It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness... --opening line of Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities
As I commence what I hope is an enduring journal about politics, policy, and the consequences thereof, my mind conjures Charles Dickens’s oft-quoted quote about it being the best of times and the worst of times…seems like most of us think it's the worst of times.
In the summer of 2010 just about every adult in America is looking for someone to blame. Usually that someone is affiliated with governance. Political ads are starting to clog the airways. We are only a few months from the mid-term elections when America invariably tells the new president that it’s not having as much fun as when the two were dating.
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| President Obama's Inauguration January 21, 2009 |
No sooner had one and a half million people gathered on the National Mall to welcome President Obama then an ostensibly anti-tax, hardcore libertarian movement emerged under the moniker The Tea Party in opposition to everything on the new president’s agenda (apparently it’s highly inappropriate to call them “Teabaggers.”)
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| Self-Explanatory |
The same optimism doesn’t apply to Afghanistan, where eight years after we defeated the Taliban on the battlefield, we face a reinvigorated insurgent enemy. At home we grow unsure about the best path to follow. I, for one, can’t fathom why any Afghan would wish to dwell in a land that resembles the 15th century with cell phones.
Both wars speak to the feud between Islam and modernity, with the United States and Europe the representatives of modernity. In New York City we debate the moral propriety of building an Islamic mosque/community center two blocks from Ground Zero. Who is financing a mosque on prime Wall Street real estate? And are we talking north-south or east-west blocks—there’s a difference?
About Iran…what can I say, President Ahmadinejad (pronounced afterdinnerjacket) would be a joke, but, you know, he, the mullahs, and their Brownshirt minions actually torture and kill people and verge on acquiring nuclear weapons. Somehow this sucks all the humor out of it.
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| Iran's Revolutionary Guards--I get teary-eyed when I see a good goosestep |
South of our border is a de facto war between organized crime and the Mexican State. The death toll of 22,700 over 3+ years suggests that it is more real war, similar to the insurgent conflicts of Iraq and Afghanistan, than police action. Today I read in the back pages of the Wall Street Journal that Mexican marines discovered 72 murdered migrants on a ranch in the state of Tamaulipas. No, that’s not a typo—seventy-two. Apparently it is the handiwork of the Zetas, the most thuggish of the Mexican gangs. It is particularly troubling (to me anyways) that these criminal enterprises are able to break down the institutions that create and maintain civilized society in Ciadad Juarez and the other border towns that control the flow of drugs into the U.S.
In the Gulf of Mexico a hole in the ocean floor spewed oil for 3 months. The corporate entities involved—BP, Transocean, Halliburton (hey, say hello to Dick Cheney for me), et. al.—demonstrated collective incompetence both on the day the rig exploded and for weeks thereafter. The only positive is America now appreciates (or should) the technical difficulties and risks inherent in deep-sea drilling. Predictably the industry opposes a modest 6-month drilling moratorium while we figure out what happened and how to prevent it from happening again.
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| Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig Fire |
Expect to hear the same thing from the Iowa industrial egg farms that recently recalled 500,000,000 salmonella-laden eggs.
A gay federal judge overturned Prop 8, which banned gay marriage in California. By most accounts the initial legal defense of the act was pathetic. Stand by for the fireworks as this case moves toward the Supreme Court.
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| Elin--Yea, I don't understand either |
Another omen…Tiger Woods finished 78th or thereabouts at Firestone Country Club earlier this month. Now he and Elin are officially divorced. Maybe Tiger can get back to having regular sex and see if it helps his golf stroke.
Which brings us to the Big Enchilada—the great financial crisis of 2008, or was it 2009, well 2010 ain’t turning out so hot…who knows exactly when it will end. With the passage of time we’ll come up with an appropriate name for it. I like My Big Fat American Recession. Suffice it to say, it’s fueling most of our political discontent.
This, in a nutshell, is our age. Arrogance, avarice, ignorance, incompetence, mischief, and plain old-fashioned evil dominate the headlines. Is it the worst of times? Certainly not. As Dickens suggested we rarely see our own times clearly—we want to speak in superlatives.
Behind the scenes there is evidence that the grown-ups among us, some of whom are politicians, are cleaning up our mess and putting the house in order. My goal with this blog is to promote the kind of civil discourse that helps people arrive at consensus behind policies that really promote the public good.
Let’s see if it works.
