The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
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    Drowning in Delusions

    By Barth on Sun, 09/27/2009 - 2:55pm |
    Something is very wrong. You know it and, as Senator Robert Dole used to say in another context,"the American people know it." We no longer sound like the people of the United States. We are not the country of hope and light, the beacon to the oppressed of the world which we have been in the best moments of our national history.

    We are now becoming increasingly selfish, stupid and self-delusional and there can be little question that each of those benchmarks of what passes for political "thought" in this country, carry seeds of disaster and of our demise as a great nation. 

     You hear it everywhere. The President spoke about how bewildered are the leaders of other industrialized nations, some the leaders of very classically conservative governments, about our inability to find a way to insure the medical care of our citizens other than the destructive employer based program we stumbled into after World War II. Today, Tom Friedman wroteabout our national response to China's campaign to "green" its own industry, comparing it to how we once responded to the launch by the Soviet Union of the first man made satellite

    This time, Mr. Friedman writes, 

    [i]nstead of a strategic response too many of our politicians are still trapped in their own dumb-as-we-wanna-be bubble, where we're always No. 1, and where the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, having sold its soul to the old coal and oil industries, uses its influence to prevent Congress from passing legislation to really spur renewables.


    This is not to mourn a lost time when all was well, the way the Reaganauts do. The days when people were openly discriminated against because they were black or Irish or Jewish or Catholic or women or homosexual is not an era to which we look fondly. But the country which had a rendezvous with destiny, the one that could roll up its sleeves and do what had to be done, and the nation motivated to be the best, the most enlightened, and the place which shows the way, is the nation we were born into and which we are losing or, perhaps and sadly, we have already lost.

    We have lost it, if that is what has happened, to another disease to which we have often been victim. It is the self-delusion which comes from thinking that if we just say something often enough it must be so. Such as 

    we have the best health care in the world


    or

    The last thing in the world I think Democrats and Republicans are going to do at the end of the day is create a government-run health care system where you've got a bureaucrat standing in between the patient and the doctor.


    because a system where a for profit insurance company bureaucrat fills that function is certainly superior.

    Some of these lines come from a lack of education and from the know nothingness and anti-intellectualism that has had such great appeal in a country where some decided who should be president by which candidate one would most want to share a beer. It is even argued that to concede that other countries do anything better than we do is unpatriotic or somehow anti-American.

    But being a good citizen does not require that one determine their views on legislation by "what it will mean to me" or to "my pocketbook" as we are frequently told. Indeed, of course, in addition to being selfish and to that extent, un-American, it is always a false argument: our history and common sense tells us that we rise and fall as a nation, not as individuals and our momentary advantages are always outweighed by the forces around us, and the lives led by our fellow citizens

    As the new year began on the Jewish calendar last weekend, a rabbi reminded a congregation in New York City of a different view, the one which is what truly made our country what we want it to be. He said, among other very important things, that 

    we must do even more for the disenfranchised, the poor, and the medically uninsured in this country. Our health care system must be fixed. Supporting the weak and the needy is a mainstay of our character and a purpose of our existence. 'Large-heartedness' said our President 'is part of the American character.' ...

    We ... will not be judged by our success in times of prosperity. That is easy. Rather we will be judged by how decently we comport ourselves in times of adversity. That is the challenge.


    and, as he said that, those who first began listening in the 1960s can recall another call to the best of what our nation can offer. This is Senator John F Kennedy, in the first presidential debate of the 1960 campaign: 


    I should make it very clear that I do not think we're doing enough, that I am not satisfied as an American with the progress that we're making. This is a great country, but I think it could be a greater country...I'm not satisfied to have fifty percent of our steel-mill capacity unused. I'm not satisfied when the United States had last year the lowest rate of economic growth of any major industrialized society in the world. Because economic growth means strength and vitality; it means we're able to sustain our defenses; it means we're able to meet our commitments abroad. I'm not satisfied when we have over nine billion dollars worth of food - some of it rotting - even though there is a hungry world, and even though four million Americans wait every month for a food package from the government, which averages five cents a day per individual. I saw cases in West Virginia, here in the United States, where children took home part of their school lunch in order to feed their families because I don't think we're meeting our obligations toward these Americans. I'm not satisfied when the Soviet Union is turning out twice as many scientists and engineers as we are. I'm not satisfied when many of our teachers are inadequately paid, or when our children go to school part-time shifts. I think we should have an educational system second to none... 

    These are all the things, I think, in this country that can make our society strong, or can mean that it stands still. I'm not satisfied until every American enjoys his full constitutional rights. If a Negro baby is born - and this is true also of Puerto Ricans and Mexicans in some of our cities - he has about one-half as much chance to get through high school as a white baby. He has one-third as much chance to get through college as a white student. He has about a third as much chance to be a professional man, about half as much chance to own a house. He has about uh - four times as much chance that he'll be out of work in his life as the white baby. I think we can do better. I don't want the talents of any American to go to waste. 

    I know that there are those who want to turn everything over to the government. I don't at all. I want the individuals to meet their responsibilities. And I want the states to meet their responsibilities. But I think there is also a national responsibility. The argument has been used against every piece of social legislation in the last twenty-five years. The people of the United States individually could not have developed the Tennessee Valley; collectively they could have.

    A cotton farmer in Georgia or a peanut farmer or a dairy farmer in Wisconsin and Minnesota, he cannot protect himself against the forces of supply and demand in the market place; but working together in effective governmental programs he can do so. Seventeen million Americans, who live over sixty-five on an average Social Security check of about seventy-eight dollars a month, they're not able to sustain themselves individually, but they can sustain themselves through the social security system. I don't believe in big government, but I believe in effective governmental action. 

    And I think that's the only way that the United States is going to maintain its freedom. It's the only way that we're going to move ahead. I think we can do a better job. I think we're going to have to do a better job if we are going to meet the responsibilities which time and events have placed upon us. We cannot turn the job over to anyone else. If the United States fails, then the whole cause of freedom fails. And I think it depends in great measure on what we do here in this country. ..

    In 1933, Franklin Roosevelt said in his inaugural that this generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny. I think our generation of Americans has the same rendezvous. The question now is: Can freedom be maintained under the most severe tack - attack it has ever known? I think it can be. And I think in the final analysis it depends upon what we do here. I think it's time America started moving again.


    It is not because of Nixon's "six o'clock shadow" that Senator Kennedy won that debate and won that election as fable has it. It is because John Fitzgerald Kennedy struck a chord in the new generation of Americans to whom the torch was then being passed, and it was those people, our parents and grandparents, who saw a better country ahead.

    We have just gone through another such election, but the question remains---the same questions asked by President Kennedy while he sought his election in 1960, by President Obama when he sought his, by President Roosevelt in the 1930s and by a rabbi in New York City last week. What kind of people are we and what kind of country do we want to have.

    We are at that crossroads again and I fear what the answer may be. I wish all those for whom the next day is one of prayer and redemption the very best, and the hope that we can mark the day with greater resolve to do better for our country and its people and that others find another way to resolve the same.