The roar of a million whispers
Vigilance is good, but most of us are simply too damned busy making a living, raising a family, and trying to enjoy life to do all the things that need to be done. Besides, life should be fun. So, what can we do to combat the political and economic threats to our welfare and freedom without turning into bleary-eyed revolutionary fanatics?
By Rod Van Mechelen
1996 Bellevue, Wash. - The July 1996 issue of the Atlantic Monthly starts off with a letter from a reader concerned about America's complacent dependence on oil in general, and Mideastern oil in particular:
I agree that we are "sleepwalking" into what will become a significant energy shortage by 2020. However, the reason that we can't plan ahead and make significant progress on alternative energy sources is that we as a nation insist on believing that the world is as we wish it were rather than as it actually as it is, so we insist that soft energy sources will be sufficient. - Mideast Oil Forever, Atlantic Monthly, July 1996
He's got a point. He's also parroting a wisdom that, while popular, is inaccurate. It's not that we don't care, it's just that most of us don't have time to be, as Nathaniel Branden once put it, "statues in the park."
Americans are pretty much like most everybody else in the world. We work a lot, think about having sex, play a little, wish we were having sex, contemplate the infinite, practice some religion, sometimes we have sex, and above all else, we are preoccupied with trying to figure out just exactly how Sandra Bullock used the "three sea shells" in Sylvester Stallone's movie, Demolition Man
.
We like to think we're decent, responsible people. Mostly, we just try to survive as comfortably as we can, and have a little fun in the process. In economics and finance, they'll teach you this isn't true; that we always act rationally to do what's in our best interests. On Wall Street, they say we "discount information" to set prices and optimize our opportunities. In marketing, they know better. They know most of us are more likely to go to McGolden Greaseburger for a family treat than to a healthy juice bar, because it's more fun to chow down on seared animal flesh and ketchup-drenched lard-sodden fries today than to worry about being healthy tomorrow.
Our weakness for fun and comfort is key to Corporate America's success. There's no easier way to make a fast buck than selling the path of least resistance. That is why we continue to consume vast quantities of oil, heap landfills with discarded plastic, and flock to the local cinema to watch Will Smith kick alien butt instead of turning the earth into a garden planet while we still have the chance by scrambling to build factories in space and mine the asteroids for precious and industrial metals.
Too comfortable to care?
After the question of survival with a little sex on the side has been answered, comfort, convenience and fun will do more to motivate most of us than any concern about a problem that's a generation or more away. Twenty years ago, members of the Libertarian Party were frothing at the mouth over government spendthrift policies that were eating away at our future generations' future. In 1976, most folks thought libertarian Ed Clark (who ran against Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan in 1980) was a loony. Now, he would be considered almost mainstream.
Why did he fail then, and why are we failing now? Resistance of the powers that be aside, there were two overriding considerations:
If folks are comfortable, you have to break through their complacency. Actually, that's not very hard to do: War and emergencies do it all the time. Nothing unsettles the settled like a clear and present danger.
What about when things may not be great, but they're okay for now? Or, as Barry Manilow used to sing, "I'm doing okay, but not very well"? That's different. Conservatism is next of kin to fear, and people who are one or two paychecks away from living on the street want more than anything to pretend they're doing okay. The last thing they want to hear is that AT&T, Boeing, and many other major US employers are going to export millions of jobs to China. If you do manage to make them hear you, they're less likely to look for solutions than to feel overwhelmed by the enormity of the problem, hunker down in their cubicles or cluster in the locker room during break time to complain about the weather, gossip about their neighbors, brag about their team, and isn't it terrible how another plane just fell out of the sky.
Who can blame them? If the sky is going to fall, what can I do about it?
Meanwhile, our politicians obfuscate, mainstream and fringe political parties alike avoid articulating clear, understandable and precise solutions for fear of opening themselves up to crippling public criticism from the Rush Limbaughumbuggers on both sides of the political spectrum, and the pragmatic captains piloting the immense corporate super tankers of multinational commerce smile and nod reassuringly as they languidly cruise by the foundering ship of state, mindless to the sinking hearts of a middle class awash in debt and mired-down hopes and dreams.
When we're doing okay, but the future looks like hell, it's hard not to live for the present and forget about tomorrow in the hope that tomorrow will never come.
The bad news is, it's almost tomorrow. The good news is, while the problems are complex, in principle, the solutions are not.
Any two-bit technocrat can increase the complexity of a system; genius enters at the transcending point: simplicity. -- Michael Davidson, Daughter of Is
That's not so say all solutions are simple. Nor do we need to drop everything, declare a state of emergency, and devote our every waking moment to making all things right. The fanatical demand that we "give until it hurts" is more a balm to soothe the souls of people who don't have a life than anything else.
Each of us, however, can and should do something, and for starters, communication is the key: if one man whispers, the sound is lost on the gentlest breeze; but the sound of ten or one hundred million voices whispering as one becomes a mighty roar.
Lobbing the lobbyists
What should we whisper?
The August 8, 1996, issue of Rolling Stone magazine features an article by William Greider about how several of America's largest corporations are lobbying the Export-Import Bank to essentially underwrite their efforts to export jobs. I don't mean to put in a plug for the folks at 1290 Avenue of the Americas, but it's a damn fine article, and suggests a good beginning to some serious whispering about ending corporate welfare. Get a copy, read it, then give a call or send email to tell your representatives you object to a government agency using taxpayer money to help American corporations layoff American workers in favor of cheap foreign labor.
Promoting international goodwill and trade is a fine thing, and economic interdependence can do more to promote world peace than any armada of politicians and diplomats. If AT&T wants to build factories in the Shandong and Sichuan provinces, great! But not at the expense of American taxpayers.
One problem, one solution. Or, more accurately, one way to deal with it that will, for now, work. Little more than a whisper from each one of us that, together, becomes a mighty roar.
Regards
Rod Van Mechelen
