I do my best thinking in two places, both of which are in the bathroom. But I type in the kitchen, where the computer is located, usually after I’ve been drinking. Tonight I’m drinking St. Remy’s, an imported French brandy that costs $16.95 at the state liquor store. Alcohol is cheap; they mix it with gasoline to run cars; so I suspect 90% of what I paid for this stuff is taxes. The state depends on my affection for tasty foreign liquor to deliver essential public services. Never mind; onward and upward to the topic.
I knew before I was 12 years old that I would devote my life to politics. I realized at an early age that politics is the most important thing in the world. Hitler was a politician; he killed 50 million people. Pol Pot was a politician; he killed 2 million people. Politicians established slavery in the southern colonies (later states), and it took a politician, Lincoln (and a war that killed 500,000 people), to rid us of it. You get my drift. If you want to get anything done, if you’re an idealist like me, if you want to make the world a better place, you have to crawl into the gutter of politics. That’s where the power to change things is.
America’s politics has always been less than genteel but these days it’s downright slimy. It hasn’t been this bad since the early days of the republic when Burr shot Hamilton, and a bit later, the runup to the Civil War (or, War Between The States, if you’re a Confederate apologist). Hamburger that’s been left out of the refrigerator for a week is an apt comparison. If you get involved with politics, you have to deal with demagoguery, fetid appeals to emotion, dishonesty and lying, and all sorts of rancid trickery, manipulation, and crotch-kicking that would make Machievelli puke.
There’s no avoiding it. Politics is too damned important to avoid, no matter how odious it becomes. When you let whorehounds run the world they kill people in droves. Letting yourself be kicked, stabbed, shot, and set upon by dogs is not a viable option for attaining happiness and prosperity. When you’re attacked you have to fight. And if you have half a brain, you’ll realize the best time to shoot a wolf is before he rips your throat out. Think how much better off the world would be if Hitler had been hanged in 1928. With apologies to death penalty opponents, they should have killed that misanthrope when they had the chance.
So. What to do about the current state of American politics? It’s a no-brainer that we’d all be better off if public policies were based on careful evaluation of facts and application of reason backed up by intelligence. Distressingly, what we have today is a national media that tries to sell its product (which they disdainfully and dishonestly call “news”) by throwing red meat to the wolf pack, and a political milieu that has descended into the dark ages of personal destruction. You will search contemporary political discourse in vain for any information or informed thought about the vast array of vexing problems facing our country.
I don’t know what the hell to do. I’m tempted to think killing the purveyors of hate-filled bullshit is the place to start but that idea has already been preempted by the rightwing loudmouths calling for the extermination of liberal-thinking peoples — i.e., partisan genocide — and naturally I’m loathe to descend to their level. Which raises an interesting question. Is it really necessary to fight fire with fire? What I mean to say is, do we have to become banal and venal, merely because they’re banal and venal? An interesting philosophical, pedogogical, and practical question.
I have a feeling things will work out, although not without cost. The great mass of the American polity, most of whom exhibit the good sense to hold themselves above the political fray and let us professionals handle the gory details of political throat-slitting, tend to intervene at the ballot box when they feel things are out of control. If you can manage a perspective that takes in, say, the last thousand years (including all 235 years of our national history) the track record of history, flawed as it is, offers grounds for cautious optimism. We got rid of functioning monarchy and feudalism; we elevated science and scientific method to an eminent (albeit not dominating) pedestal in society; and, in our own country, we rid ourselves of slavery; we ultimately treated the Native Americans who survived our “civilizing” programme with civility and even made some of them prosperous; we helped 20 million dead Russians (and their few survivors)* save Europe from that Bavarian paperhanger (albeit too late for umpty-million Jews, gypsies, communists, “undesirables,” and children who didn’t do anything wrong other than their bodies were useful for “medical experiments”); we enacted the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act; we got out of Vietnam; after the Supeme Court selected W. we had the sense to elect Obama; and a whole bunch of other stuff, the details of which I forget because I’ve been drinking tonight. What I’m trying to get at is I believe there’s some reason, however inhibited, for hope.
Obama ran on “hope” and “change,” then screwed his supporters, but that’s a story for another time. Just a moment while I get up and refill my shot glass with St. Remy’s. I need another slug of 80 proof to deal with this.
I’m in my 60’s now and, I’m proud to report, haven’t given up. I’m still idealistic. I still want the same things I wanted in my naive youth of 40-odd years ago: A peaceful world. A happy world. Public policy based on facts and reason, and on what’s good for the vast majority instead of the powerful and selfish few. I still think it’s possible. After a lifetime of trying, as best I could, to make these ideals a reality, I haven’t given up. I’m going to be dead someday, and fairly soon. Say, within 20 or 30 years. What I’m trying to say is, if you’re young, take that torch from my feeble paw and carry it forward. Don’t give up the dream of making the world better, of making us better, of overcoming human nature as it is, and creating a better human nature. Whenever you feel discouraged about how far we still have to go, remind yourself of how far we’ve come. Yes, it really is possible; we can make ourselves into people who are better than the generations before us were. But you’ll have to get down and dirty in the gutter of politics to do it. I never allowed myself to be too proud, or too afraid, to do that. I hope, pray, and cajole, that you won’t either. All I ask of you is that you carry on after I’m no longer here. Together, generation after generation, we can do this. We can change the world, make it better, and turn our hopes into realized reality. I truly believe this.
But, because politics is at the center of everything, nothing is possible unless you get involved in politics — and change politics. Every generation is new, fresh, different, and leaves its stamp. Mine did. So will yours. Politics is a gradual process that takes generations upon generations to change the world. But change the world it does.
* Of course the Russians (and their enslaved minions) won the war; the notion that we did it is merely self-serving xenophobia. Why we’d think such is a mystery; they did a hell of a lot more fighting and dying that we did, mostly in their own villages and provinces, which we never had to do.
P.S.: Although I was drunk when I wrote this, what I hope you’ll take away from this article is a realization that we lagomorphs have feelings and can write with passion and sincerity, even when loaded to the gills. Excuse me for a moment while I go take a piss; at my age, booze goes straight through me, but that’s not a bad thing because it indicates I’m still alive. I promise you that, for as long as I’m here, I will never give up believing that we can make human nature and this world better. That’s it, I’m out of juice how, I’ve shot my wad, I have to go to bed now and keep the Mrs. warm. Think about what I’ve said and talk about it tomorrow.
Hi,
I hang out with ‘The Oatmeals’ a geriatric
breakfast group on Bainbridge Island. We are
very good at finding problems with the world,
but much less so with solutions. Especially
the kind that might .. just possibly ..
be effected.
Suggestions, suggestions, suggestions.
How do we get from here to there?
Cheers,
Halstead
One answer is rather simple ….
Do ANYTHING!
The amount of complaining and moaning I hear today sounds like something out of Russia in any of its, “lets overthrow the czar out” pouts.
So few people do anything either because they would rather moan, feel all is hopeless, of, perhaps, because they find the choices overwhelming.
Do something!
You can’t change human nature, but you can change behavior by changing the culture. No one burns people at the stake for heresy or witchcraft anymore. That’s progress — a real, tangible, beneficial, and permanent change in human behavior. I’m optimistic about the future because, although human nature is timeless and unchanging, historical experience demonstrates that changes in human culture, followed by changes in collective human behavior, are not only feasible but inevitable. If we can abolish the stake, we can abolish war too. It’ll be done the same way, with the same leadership skills, through the same social mechanisms. As for how, it’s simple. Care about other people. Everyone. All of them. The fate of all 7 billion people in this world should be your personal concern. A wrong against any person anywhere should elicit our collective disapproval. When everyone does that, we won’t do evil things to each other anymore. Caring about others is a product of our values, so we have to get people with bad values to embrace better values. They’re not necessarily bad people, they just have the wrong values. So let’s help them repair their values. Look after your own values first, then teach . One person at a time. That’s what I’m trying to do as an opinion writer. After I get 7 billion people to care about each other, my work as a writer will be completed. I hope to succeed, because I’m lazy and don’t want to work. I’d rather spend my time rolling in the grass and lollygaging in meadows filled with flowers under bright skies in a world in which there is no hate, war, or exploitation. That’s my dream, and I believe we can make it happen. Maybe not within my time, but in time. All I want to do is teach four words to the whole world: Care about each other. Those four words will make everything you dream of, and more, possible.
Have you thought about adding some differing opinions to the article? I think it will really enhance my understanding.