Look out world take a
good look
What comes down here
You must learn this
lesson fast and learn it well
This ain't no upwardly
mobile freeway
Oh no, this is the
road to Hell
People, who know me for a longer time, know that I’m neither
religious nor very chauvinistic or a believer in any kind of exceptionalism
whatsoever.
The only thing that I believe in is that most people have a desire
to work hard and have fun while doing it, in exchange for enough money to have
a good life from it. How much money is indeed enough and what life is exactly a
good life, differs from person to person.
On top of that, I believe that most people have the will to
do good towards each other, without per sé looking at their own benefits first.
For that matter, I am a typical Theory Y person.
Nevertheless, I know that there are circumstances –
irrespective whether these are religiously, historically or economically
inspired – that people don’t want to do good to each other. To the contrary, instead
they want to destroy each other in a figurative or sometimes even all too litteral
way, unfortunately.
The recent events in the Arab world (Syria, Afghanistan and
Iraq) and Africa (Egypt, Somalia, Mali, Kenia and Nigeria) and the shooting
incidents inside and outside the US show unfortunately, that the human race has
an almost unlimited list of reasons, causes and ways to kill each other.
It is sometimes very hard for my thorough believe in the
intrinsic goodness of people to not be shocked and shaken every now and then. I
always try not to judge on ‘people at war’ before knowing the whole story behind
their anger and outrage from inside out. I don’t believe in black and white; in
the eternal goodness or wickedness of people.
Few things happen without a reason, but the reason might be
very opaque to the objective viewer’s eyes. For that and for other reasons I
have been quite reluctant to write about the current American political
situation lately:
- I know too little about it yet;
- I know too little of the historic context in which things happened;
- I don’t want to sound like a know-it-all European, as we have only just swept our own dead bodies under the rug.
Nevertheless, the current political situation in the United
States is akin to a head-to-head car collision waiting to happen, because
neither of the drivers wants to give in first.
The only complicating factor is that not only the lives of
the drivers are on the line, but also the (economic) lives of many of the
viewers to the spectacle. The United States and its dollar belong to the
economic and financial machinery of this world and when this machine halts, it
can have grave consequences.
That is why many Europeans have been watching how the events
unfolded in sheer astonishment and disbelieve and sometimes even with a misplaced sense of shame:
- How come that the ever optimistic, world-leading and gung ho
Americans have managed to get caught in a political trap from which there seems
no escape?!
- How come that a splinter party within the GOP, like the Tea
Party (often described in the European papers as ‘a bunch of political nitwits
and idiots’), can cause so much political mayhem, driven by political visions and
ideas that date back to the first US presidents and, perhaps, even the
Mayflower?!
- How come that wise and savvy bloggers, like Mike Shedlock (a
genuine hero of mine throughout the credit crisis), have
become so enraged and fundamentalistic about the US government, that
they applaude the government shutdown and perhaps even the impact of not raising
the debt ceiling, seemingly without thinking twice about the consequences?!
- What the heck is wrong with Obamacare – apart from the fact
that it covers too few health issues, in comparison with my own mandatory
health insurance – and why do these kinds of laws always lead to a
constitutional debate in the US?!
- Why are people not accepting that the US constitution is a document of more than twohundred years in age, which perhaps needs a little refurbishing to be contemporary again?! We have moved ahead since those days and we replaced our horse-and-carriage for something a little bit more modern, didn’t we?! So, shouldn’t we accept that our laws need some tuning too; even if it is the constitution?!
And there is more:
- It is not a coincidence that Vladimir Putin – a Russian and not
by a million miles the most democratic leader in the world – writes an Op-Ed to
the New York Times, which is widely applauded in diplomatic and foreign policy circles,
(in spite of the writer), and causes President Obama to make a 180 degrees
U-turn about Syria in the process.
- It is not a coincidence that the whole US government
(including Congress) is left in shock-and-awe about how this could have
happened and why they didn’t see it coming: their (former) archenemy beating
them at their own turf with their own weapons of mass communication.
- It is not a coincidence that President
Dima Rousseff of Brazil denounced her visit to the United States,
because she disagreed with the US policy towards telephone and internet tapping
and economic espionage and probably with thousands of things more.
- It is not a coincidence that paying taxes is almost
considered ‘unconstitutional’ by some diehards and always leads to heated
debates between proponents and opponents in the US.
- It is not a coincidence that about 45 million Americans are living from foodstamps, while many, many more live from paycheck to paycheck.
- It is not a coincidence that Main Street’s misery is Wall
Streets fortune, as a consequence of one of the most perverse incentives in the
world; the worse the economy gets, the longer the quantitative easing (aka “free
money for every rich investor”) programs endure.
- It is not a coincidence that, while the American economy is shaky at best, the stock rates hit all-time records.
- It is surely not a coincidence that less than 15% of the Americans thinks that their interests are in good hands at congress.
Shortly summarized: what the heck is going on in the ‘shining
city on the hill’, which seems more and more obscured every day? Somebody is desperately
needed there to put the light back on!
Although I don’t know which solution is the best (i.e. most
feasible) for the current political conundrum in the United States, I must
think about the following story, which I read in my son’s schoolbook a short while ago.
It is called “stone soup”…
A hungry stranger is
walking from door to door in a small town, asking for something to eat.
Although most people are willing to give him something to eat, nobody has much
to offer.
When he visits the
last house in the village, the stranger says: “I know you can’t offer me
anything to eat, but I hope you can lend me a cooking pan”. When asked why, the
stranger states that he is going to cook “Stone Soup”:
He cooks a few gallons
of water, puts three big stones in it and smells the water, like it is a
delicacy.
Somebody asks him
about the taste of stone soup and the stranger states that it might taste
better with a few grams of salt in it. This person gets the salt for him.
The next villagers talking
to the stranger get to hear that a few onions, carrots, potatoes and a few other vegetables
wouldn’t hurt the taste either. Everybody has a few small things in his house and
gets it for the stranger, curious for the taste of stone soup.
Now the whole
village starts to visit the stranger and his strange soup and they bring him
some meat, pepper, nutmeg and other ingredients. The stranger adds everything
to the soup and cooks it further. Now the soup is ready.
Everybody gets a cup
of soup, tastes it and agrees that Stone Soup is a darn tasty, nourishing soup.
All the villagers get fed by this soup, in spite of the fact that nobody had
really enough to eat in his house.
The moral of this story, sticking out a mile is: if nobody
puts the small, individual interests of people together and molds them into large,
collective interests, then the needs of almost nobody are fulfilled, which causes
a whole society to suffer.
However, if an independent party can mold these interests
together, then the whole society (and not only the rich people) can flourish
from it.
Thus we can learn three things from this story:
- the US government should act more like the stranger in this story and cook soup for the whole society, instead of handing the ingredients to a few benificiaries, including themselves.
- Everybody can offer his share to ‘the soup’ and irrespectable of the size of this share, it should always be welcomed.
- Not all strangers (i.e. governments) are bad for societies.
I wish my American friends and the American government much
wisdom, self-sacrifice and decisiveness in the coming weeks, because ‘heck, do
you need it these days’.
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