How We Got "Here" (from May, 2014)

I think it's pretty obvious to everyone by now that Cliven Bundy, the rancher guy out in Nevada,  is not a victim or a patriotic American. Rather, he is a coward, a racist, and a moocher, in the worst sense of the word. It's truly sad that we've sunk so low in this country that we feel like we've got to "take sides" on every media event that happens in this country. Just like Tawana Brawley incident back in 1987, a stunt hits the headlines, and prejudices and fears determine where we feel we must "stand", as if taking sides somehow justifies or solidifies our standing in the eyes of those we despise or those we need. Both the hatred we feel and the need for approval that we crave are based in fear. Ultimately, one must feel sorry for Mr. Bundy, because he is clearly a very ignorant man. Ignorance is accidental; stupidity is intentional. Those who came to support Mr. Bundy, and the media who portrayed him as some kind of martyr are stupid. They willingly ignored the facts, the evidence, and chose to allow their fears and delusions guide their thoughts and actions.

What makes all this doubly sad is that when fear mixes with pride, a person becomes blinded to anything but his or her own fantasies and fears. When presented with the facts, instead of acknowledging their momentary lapse of reason, he or she lapses into more convoluted delusions. Conspiracies become more insidious, plots more nefarious. Soon, everyone is an enemy.

We live in new times, disconcerting times, and these are times of our own making. Words like "conservative" and "liberal" have become absolutely meaningless. And yet we try continually to make ideas and events of today fit categories that worked a long time ago but no more. Those who call themselves "conservatives" rarely have a clue as to what that term once meant, though they try to attach themselves to its history and heritage. Calling Ronald Reagan a "conservative" is truly the height of folly. Likewise, those who tout their "conservative" status based on the "Founding Fathers" usually have no idea about the central ideas that instigated the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution. Revisionist history used to be an invective hurled at "liberals", but now revisionist history has become the mainstay of the frightened white male and his minions, those who all to often latch on to the Republican party.

This is NOT to say that Democrats are no less culpable or guilty. In reactionary times, one must look at what caused the disconnect; what made people lose their ability to reason, to think objectively. It's easy to point the finger at Fox News, because they intentionally seek to be divisive, belligerent, and unabashedly proud of the lies and stupidity they produce solely for the purpose of irritating the "opponent" and comforting the delusions of those who turn to them for the truth. In true Orwellian fashion, they then tout themselves as an alternative to deception and blatant propaganda. But we must remember that these hacks are not OUTSIDE the mainstream, but firmly entrenched in it. The Fox "News" Corporation would not exist had it not been for a major shift in the thinking and the articulation of said thinking in this country. We went from a worldview where "If the White Man said, it must be true to" to "Don't Trust Whitey!" The imbeciles at Fox seek to re-fashion the thinking of the the white, male authority figure in multi-colored hues, but the deception just doesn't work. Much of their drift into, and their acceptance by the "mainstream" is revealed in other networks' attempt to model themselves after the friendly, fluffy, forgettable formatting of the fools at Fox. Regardless of flavoring, cotton candy is still cotton candy; but it is not our teeth that are rotting. It's our minds. But this is only a tangent, valid though it might be.

What has happened? Well for one thing, "authority" became a four-letter word, thus all four-letter words became acceptable. Hierarchies, like the statue of Saddam Hussein, were slung to the ground to the sound of maniacal jubilation. The results? Now, good is bad, left is right, up is down, everything is relative. A social and cultural tsunami hit this nation, and it seemed that no one had a solution beyond finger-pointing. The world of "Every man for himself!" began; everyone, in their own special way, began thrashing around for some kind of flotation device, some kind of stability and feeling of security. As Christopher Lasch pointed out: survival, rather than self-improvement, became the foundation of modern life. Both Democrats and Republicans latched on to our fears and developed a language that resonated with our anxiety; and instead of calming us or reassuring us, they ratcheted up the "fear factor", so that our sense of powerlessness might make them seem more powerful. I don't know which is worse: The Democrats belief that we can forge a new world based on mistrust and envy, or the Republicans belief that distorting the past and promising a return to a place that never existed is how to restore calm, prosperity, and goodwill. Either way, the conservative beliefs that life is basically tragic and that there are limits to what society and/or the individual can achieve have been discarded as antiquated and a hindrance to progress. (Traditional values, then, became anathema to people who called themselves conservatives, one of the sad ironies of modern life.)

Both Envy and Greed find their base in a sense of entitlement. Both used to be part of the Seven Deadly Sins. In 1981, we began the process-- not as hated enemies, but hand in hand -- to change that, to change the look of morality in this country; to accommodate our feelings, our passions, our predilections. To do so, we had to cast aside our humility, our spirituality, our innate sense of worth. Three decades later, we see the results: a Dow Jones Industrial Average that went from just under 1,000 to over 16,000. Where once there were less than 600,000 millionaires in 1980, now there are close to ten million. But if we are honest, we will have to admit that a concomitant amount of misery -- economic, social, and psychological -- was created as well as all this wealth. Had the idea of "self-interest" instead of  "selfishness" held sway over the past thirty years, most of this misery would be non-existent. Yes, we will always have to poor, but that doesn't give us license to intentionally increase the percentage. And let's not forget gated communities, home security systems, and personal arsenals: all of these are the result of our participation in the dissolution of community, our withdrawal from the public in favor of the private, our self-destructive desire to fill our lives with things rather than Happiness or Joy. The fear and anxiety of these times is, indeed, of our own creation. 

For those of a religious bent, one need only look to the Old Testament to see the validity of this assertion. When "God's people" retained their humility and their humanity, they thrived. When they turned their backs on their Creator, when they began to live for themselves, disaster struck. (I mention biblical history because so many who see economic growth as a sign of God's favor, turn a blind eye to the reality of our selfishness.) And what did God's messengers tell the people when their world fell apart? That THEY were the cause of it. Their agony and misery was self-inflicted. All they had to do was "turn back to God", regain their love of others -- family, friends, slaves, strangers, the poor, the rich -- and things would turn around. But what are we Americans encouraged to do? Ask for divine Providence to smite those who have brought all this anguish upon us. "Hate your neighbor as yourself", in other words. It's pathetic.

So where does this leave us? We have leached the vocabulary of political debate of all meaning; it did not happen on its own. The sad truth is, there will be no resolution, no reconciliation until we let go of our fears, and the fragmented desires that spring from them. We will not be the engineers of said reconciliation, but we will be the beneficiaries. We will not only be relieved when it happens, but we will be humbled, in that it will come from dimensions and directions we thought no longer existed.