the computer, signaling their agreement to begin the countdown; the dramatic tension comes as the computer’s disembodied voice counts down the minutes until the ship will explode and kill all the crew and passengers.
On television, of course, the bad guys are thwarted in the nick of time, and the destruct sequence is aborted (usually with mere seconds to spare).
We’re not on television, however, and a real countdown clock is ticking. Unless we do something pretty soon to change our trajectory, we stand a good chance of destroying the America we’ve known–the America with a robust middle class, a functioning government and a belief in its ability to meet daunting challenges like those posed by climate change, technology and globalization.
Yesterday’s post was a pretty graphic demonstration of the way in which wealth is currently distributed in the U.S. There’s ample evidence that disparities of this magnitude are profoundly destabilizing–that left unaddressed, they are inconsistent with a functioning democracy. Too many lawmakers in Washington and state capitols around the country are partisan, inept, or lightly tethered to reality–and the result is government that is so broken that no one trusts it anymore.
This paralysis–this inability of American government to act on behalf of the common good–is our self-destruct countdown.
It’s maddening, because there are so many positive elements of American society. I look at my students, and I’d be proud to turn the country over to them; they are thoughtful, inclusive, determined to contribute to their communities. I look at what science and technology have accomplished, and I marvel at the human ingenuity that has made life better for millions of people. Our arts communities are vibrant. Our universities are adding to the sum of human knowledge.
The thing is, all of those social goods require a functional infrastructure: government. And ours is on self-destruct.
CommentsWatching the Indiana legislature is sort of like driving past a big wreck….hard not to slow down and stare, even when you know you should look away. The debate over a measure intended to close down “clinics” (aka Planned Parenthood) by requiring them to build mini-hospitals and force patients to undergo two trans-vaginal ultrasounds got me thinking more generally about the nature of law in our contemporary society.
I often tell students that the underlying premise of the Bill of Rights is “live and let live.” There was a libertarian philosophy that heavily influenced our approach to government, a respect for the individual right to personal autonomy, best summed up as: people have a right to live their lives as they see fit, so long as they don’t harm the person or property of a non-consenting other, and so long as they are willing to extend an equal right to self-determination to others.
The seeming simplicity of that construct belies the difficulty Americans have had in applying it. The confounding issue is the nature of harm (and sometimes, as in the so-called “abortion wars,” the definition of “person”).
Smoking is a good example. If you are an adult, the government has no business interfering with your choice to engage in a bad habit. When it became known that passive smoke is harmful, however, the government was justified in stepping in with regulations intended to protect non-smokers from the effects of your bad habit. Seat belts are a more dicey proposition; there is an argument that drivers who fail to buckle up sustain more injuries in accidents, thus driving up the insurance premiums for everyone else, but that’s a pretty speculative harm on which to base a fairly substantial intrusion.
The problem is, as a society, we are becoming more and more connected. Increasingly, the actions of one person affect many others, and if those actions threaten some sort of harm, we look to government to intervene. Worse, the Puritans who have always been a part of American culture remain with us, insistent scolds who want government-as-moral-nanny-state, government that both protects us from ourselves and prevents us from sinning (as they define sin).
We may never agree on where to draw the line. Government surely has the right to tell us we can’t rob the local liquor store, and it just as surely has no right to insist that we eat our broccoli, but between those poles lies great conflict.
We need to become much more thoughtful about the nature of the harms that justify government interventions in our lives. I understand the ongoing debates about abortion–those debates spring from very different beliefs about “personhood.” Seat belts, not so much.
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