Kossacks -- What follows is a second essay I've written for scholarship consideration. I'll be attending American University's SPA in the fall. The question is purposefully vague: Why do you want to get involved in public service? What do you think? Anyone know how to spell syssaphusian? Like the guy, Syssaphus, who was condemned to push a boulder up a mountain, only to have it roll back down at the end of the trip?
The thought of working in politics occurred to me one day when I was teaching a class on "The Penal Colony" by Franz Kafka. In the story, a representative of the colony's government shows to a foreign traveler the colony's cruel torture device. The device is a form of capital punishment; what makes the story so wonderful to teach is the foreign traveler's reluctance to speak out against the device - even though this type of brutal punishment repulses him.
My students debated action versus inaction, recognizing a wrong and - as the traveler does - refusing to speak out. After the discussion, I went into my office, where I continued the conversation with a student. She pressed me on my stance: Was the traveler guilty of murder, simply because he remained silent? I told the student flatly that I believe in action, and that throwing one's hands up in the air - saying "it's out of my control" - is no excuse for inaction.
Later that night, I began thinking about how to justify my opinion. There I sat, a politically interested, middle class, 24 year old. Random thoughts popped in and out of my head. I read the blogs, watched CSPAN, and subscribed to The Economist, but I was shocked by what I saw in the aftermath of Katrina: people lived like this in America? I had become disillusioned with the motivation and justification for the Iraq war: why was the public - and our elected representatives - so easily misled? And as corruption scandal followed corruption scandal, I felt I couldn't trust the people whom I elected to office. What was I doing to change these terrible injustices? I complained to, and with, other like-minded individuals. I engaged in less-than-spirited debates with family, friends, strangers in the blogosphere. Was this any better than the traveler in Kafka's story?
As I often do when faced with these types of philosophical questions, I called my grandfather. He laughed when I told him my story, and then told me (for the umpteenth time) about his experience as Freedom Rider in Mississippi in the 60s. Only this time, he told me about why he went, not the usual, romanticized romp down memory lane he launched into every Martin Luther King Day. He described his desire to stop sitting on the curb, clapping as the heroes lead the march toward equality. He explained his fundamental belief in the rights Jefferson enumerated in the Declaration; the Constitution (and its amendments) was his bible. The government wasn't holding up their end of the bargain; James Madison was calling him to help African-Americans register to vote.
I hung up from him feeling I had to start to help solve some of the problems I saw in government. But still, I waffled. Government can't do any good; Washington is a den of corruption. Changing that town would be a Syssaphusian task. Even if I made some small difference, Government is selfish - I was simply too disillusioned.
Then another image occurred to me. As cancer ate away at my father's brain and lungs, he sat at the dining room table tracking his movements through Vietnam on a map provided by the Veterans Administration. The purpose of the map was to see how much Agent Orange he was exposed to; one theory explaining the severity of his cancer was that it was caused by over-exposure to the herbicide in the jungles of South East Asia. I thought about what I would do, if I was him at that moment. The actions his government took were directly linked to his pain and suffering, and ultimately, to his death. Yet, rather than being disillusioned, my father was working within the system, not against it. He had done his protesting against the war, now it was time to let government do something good for him. After he died a few months later, my mother got a small settlement - just enough to cover burial expenses.
In my opinion, government can be responsible. But a government is only as successful as the people who make it up. As the DC "establishment" continues to shoot itself in the foot with corruption scandals, voters will begin to hold their representatives accountable. With a touch of my father's pragmatism, and a dash of my grandfather's cynicism, I feel I can spend the next 50 years of my life working - from within the system - to get good people elected to office. In this way, I'll be making both my father and my grandfather proud.