Aside from the successful mission against bin Laden last weekend, it’s hard to find any positive news in the political sphere these days. Congress is talking about deficits, debt ceilings, inflation, bond vigilantes, and budget cuts. GOP presidential candidates are talking in South Carolina about how we have enough fossil fuels in the U.S. right now to eliminate our need to import energy (and the guy who said that won the debate according to the focus group!). In Minnesota, talk is about deficits, budget cuts, voter ID, silver and gold currency, abortion, Vikings stadiums, and giving up. Few are talking about doing something about 9% unemployment or people laid off a year ago still looking for a job. But lots of people seem to think that the answer is simple, and we just need to follow their belief systems (and did you catch the Atlas Shrugged movie? Probably not.).
Sometimes, politics is frustrating. Sure, it can be frustrating when you are losing. Political fortunes rise and fall, and I’ve seen both sides. But a lot of the frustration these days isn’t quite that, I think, especially the frustration I’m feeling. It’s the kind of frustration you get when people are playing Calvinball with reality, changing the rules of the game and the debate. Add to that a healthy scoop of ignorance about how government works both nationally and locally, and you get pretty close to the state of political discourse in the U.S. today that is leading to these general funk. How did we get here? I’m no historian, so I can’t really answer that. How did I get here personally? Ah, now that’s a question I can answer. Perhaps.
I don’t come from a political family. No activists, elected officials, union members, or anything like that. Two memories do stand out from my early childhood, however. The first is that when I was in first grade, I was the only person in my class to vote for Walter Mondale in our mock election in my private Catholic grade school. Why did I vote for him? I have no idea. The second is that one day in daycare, one of the other children used the word “f—-t” as an insult. Not knowing what it meant, I didn’t understand why it was meant to be an insult. When I was told what it meant, I still didn’t understand why it was meant to be an insult. This made me realize that hatred and fear of the “other” is something that has to be taught, it isn’t learned. I wasn’t taught to hate and fear, and for that I can thank my parents and, for the most part, my education.
Time passed. I went to Catholic schools that emphasized social justice, not waving pictures of fetuses and gays around, so fortunately I took away values like compassion and empathy. I read Calvin and Hobbes and Bloom County (come on, they were good). Finally, I was handed a book by a good friend that would change my life forever: Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 by Hunter S. Thompson. For those who don’t know, it’s a book about the Democratic primaries, and then the general election in the 1972 presidential campaign, where Richard Nixon handily defeated George McGovern and sowed the seeds of his own destruction less than two years later. Written from the inside, it made politics fascinating, a game of strategy. Of course, it was also made that much more interesting by being written in Thompson’s own style. I took away a strong interest in the political process and the idea that it could be as complex as chess. Other snippets that I remember from that time are mocking Allen Quist‘s reactionary run for governor in 1994, and an extra-credit assignment I did for a current events class that required me to go to a precinct caucus, showing me how grassroots politics works in Minnesota. I also took pleasure in tweaking the establishment that was my high school administration, especially with regards to its viewpoints on things like abstinence-only education and gay rights. All of this added up to a pretty liberal outlook for me.
After high school, I went to college at the University of Minnesota. I had no desire to stay in the homogenous, conservative town that was Saint Cloud, and relished the chance to live in a more pluralistic environment. I got involved with College Democrats, and I read a lot of books on political science. Sure, I read some because that was my major, but the vast majority of them I read because I would wander over to Wilson Library, head to the section on politics, and grab every book that looked remotely interesting. I also had an instructor who helpfully put together a list of books that everybody with even a passing interest in U.S. politics should read, from a variety of perspectives. That includes a couple of books by conservative authors. Then there’s my big secret: I also read Ayn Rand.
I read Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, more than once. I even bought into it at some level for about a week. Once reality set in, however, and I realized that an ethos that makes selfishness its number one ideal and sees any kind of altruism as fiercely immoral, I saw it for what it was: profoundly ridiculous. Humans don’t work that way and aren’t meant to. You need aliens to capture it fully: the raw logic and lack of emotion of the Vulcans coupled with the unbridled capitalism of the Ferengi. The marriage is about as likely on Earth as it is in the Star Trek universe. Although, if the movie version of Atlas Shrugged had Vulcans and Ferengi, maybe people would have actually seen it.
Objectivism thus tried and discarded, I went back to where I had been before. And as time went on, and I went through more elections, read more (especially liberal-leaning blogs as they started up, but also a few conservative ones), followed politics, and in general lived my life, my views became what they are today: Liberal, in all the good senses of the word.
I believe in responsibility, both personal and communal. I believe in giving everybody the opportunity for a good life, through a good education, safe neighborhoods, and good health; the rest is up to them, with helping hands when people are down on their luck through no fault of their own. I believe in equality no matter who you are. I believe in true justice, not just punishment or vengeance. I believe in honesty in both the public and private spheres. I believe that we are all in this together, and that nobody is an island unto themselves.
Practically, I believe everybody should have access to health care. How this happens, I don’t care, be it single-payer, private insurance, or a mix. I believe that seniors should have a retirement of dignity and shouldn’t have to live in poverty. I believe that no matter where you live or what your parents do, you should be able to get a good education that won’t leave you illiterate and unable to be a productive member of society. I believe in welcoming people to this country who want to work and improve their lives. I believe in an economy based not on moving money around and creating financial vehicles with three-letter acronyms that nobody can understand, but one based on creating useful goods and services that actually benefit people. I believe in progressive taxation for a host of reasons, from economic to moral.
Most importantly, I believe that we should sit down and decide what kind of society we want to create, and then how we are going to pay for it. I think our currently system has it backwards: we get a number, and then figure out what it will buy. Polls seem to show that Americans don’t want to cut Social Security and Medicare, and don’t want to hurt the most vulnerable. They also don’t want to raise taxes, they want to eliminate the deficit, and they don’t want to raise the debt ceiling. Those goals aren’t simultaneously achievable. Something has got to give, but it’s generally not politically wise to point this out.
This is the root of the frustration that I am feeling today, and that many other people are feeling, I suspect, as well. I’m not old enough to remember if this was always the case. Perhaps it was. But to me, at least, it seems that the unwillingness to sit down and talk about the kind of society we want is more extreme than it has been in the past. The willful ignorance of facts feels worse. The instinct to simply change the rules when people don’t get what they want at first is much more immediate; this also goes along with smearing organizations like the Congressional Budget Office that are supposed to be non-partisan and generally are, unless people think their findings are wrong. Some of this is fear and hatred of the “other”, something I was not raised to believe (see: birthers). Some of this is the balkanization of media. Some is perhaps the lack of an overarching narrative, such as the Cold War. What is clear, though, is that this frustration can’t last forever, because with every passing year the issue of what kind of society we want becomes more pressing. We have to decide. And I know what kind of place I’d like to live in.