When diet and exercise are not enough, Lipitor may help...
The collective outrage that has been expressed across the nation over the recent news story that the South Fulton county fire department in Tennessee stood by and watched as a family’s house burned down because they had either refused or simply forgot to pay a $75.00 service fee is very telling about all that ails our troubled society. Jimmy Carter once remarked that this nation suffered from a crisis of confidence, and though I have never heard president Obama say it, I think we suffer from a crisis of compassion and sense of community today. Perhaps this lack of compassion and community is what prompted George W. Bush to campaign as a compassionate conservative in the 2000 presidential election. At any rate, what I see occurring in this nation is troubling, and indicative of a society that has abandoned its social contract.
The greatest threat to the nation today is not terrorism or brown people. Rather, it is what’s lacking inside each of us, you and I, that most threatens it. This lack of compassion and sense of community has reached a point where we would allow our neighbors home to burn on account of a small unpaid fee. Simply put, we have forgotten how to love, and we’re certainly not our brother’s keeper anymore. I'm not sure how you transform a society that has abandoned such principles as honesty, decency, respect, tolerance, compassion, grace, community, etc. And frankly, I don't feel one has to have faith to still believe in such antiquated values. I am no believer myself, but I do believe in grace. And I believe I am my brother’s keeper.
There’s a lot of noise in the streets these days, and many voices have expressed an opinion or two. And as could be expected during such trying times, many solutions have been proposed. Some are good and others not so much. For me, I have no solutions, nor do I wish to propose any. See, I believe the problems facing the nation are both internal (that is, within ourselves) and systematic, and therefore can only be resolved by reforming the sum. Fixing the holes in the damn will no longer suffice, we all know the damn will soon fail regardless of our inconsequential repairs, and we need to be saved from this spiritual (not necessarily religious) and political morass we find ourselves in while we still have time.
I had hoped president Obama would lead us unto Canaan, but he seems either too weak or timid, or worse, lacks the compassion to do what is right. I had hoped the president would put the nation back where it needs to be, and not just where we were prior to the Crash of 2008. Sadly, it appears I was mistaken. If most every economist is in agreement that the repeal of the Glass-Stegall Act of 1932 played a significant role in the recent financial meltdown, then the lack of such protections moving forward is all too telling. Rather than solving known problems with known solutions, the president and the congress simply put Humpty Dumpty back on his wall. In time, he will have a great fall once again. And once more the U.S. taxpayer will be there to put him back together again. My parents bailed out the savings and loan industry in 1987, my generation bailed out the "too big to fail" banks in 2008. Perhaps this unique addition to the capitalistic system will become generational, and my children’s generation will feel the exhilaration of the wind rushing through their hair as they bail the banks out once more circa 2028. Oh, the stories we will tell.
You could award someone a PhD if they could figure out how we begin to take back our government from the interest groups that have hijacked our democratic institutions. The Senate is broken, it is no longer a functioning body of the government and the Supreme Court leaves quite a lot to be desired as well. The House still functions but barely and the Executive branch seems irretrievably seduced with power and its own authority. The unitary theory of executive power, conceived in the age of Nixon, given a shot of adrenaline during the Bush era, remains a potent element of Obama's White House mindset. Executive targeting, rendition, enhanced interrogations, secret tribunals, executive privilege and the use of domestic surveillance programs have only grown bolder and more transparent under this president.
The Tea-Baggers are correct when they holler they want their country back. Where they are wrong is where they place all the blame and where they level their frustration at. Sadly, I think had president Obama governed from the center-left and reoriented the country by demonstrating to Wall Street and big business that he is in charge, and that the rules have changed, much of the populist anger today would be properly harnessed. Only the racists in that movement would be out hollering in the streets today because the rest of us would have our hands full sweeping up the mess of a system that crashed down around us thirty years ago. Sadly, that did not happen and the White House missed a golden opportunity to co-opt the legitimate anger in the nation by pressing forward with populists’ tinged policies that addressed the root causes of the nation’s troubles.
The firefighters in Fulton County too missed a golden opportunity when they failed to extinguish the flames that threatened their brother’s home. Sadly, the nation that doesn’t know how to love, and lacks a sense of community, also produced a group of men who feared losing their job more than they feared the consequences of a nation abandoning its moral compass and the social contract that prevents us from morphing into a pure Hobbesian state. In the end, it’s perhaps the latest sign we are a nation of lost souls, content to protect what little we have left and nothing more. Such nations never last long for the center will not hold. Until we recapture the essence of what makes us a loving, compassionate society that values community, everything else we do will remain inconsequential.