America's Idiotic Instar

Today, I got an forwarded column from a good friend that espoused a viewpoint he knew I didn't have.  The piece provided a backdrop of a welfare society that vilifies conservatives and reactionaries while embracing naive values of an uninformed, irresponsible electorate.  I've hyperlinked the column so that you can decide for yourselves what you think of it, but I thought that I would post part of my response below  in order to provide a background for my feelings on the issue, since it got me thinking.

We shy away from the real reasons for an uninformed electorate, and that's the fact that we have technology, T.V. and media blaring around us all the time, so the electorate is both stupid with a short attention span for that which would have been common knowledge in the past, plus, there are so many perspectives and spins out there, that we have no idea what's going on.  Whether it's Romney, Obama, Bush, or Clinton, we've got a 1% group of connected cronies running this place.  It's not a Republican or Democratic issue, it's just the bullshit that having a big democracy leads to once you're at this point.  If we had a french revolution moment in America where tables were really turned and financial systems really broke down, most would see it as a sign that our morals had fallen apart and we had failed as a nation, but why not see this fracturing and the eventual dissolution as an instar during our continued growth as a nation?  In other words, maybe these tough changes have to take place, this fracturing, in order for the nation to continue to progress.


This time in America puzzles me, because I don't have much to compare it to.  I'm a 31-year-old who just knows what he reads and hears on the news, and unlike all of those my age on the news that feel they have the answers, I thought it prudent to ask around.  So, I have been asking those around me at work this week to see if the fractures and problems that are going on are just the way it's always been.  I've talked to conservative and democratic federal workers who saw everyone from Kennedy to Bush come and go, who experienced the last government shutdown, who have felt democratic and republican budget impacts, and have pretty broad, even-handed views on the topic.  All of them said that things are different this time.  The lack of new appropriations and the intransigent electorate are different than before.  "In the past," one co-worker said to me, "we would listen to Walter Cronkite at night on the news, and that was the perspective, whether right or wrong.  Nowadays, there are so many perspectives and pundits and special interests that the electorate doesn't know which way to go."  Still another senior member of the staff at my office said that the shutdown of 1996 was just the beginning of a long period of polarized electorates.  "What's worse," continued my colleague, "is that gerrymandering is worse now than ever and politicians are so safe in their districts that they don't have as much incentive to change or compromise" as they used to.  

Maybe the current actions of a minority of the minority are a tiny peek into the type of change that we have to be willing to sacrifice for.  To change the spending and taxing and prioritizing that goes on in the US, we have to take big risks to change the establishment and cause change, but it's clear to me, and I'm sure to many of you, that it shouldn't be done as an ultimatum.  I think that at the core of this mess is the lack of trust between politicians.  The speaker doesn't trust that the president will negotiate and give in to tough spending and revenue changes if he gives up the bargaining chips in his hand, nomatter how dangerous the endgame.  Likewise, the senate majority has the same mistrust of others.  Whether the mistrust is based in reality or not, it is there, and causes the gridlock we see tearing down the institution.  All the while, Tweets, posts, and pundits continue the game, seeking fame and fortune over feduciary foresight.