Orchestrated Drama*

Orchestrated drama is just that:  orchestrated.  And I don’t know about the rest of my fellow citizens, but I, for one, have no time for it.

Both sides will compromise far too much to suit my personal values and not near enough to suit my practical need to get things done.

It is the real tension of politics.  Always has been, I suspect.

So I can’t hold with the tea-party folk simply because I cannot find my highest good in a fiscal responsibility that will not cut military spending.  Therein lies the lie, at least for me, of the tea-party aims.  Be willing to cut it all, even the part that hurts your felt values, and then we’ll get somewhere.  Until then, go away.

And I can’t hold much with my left-wing progressive friends either, so long as they remain unwilling to talk to the older folk about some sacrifice.  I’m just not willing to carve out one huge segment of the population and say they’re off limits.

If sacrifice is called for, it’s got to be shared, doesn’t it?

That remains my problem with AARP:  acting as if, as an old person, my only interests rest with self.  Don’t my interests also rest in the well-being of the generations?  I like to think so.

So from one citizen whiling her time away in a hospital room sitting with an elderly mother recovering from a car accident, I say, get on with it.  Put it all on the table.  And don’t any of you dare come back to us and speak of sacrifice unless it’s shared and proportional.

It is not the same for a rich man to give up $100 as for a poor man.  Do not insult us by pretending that it is.  Admit that military spending is as much about employment as it is about actual defense of the nation.  Quit trying to scare us.  There is only so safe we will ever be, no matter how many guns we possess.

Treat us like grownups.


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*This was written late December, 2012, while I sat in intensive care with my mother (who has recovered amazingly well).  There was yet another looming fiscal crisis.  Now we’ve been given a few months of relative quiet on the fiscal front, as we sit in between one fiscal crisis and the next – a process of intentional delay and failure to address root causes that simply prolongs our inevitabilities.  I don’t know about the rest of the citizenry, but I grow weary of it.

I grow weary of Senators holding the floor of their body hostage to showmanship that accomplishes nothing.

I grow weary of a media that treats me like an idiot.

I grow weary of us as citizens, who apparently are willing to be treated as idiots, buying into the next crazed claim made by our respective partisan champions.

I am citizen and I grow weary.

And I ponder what I can do.  It seems like not much.  But there is one thing I can do – I can make my voice heard.  One voice isn’t much.  But many voices matter (in our time, they’re called opinion polls and we have become a nation that now governs by opinion polls, more’s the pity).

So one thing I am going to do is post to my own FB page what I, as a citizen, am willing to sacrifice in order to help get our fiscal house in order.

This is how it will read: “I am a citizen of the United States.  I am 58 years old.  In order to help resolve the fiscal crisis of my country and as one who will receive top-tier social security benefits at retirement, I am willing to have my social security benefits cut by 10% (it’s an arbitrary figure – I’d take a bigger cut if that’s what’s needed) in order to help preserve this system for those who come after me.  What are you willing to do?”

Maybe, just maybe, this way, we can come up with some good ideas and let our elected officials know by those nefarious polls that it isn’t political suicide to have sacrifice – it’s just that the sacrifice has to (1) have actual results and (2) be fair.  In other words, if you’re going to cut something like social security, you darned better well cut military spending, corporate subsidies, and other big-ticket items too.

How else do we even begin to look into the faces of folks whose SNAP (food stamp) benefits have been cut?  A woman I know has had hers cut from $16 to $15 per month; another with a family of 4 from $120 to $80.

I can afford the cut.  They can’t.  Cutting their benefits isn’t wisdom.  It’s scandal.  Enough.

The Distribution of Wealth: Is the Game Rigged?

I read about the wide disparities in wealth distribution in these United States these days and I am chagrined.

The old arguments about how things have always been (as if that’s conclusive proof that they must ever be thus, as if slavery wasn’t abolished, as if women weren’t once chattel and now independent agents, as if change has never happened on this planet) are like dust in my mouth.

When it comes to economic inequality, what I’m thinking is this: can things be this uneven without the game being rigged?

Don’t statistical probabilities argue against that?  Maybe not.  I can’t say for sure.

But a rigged game is something we all understand.  And hate.  At least when we’re on the receiving instead of taking end of the rig.

When it’s the other way around, the thinking seems to be:  I got mine, you get yours.

That’s not theology.

It’s crap.

Because, first of all, you/we didn’t get yours/ours.

Not you-all-by-yourself-you anyhow.

Secondly, it isn’t ‘mine’.  Never was.  Never will be.

Thirdly, if you think it’s about merit and facts and not advantages and perspective, try this one on for size:   1 in 5 families in the United States receive food stamps.  Washington Blog

What’s your own reaction to that?

If you react with distrust and the assumption that a whole lot of folks must be milking the system, I’m guessing that you don’t receive food stamps or have a family member or friend whom you both love and respect who does.

If you react with sadness that there should be so much want in our country, I’m guessing that you either receive or have received financial help yourself in the past or present or have a family member or friend whom you both love and respect who does or has.

It’s the same fact.

But the conclusions we draw from it vary widely based on our own worldviews, formed by our own experiences.

It’s the same fact.

If you view this fact as evidence of individual moral failure, I’m guessing you’ve been raised on the idea of self-sufficiency, which carries with it the assumption that the need for help is a matter of personal failure and a matter of individual shame.

If you view this fact as evidence of collective moral failure, I’m guessing you’ve been raised on the idea of communal sufficiency, which carries with it the assumption that the need for help is a matter of collective failure and a matter of collective shame.

It’s the same fact.

No matter how you understand or interpret it, it is the same fact.

Which teaches me that I need to listen to others more if I would even begin to approach meaning and understanding, for the same facts bring forth a myriad of conclusions and opinions.  Our conclusions and opinions are not facts.  They may have value, but they are not immutable.  They do not stand as laws of the universe.  And unlike facts, they can change.

Thus it is my worldview, but not necessarily fact, that the disparity in wealth in the United States today suggests the ‘game’ of wealth accumulation is rigged.  That conclusion shapes how I understand my own wealth as well as yours.

It makes me cringe, since I am largely on the receiving end of benefits I did not earn, privileges I do not merit.  It makes me challenge myself since God repeatedly reminds me that to whom much is given (and I am one to whom much has been given), much is required.  It makes me question my ‘kind’ as I listen to the language of possession be translated to the language of entitlement.

But what if I’m wrong?  What if the ‘game’ isn’t rigged?  Does that change anything?  Does it make me more entitled?  Less?  Or, I suspect, not entitled at all?  Does my earning or merit, should it exist, lessen my duty to my fellow creatures to share the bounty?  I suspect not.  (No, I know not).

Because worldview or no worldview, the fact is that my very possession suggests that the ‘game’ actually is rigged – whether it’s by accident of birth, divine providence or unfair advantage, to paraphrase John Donne, whenever the bell tolls for thee, it also tolls for me.

It might be (I stress the might) different if there weren’t enough to go around.  But there is.  And that fact alone stands as an indictment when the reality is that ‘it’ is not going around.

In that reality, I stand indicted, convicted, guilty.  How could I be otherwise?