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Continue reading “Should We Have Faith in Faith?”
Monthly Archives: September 2005
Spoils of War
Americans really like to wage war—at least when it comes to domestic issues. There was Johnson’s War on Poverty, and Nixon’s War on Drugs (an Energizer Bunny of a war—still going strong). President Bush loses no opportunity to remind us that we are fighting a War on Terror.
We like our domestic wars for the same reasons we like sports contests: they are relatively short-term conflicts, and when they’re over, somebody won, and somebody else lost. Mission accomplished! Let’s go to the mall.
We aren’t quite so hot when it comes to the sustained, boring, never-ending business of making our government function. Where’s the excitement, after all, in policing, maintaining, coordinating and fine-tuning governing institutions? Those tasks offer none of the adrenalin rush of our “wars.” They don’t offer the same kinds of opportunities for pontificating on The Meaning of it All. And, of course, they rarely offer the lucrative rewards available to players who had the good sense to sign on with the winners. So we run American government at all levels pretty much the way we conduct our sporting events: we pay attention while the teams are on the field, and we lavishly reward the guys who win. And then we hit the channel button on the remote.
If it hadn’t been Hurricane Katrina, it would have been some other disaster that showed us the result of our constant denigration of actual government operations, our dismissal of all public servants as pathetic bureaucrats unable to function in the private sector. If we weren’t contemptuous of government, we wouldn’t treat national agencies like FEMA and local commissions charged with flood control as “turkey farms”—good-paying jobs for the political hacks who played with the winning team. I mean, it’s not like those agencies do anything important, right? To the victors go the spoils.
Not that patronage doesn’t have its place. We elect people (presumably) based upon their promise to steer government in a certain policy direction, and they are entitled to fill policymaking positions with people who agree with those directions. Theoretically, at least, we hold them accountable when they give important positions to people who can’t do the job. (And lots of people can’t. As easy as it is to pick on Michael Brown and his “experience” in horse-breeding, even real success in the private sector is no guarantee that someone won’t be clueless when it comes to the very different “business” we call government. It’s a lot harder to run a bureaucracy than it is to fight a battle, political or otherwise.) But most government work isn’t policy—it’s implementation. Is this air clean? Is this food safe? Will this city flood? These are functions than require a longer attention span than four or eight years.
Much as partisan ideologues hate to admit it, there’s a lot of government work that needs to be protected against partisan political priorities—and a lot of jobs that shouldn’t be handed out to turkeys as spoils of war.
Spoils of War
Americans really like to wage war—at least when it comes to domestic issues. There was Johnson’s War on Poverty, and Nixon’s War on Drugs (an Energizer Bunny of a war—still going strong). President Bush loses no opportunity to remind us that we are fighting a War on Terror.
We like our domestic wars for the same reasons we like sports contests: they are relatively short-term conflicts, and when they’re over, somebody won, and somebody else lost. Mission accomplished! Let’s go to the mall.
We aren’t quite so hot when it comes to the sustained, boring, never-ending business of making our government function. Where’s the excitement, after all, in policing, maintaining, coordinating and fine-tuning governing institutions? Those tasks offer none of the adrenalin rush of our “wars.” They don’t offer the same kinds of opportunities for pontificating on The Meaning of it All. And, of course, they rarely offer the lucrative rewards available to players who had the good sense to sign on with the winners. So we run American government at all levels pretty much the way we conduct our sporting events: we pay attention while the teams are on the field, and we lavishly reward the guys who win. And then we hit the channel button on the remote.
If it hadn’t been Hurricane Katrina, it would have been some other disaster that showed us the result of our constant denigration of actual government operations, our dismissal of all public servants as pathetic bureaucrats unable to function in the private sector. If we weren’t contemptuous of government, we wouldn’t treat national agencies like FEMA and local commissions charged with flood control as “turkey farms”—good-paying jobs for the political hacks who played with the winning team. I mean, it’s not like those agencies do anything important, right? To the victors go the spoils.
Not that patronage doesn’t have its place. We elect people (presumably) based upon their promise to steer government in a certain policy direction, and they are entitled to fill policymaking positions with people who agree with those directions. Theoretically, at least, we hold them accountable when they give important positions to people who can’t do the job. (And lots of people can’t. As easy as it is to pick on Michael Brown and his “experience” in horse-breeding, even real success in the private sector is no guarantee that someone won’t be clueless when it comes to the very different “business” we call government. It’s a lot harder to run a bureaucracy than it is to fight a battle, political or otherwise.) But most government work isn’t policy—it’s implementation. Is this air clean? Is this food safe? Will this city flood? These are functions than require a longer attention span than four or eight years.
Much as partisan ideologues hate to admit it, there’s a lot of government work that needs to be protected against partisan political priorities—and a lot of jobs that shouldn’t be handed out to turkeys as spoils of war.
Different Realities
Paradigms are sets of assumptions about the world that condition our view of reality–worldviews that preclude recognizing other possibilities. Management consultants sometimes use paradigm theory to explain the failure of businesses to adapt to changing realities. An often-cited example is the digital watch. When inventors took the concept to Swiss watchmakers, they were dismissed because "watches have mainsprings," and a Japanese industry was created.
Continue reading “Different Realities”
Get Mad–And Get Even
Remember the great line from the classic movie Network? Where people leaned out their windows and yelled, “We’re mad as hell, and we aren’t going to take it anymore”?
I’m there. What pushed me over the edge were the grim pictures from New Orleans, showing the devastating consequences of stupidity, arrogance and continuing, monumental failures of leadership. Added to the incompetence of an unnecessary war that no one knew how to wage, economic policies that are rapidly turning the U.S. into a banana republic, it was for me—and, I hope, for many others—the last straw.
But just being mad doesn’t get us anywhere. Being pissed off doesn’t win wars. (If it did, some of us have been so mad so long, dead bodies would be littering the battlefield.) People who care about America have to channel our anger into productive activism in our own communities. If we don’t, we are equally culpable.
The gay community needs to be politically active for lots of reasons that are only marginally connected to the disaster that is our national government, but let me just list four:
· First, elected officials are not mind-readers. City-County Councilors don’t know that most people really do believe in civil rights for everyone. Even Jerry Falwell says he believes that! State Senators and Representatives don’t know that the local clones of the American Family Institute and Concerned Women for America don’t speak for most Americans, and they won’t know unless we tell them.
· Second, the Right wing is not just vocal, they are shrill. It’s one thing to be quiet when most other people are being quiet. But the right wing makes up for its small numbers with VERY loud voices. If those voices aren’t countered, if they are allowed to dominate the conversation, there will BE no conversation, because they are sure not interested in dialogue. If it takes two to make a debate, we need to be one of the two.
· Third, nothing ever changes unless ordinary, good people make it change. It’s a political truism that the “base” of each political party is dominated by the most committed—okay, the most rabid—partisans. The majority of Americans have long since “tuned out” the usual voices, and they are not invested in civil rights or any other issues—they aren’t against equal rights, they just haven’t thought about it one way or the other. (Until Hurricane Katrina intruded, they’ve mostly been following the kidnapping of the blond in Aruba, or watching Donald Trump fire someone.)
· And fourth, we owe it to our communities, and to America. People have died to protect our right to free speech, our right to petition our government for redress of grievances, to criticize public officials when they are wrong, or corrupt, or just plain stupid–we need to use that right. Use it or lose it was never more apt.
Feel impotent? Wonder what you can do between your job and other obligations? Plenty!
You can write letters to the editor(s)–supporting the good guys, criticizing the bad guys. And don’t just send them to the local daily paper: send them to neighborhood papers, appropriate newsletters, local and national magazines—any appropriate outlet. (And do use spell-check; I get hate emails about my columns all the time, and there is nothing more annoying than being cussed out in language you can’t decipher.)
Contact your elected officials. I know you get told that all the time, but it really is important. Email is good, if time is a problem. Hand-written letters are better, and personal contacts are best of all. Does your Representative hold town meetings? Go. And speak up. Did you contribute to a campaign? Call and remind the recipient that you’ve supported him financially and you are vitally interested in his position on fairness and equality for all Americans.
Does someone who is actively working against gay rights own a business? Boycott it, and tell them why.
Be a precinct committeeperson or ward chair, for either party. Actually, the GOP would be best—today’s Republicans desperately need more rational voices within the ranks.
Monitor the media. Pat Robertson isn’t the only loony-tune out there making ludicrous statements. Rational people are offended by pronouncements that God destroyed thousands of poor people in New Orleans because He opposes gay rights. Any opportunity to highlight the essentially nutty character of the far right is an opening. My favorite headline in the wake of the most recent Robertson episode was, “Who Would Jesus Whack?” One story about James Dobson saying Sponge-Bob Squarepants is gay is worth a month of well-researched arguments.
There is a large and receptive audience waiting for our message—but someone has to deliver it.