The election of Barack Obama was an incredible event and one of the most significant tipping points in our shared political history. Tipping points are the beginning of a period of chaos. Change requires such a period, by definition. Such a period of time requires hope in the face of our tendency to revert to stablity. But a true tipping point means those reversions will all ultimately fail. The landscape has changed too much to go back.
That reality can lead to feeling powerless. Whatever any of us thought would become true when the change we worked for happened was intuition based on the ways things were then. Reality has a way of confounding models and theories and mythologies and idealism. Like a surfer on a new kind of wave, we have to waver and risk moves we aren't comfortable with. Unless we are really lucky, we will have to get wet a few times.
But human beings are evolved, programmed, endowed -- whatever -- to surf this kind of chaos, and have done so thousands of times in the past. It is now time for us to join President Obama and do it again for the same reason -- to have a future worthy of our children.
There is only one elementary truth: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, the providence moves, too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it now.
--Goethe
Much has been made of 9-11. That is was an inflection point in the arc of our nation's history. That is was the beginning of a "new normal". That it changed forever the trajectory of our democracy. This mythology has been assumed and rehashed endlessly. But the inflection points that matter are often subtle. By the time a catastrophic event happens, the seeds of it were sown unseen and, all too often, unheeded.
The psychic shock of 9-11 was met with two major reactions: the immediate reaction of the People and the engineered reaction of those in power. The immediate reaction was one of pulling together and of solidarity with the families of those lost. The world's immediate reaction was an opening for America to stand and shake off the tradegy by the strength of our position on the world stage since World War II. A leader with the right stuff on September 12 would have been able to say we would cut our dependence on foreign oil through shared national sacrifice, and it would have been done. Such a leader would have invited the world to stand together against a well-organized, but pitiful, criminal band of zealots. And those who financed them.
We didn't have such a leader then. We hope we have such a leader now.
Engineered reactions are temporary. The Bush Adminstration played out the last of them to the last dreg. They thought Reagan's bag of tricks would lead to Republican hegemony for a generation. But flag-waving and blood lust lead only to despair and discouragement. Such reactions cannot stand the tests of history. They are a form of cowardice. They are a form of quibbling. After thirty years, their power is spent.
Quibbling Cowardice
The leaders we had on 9-11 did not have the right stuff. They were cowards and appealed to us to be cowards as well. Shop. Let us protect you. Be scared in levels symbolized by color codes. Wallow in fear by stocking up on duct tape. Cower in your basement and let us take over and peer into every aspect of your personal life. This isn't much of a future, but it's the only future you can aspire to have.
In quick succession, new Gestapo-flavored institutions were born: the TSA, Homeland Security, the law-enforcement orgy in the Patriot Act, etc.. The machinery of injustice first hammered out in the Drug War was refitted and turbocharged with the War On Terrorism. This hubris - this infection of evil in our body politic - is not practical. The one-percent doctrine is folly, pure and simple.
But the inflection point happened long ago. Its seeds were laid in the machinations of the 1980 Presidential campaign. President Carter was holding true to a principle: no deals with terrorists. A rescue attempt failed. Then on the day Reagan was inaugurated, the hostages in Iran were released. We now know arms were exchanged for them. Arms to the hostage takers.
President Carter followed the honorable path -- in this regard and in our energy dependence and environment responsibilities. Reagan glibly danced around making jibes at such foolishness. Tearing down the solar panels on the White House was a cynical and cowardly act. The only thing which should bear his name is a rusted gas pump at an abandoned gas station.
The trajectory to 9-11 started there and then. Whatever the machinations that produced the deal, the fact of the deal began the onset, and then acceptance, of quibbling in our public officials. During the Iran-Contra investigations, a Lutenent Colonal named Oliver North stood against Congress and defiantly testified, under immunity, that he indeed destroyed evidence, and did so for his Commander In Chief.
intr.v., bled, bling, -bles.
To evade the truth or importance of an issue by raising trivial distinctions and objections.
To find fault or criticize for petty reasons; cavil.
n.
A petty distinction or an irrelevant objection.
Archaic. A pun.
[Probably diminutive of obsolete quib, equivocation, perhaps from Latin quibus, dative and ablative pl. of quī, who, what (from its frequent use in legal documents).]
quibbler quib'bler n.
SYNONYMS quibble, carp, cavil, niggle, nitpick, pettifog. These verbs mean to raise petty or frivolous objections or complaints: quibbling about minor details; a critic who constantly carped; caviling about the price of coffee; an editor who niggled about commas; tried to stop nitpicking all the time; pettifogging about trivialities.
Answers Web Site
The poisonous influence of quibbling has long been recognized in many fields of human endeavor. Perhaps the most iconic place where quibbling is recognized as dishonorable and even dangerous is in military discipline. In the Citadel's Code Of Honor, there are four violations of the Code:
Under the Citadel's famed Honor Code, we find quibbling listed as a form of lying:
a. LYING: Making a false official statement. An official statement is defined as a statement, written or oral, made to a commissioned or noncommissioned officer of the staff or the faculty of the college, a member of the guard on duty, or any cadet required in turn to use the statement as a basis for an official report in any form.
(1) Quibbling is the use of ambiguous or vague language to evade a point at issue. Quibbling will be considered and treated as a false official statement.
(2) The use of any document, on or off campus, to misrepresent one's identity or status to gain a benefit that one would not have received without the misrepresentation will be considered and treated as a false official statement.
(3) Improper Question
THE HONOR SYSTEM
Prescribing The ORGANIZATION, RULES, AND PROCEDURES
For The CADET HONOR SYSTEM, THE CITADEL
SECTION III — The Cadet Honor Code
The Citadel
The Path Of Honor Instead Of A Trail Of Tears
President Obama has set the theme of his governing upon returning to the path of honorable conduct by the United States in all things. This philosophy is essential to bringing a new era of respect to the career of public service. But the Federal Government is a big place. Generations of appointees from various philosophies hold key positions throughout the government. In every dimension, the lack of honor for three decades, with a brief respite during the embattled Clinton Administration, has left us with situations where seeking the path of honor now seems tactically foolish, or even impossible. Such changes can only be enacted when the opportunity presents itself. We can't simply go out and pretend everyone will act honorably, nor would anyone else in the world community believe us if we don't seem to match our rhetoric with consistent actions.
It will take years -- perhaps decades -- to develop a trust in ourselves and in other nations that America is back on the narrow and difficult path of honor. It's just too easy to want blood and treasure. It's our nature. It's so naive to think like this in a dangerous world. It's the very essence of "weak-kneeed liberals", "bleeding hearts" and other strangely perjorative terms so freely tossed around these days. My sig on this site is "Give 'em L" -- the tonic for this poison is proudly wearing the term "liberal" -- the "L word" -- without quibbling and with honor. Echoing Truman's "Give 'em hell Harry" moniker, it is time to return to our roots in order to have a future worthy of our children.
Obama continues to take all the small opportunites, often safely outside the echo chamber of cable and net news, to shore up public servants and heal the wounds inflicted on the image of public service. One major such behind-the-kleeg-lights moment came this week, with the National Security Policy Statement, summarized succiently by Hillary Clinton this Thursday at the Brookings Institute, at the same time the President was having his press conference on the "Gulf kill" crisis.
This tactic is indicative of the relentless drumbeat the various members of the Administration maintain, and the policies they revise, in their speeches and actions. In a way, the Administration can gain far more ground overall when a policy area is not the current argument in the media. The War On Drugs and War On Terrorism rhetoric is gone. The poison is diluting and We The People are waking up. Now each of these warts on our body politic must be worn down and reframed into something which could do good -- which could be held up honorably.
Each of these tactical moves spring from a strategic shift. The public servants who enact them are surfing on chaos. So divided and fragmented have we become politically, that every move will be met with howls and anger. But they will also be met with hope and relief.
Hardened Hearts, Broken Souls
9-11 was a psychic event for this body politic. It was a cusp in the arc of our common history. But each such cusp shatters our understanding of our relationship with each other. As Glenn Beck likes to taunt, those who fail to remember the blood lust, or never felt it, are enemies of the America of a mythology he is brewing up as he goes. Dick Cheney feared and hated the "law enforcement response" so much that he set up and whacked that straw man early and often. His daughter continues the whacking hoping to keep getting air time for their madness. Fox News acts like they believe their very existance depends on keeping this strange and quirky mythology of an America that never was alive.
But the longer the public servants surf, the more they know how to read the wave and find the best slot to get the longest run. We citizens tend to think of our government as very stable and monolithic. But it arises from the daily sustenance of the actions and rhetoric of thousands of public servants. The pejorative spin of the term "political appointees" is balanced by the reality that each Adminstration injects a new generation of people into the government. The longer and more effectively an Administration can govern is the key factor in how much they can really influence what the government does and how it evolves.
The best defence against quibbling is setting logical traps and then waiting for the quibbler to step into one. Oil-friendly politicians are in one of those traps now. Many of them have already been bruised and dogged by the TARP trap, the financial reform trap and many others. Eventually, they will tire of the fight and start making deals -- after all, that is what politicians do for a living.
Illogical traps are also laid out, and President Obama is struggling again one this week as a gutted and demoralized regulatory culture and an underfunded scientific and engineering cadre cannot cope with a crisis of the magnitude being played out in the Gulf of Mexico -- at least initially. But Obama is not afraid to admit they are learning and is not shy about engaging the game before him anyway. It really is the only way to learn how to play in the clutches. He will persist. He will not incite. He will apply the rules he has honorably.
Hope Is Not Hero Worship
Not to say the Administration does not quibble. All of us do. We can't control everything. We have to try to work the situation to protect our larger interests. Even those who learn the Honor Code quibble. When it matters most is when lives are at stake. But the facile ease with which quibbling is accepted in "official statements" such as the news media leads to chaos. Truth is lost in a gloss of weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Coming back from such indulgence requires abstinance and discipline. With quibbling, it takes risking embarassment by admitting the truth and finding we are better for it and the problems we were trying to avoid are much worse than meeting them head on and commiting ourselves to solving it -- even if we have no idea whether we can or not. Especially when we are faced with something which has never been required to solve before.
But as Obama struggles, on other fronts he advances. Thursday he drew the fire and the heat of the Gulf Kill crisis to himself so the meme shifts to whether he can actually lead a fractured and weakened group of agencies to face up to the challenge of this crisis, and of our energy policies in general. Meanwhile, members of his team stay focused on their arenas and advance without being impeded by news media smackdowns and heartbreaking stories of fellow citizens with very real grievances against an industry and a government which cannot get to them and address their needs. Hillary stood up and delivered in her speech. The new National Drug Policy was rolled out quietly a few weeks ago in which the needle is adjusted slightly, but decisively, toward public health and away from the madness and evil of imprisoning fellow citizens for something that never should have been made criminal. The War On Drugs, as an official statement, is a baldfaced lie. In this Administration, none of the quibbling about that is tolerated any longer. The "War On Terrorism" lie -- in all senses of the Citidel definitions above -- left our official statements long ago.
Quietly. Relentlessly. Subtly. Rolled out behind the screen of the latest crisis de jeur. In the zeitgeist, there is a glimmer of hope that honor may return to the public square again. The "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy collapse being tended carefully, and relentlessly, is happening as it is because it isn't worth opposing any longer. No honorable opposition can be mounted, and fear of it relative to everything else is diminished. The opportunity presents itself not due to the direct action of any one person, but to the concerted effort to redress grievences We The People have in an honorable, if ponderous, way.
Look back two years. Hell, look back one year. How many things have become hard to defend which were assumed to be true only a short time ago? We did that. We are doing that. President Obama is still listening, and we need to make sure he has to keep listening. His team of public servants is listening. Perchance we, ourselves, will start listening?
A Recipe For Failure
Unlike George W. Bush, Obama is willing to fire people quickly and without fanfare. His reason for doing so is based in a failure of living up to responsibility or an inability to conduct yourself with honor. In contrast, Bush's loyalty cult gave up trying to move government to be more effective. Effectiveness was not the wellspring of reward, cronyism was. Taking responsibility was a risk only a fool would take when your job was assured by the tally of your political contributions or usefulness. Quibbling was the default style since nobody seemed to stitch together the logic of what was said to expose lapses in logic and concern for the citizens those pubic servants served.
The poison of Reagan's Curse had spread throughout the government. The remaining people dedicated to public service were discouraged and suppressed. Speaking truth to power was so Sixties. "We make reality now" the chattering hangers-on to the royal court would sniff at anyone challenging their hegemony.
It could not last because nothing essential or important was getting done. Honor was a cardboard cutout of law enforcement, intelligence and military people. Imperfect people were raised up to a mythology of perfection, and will suffer for it. Their imperfections become national news. Their professions' honor erodes as the people in each such profession are proven to be human after all. This cynical hero worship is profiling all unto itself. It traps them, and us, in a charade. To the Bush Administration, the rest of us were just cannon fodder and should thank our lucky stars braver and better people than we were guarding us against whatever straw man thrown down the pit to us.
They forgot only We The People can be the foundation of our safety, or lack of it. They sought to cast Us aside so they could meet in secret and revel over heads delivered to Washington in sealed boxes. They engaged in an orgy of power and thus squandered it. That power We gave to them, not the other way around. Only We can bolster our common safety. Only We The People can muster the courage to engage an enemy at all levels and defeat it -- especially when that enemy is one we, ourselves, created and sustain by having to buy oil products to live our lives. Reagan betrayed Us to make a deal which made Us feel good at the time. The price We are paying for that "Morning in America" feeling now is truly terrible. But quibbling about paying that price is only prolonging its poisonous effect on our national soul.
Lying To Ourselves
I remember an interview with candidate Obama in Iowa in which he candidly admitted he had never had to run a negative campaign. He wondered out load whether he could do so if it became necessary. He hoped he could stand up to his own scruples. Later he made a comment about racism, saying "I've found racism is an issue until the other person gets to know you as a person.". When we stop quibbling and admit truth, real people emerge to our sight where before was only a thing to be feared and avoided. When We realize each of Us is human, and thus more alike than dissimilar, there is an epiphany of personal freedom. We are free to be more ourselves and to accept the foibles of others along the way to becoming "more perfect" together. We all gain the ability to ignore frivolous problems and can better tackle "impossible" ones.
The "War On Drugs" is a lie particularly insidious. It is a lie we have foisted on ourselves. Like the Victorians who thought "bad" people were possessed by demons, we actually now ascribe to fellow citizens "bad character" because they use "drugs". Now, which "drug" would that be? The ones foisted on us through TV ads? The ones we take to be able to live through the day? The ones that some people grow and use without infringing on the liberty of anyone else? Which "drug problem" are we solving? Putting kids in grade school on Ritalin so they behave themselves? Neighborhoods overrun with violence and anarchy because We have failed to even want to address their real needs? A Southern border war among thugs and criminals driven by poverty as much as product? Not being able to buy drugs from Canada that are cheaper than those in the US? The problems are legion, and they are not simple. The term "drugs" is now used in so many contexts, it has become hollow and its perjorative shock value diminished. Good riddance. Now we need to be candid about each of these problems and honorable about solving them.
When we hate each other without good reason, we poison ourselves. When we throw out the pall of phantom problems in words charged like neon billboards to hide from real problems looking right at us from our very doorstep, we fool ourselves. Such luxuries are gone. Such fantasies are now deadly. Such hubris has burned us all.
When we let go of foolish fears -- especially the ones we have allowed to roll off our tougue without thinking -- we feel a weight lifted from our shoulders. We feel, finally, that we can stand up again.
Standing Up
In the end, honor arises from the People themselves. As in all other things in our system of government, the People create wealth through their labor. The People create power through their votes, or lack of voting. The People expect honor in the actions of their public servants, or they expect those public servants to be replaced.
In 2006 and 2008, the People could not stomach any more of Reagan's Curse. Instinctively, often reluctantly, they rose up and were surprised to see so many others rise up as well. The People still hope to see the quibbling to stop. We expect to see the Government act like adults again. We fear our greatest days are over, as a nation.
Into this choas, a young man with a funny name decided to plunge. He volunteered to do so, long before he had to if he had paid his dues and waited his turn. He is embattled often. He has not been bowed. He is the object of protest and the subject of dog-whistle converstations. But he stands up and meets each day with resolve. He is slogging ever forward with a calm demeanor and a determined rhetoric calling to everyone "Stand up and be excellent to each other".
I do not agree with many of President Obama's policies, but I respect the arc he is trying to bend. I trust that, if I got to sit down with him and stated my grievences without quibbling or mincing words, I would be met with respectful and logical responses to each one. I would not expect agreement. I would expect counsel and respect. I trust I could look him in the eye and he in mine and both of us would know the outcome of our argument should be an honorable action or don't even propose it.
That is saying something. Unfortunately, after 30 years of cowardice and quibbling, it is saying something that seems new. President Obama continues to meet with the Republican caucus, and to chip away at their filibuster bunker mentality. In the financial reform bill, he peeled some more Republicans away. In their actions, they are finding Our common fears more powerful than their personal political agendas. Obama goes into these meetings with Us as his only constituent. His resistance to being deflected or engaged in trivia is becoming legendary. It is moving the needle. It is bending the arc.
Relentless. Honorable. Persistent. Responsible. Impossible to actually be in every regard for any real person. Worthy, though, for every person to strive to attain. President Obama is striving for that ideal and admitting he will never truly attain it. This core moral value is the prize he believes he has been given to defend and against which history will ultimately judge his time in office. When "official reports" are required, quibbling must be suppressed. The pain of directly addressing the truth is mild compared to the hell of maintaining a thousand small lies and losing your way in a time of chaos and danger.
We The People are starting to surf this chaos instead of wallow in it. Those of us who are public servants are able to use logic more and ideology less in our work. Those of us who are not public servants feel more empowered to take our grievances to those who are.
This isn't a rosy picture. These are dangerous times. We have offended our own citizens, other nations and the planet itself. Karma is coming at us from all directions. In the face of this, we can continue to quibble or we can dare to speak our minds. In the midst of this cusp in our history, we can stay on the beach or take to the water. Obama has waded in, and is engaged. He hasn't drowned yet. In fact, he seems to be enjoying the struggle. He invites the rest of us to wade in, too. He challenges us to at least stop hiding from logic and reason in ideologies born of fear instead of hope.
Surfing
President Obama is only one of Us. But he asked Us to place him first among us for a time, and We did. Crazy as it was for someone to have so much hope, by choosing him some of that hope reawakened in our own hearts. That hope is being tested daily. All this karma could swamp anyone, including President Obama and his Adminstration. Scandals may await. Catatrophies will erupt. Nature could extinguish the light of our existance in a heartbeat.
But until we are no longer here, we must be here now. In this time. In this cusp. In this cusp of chaos. Here is the only place we can stand and, in standing, commit ourselves to playing out the hands dealt us without quibbling, with honor and with mutual respect for all the players -- particularly our enemies.
Hope lies in such a daring action. Danger lies in such a daring action. It may be uncomfortable. It will be painful. But if we actually do this thing and stand up and take to the waves roiling around us, we may find the honorable path back to shore. There's real hope in that. It may be the only real hope left to us right now.
Quibbling arises naturally in us when we feel guilty already. When we are embarassed by being discovered doing something dishonorable. When we are part of a mob who commits evil against someone unjustly. It is an outward sign of inner cringing and wanting to hide.
Take a chance. Break the insidious spell of quibbling. Take on small waves first to get the feel of the water and the board. Feel the exhilaration of small victories only dramatic to yourself. Build up your courage. Cower no more. You may find you like it.
There might even be a future in it.