Civilization and Our Discontent

I was at the doctor’s office the other day and I noticed a Pediatric Scale for Pain (the Wong-Baker Faces for Pain Scale), pasted on the wall. You’ve probably seen it; it looks like this:

I tried to locate myself on this chart and I decided on 2. Or 3. But here’s the thing – I am ALWAYS at 2. Or 3. Okay, maybe 1, if I’m doing something that doesn’t annoy me. Never that sappy 0 – 0 is for suckers. And 4 or 5 is like when your dog dies. So, 2, mostly. That’s life – it hurts a little more, once you settle on the fact that you’re never going to be a rock star/astronaut/whatever. If it gets to 3, you make a doctor’s appointment.

At least, that’s the rule for those of us who are restrained by the simple sensitivities of living in the real world. That is, those of us who realize how lucky we are and how much better things could be for a lot of other people.

Like: I got into my truck the other day and it wouldn’t crank to start. Not surprising, because the battery was seven years old. I went into the house and called my roadside service; 45 minutes later a guy pulls into my driveway and gives me a jump. I drive down to the auto parts place and buy a new battery. They install it and take away the old one, no additional charge. An hour or so later and I’m driving around with a new battery and my hands are clean.

Do you see how privileged that is?

Now, my more conservative friends would defend this “privilege,” arguing that I worked all my life, I earned my retirement, I shouldn’t have to feel embarrassed that I can afford to pay to avoid life’s little inconveniences. But, you know, that guy who came to give me a jump – he was just a guy in some old beater car. Not a tow truck driver, not an employee of some local auto service. Just a guy, running around in his own car, trying to make a buck. I’ll bet any money that he was a “private contractor” – i.e., no benefits, no sick leave, no overtime, nada. This guy, in this world, will work a hell of a lot harder than I ever had to, on more jobs, for less money, and when he’s my age he’ll still have to go change out his own fucking battery.

And what about those guys at the auto parts store? The store commits them to all kinds of customer service – free tests, free installation, help the morons who don’t know how to change their own oil, etc. Then it cuts back on their hours, until now there’s only two of them in the store trying to give “customer service” to 10 people at once. The 21^st century has exposed the American Dream for what it always was – corporate greed, ever-increasing demands for productivity and declining wages.

And me?  I’m a goddamned Wooly Mammoth, the last of a vanishing breed – the middle-class male. I’m a guy who worked all his life in public service occupations and now I have actual retirement, paid for by investment in properly managed government retirement accounts. Imagine, instead, that I had paid my money into a 401k. I could have retired 10 years earlier. And then sat back and watched as my entire portfolio got wiped out in the crash of 2008. Wouldn’t that have been pretty?

So, 2. 2 is not so bad.

The world I grew up in, the USA post-World War II, was a world of invincibility and can-do, a world where the American Experiment was a resounding success. We ruled the globe militarily, our country was awash in opportunity, the middle class was strong and growing. It was a great time to be alive – at least, if you were a White Male. I had no worries. Hakuna Matata. Even when I was a 19-year-old high school dropout with a child bride and a kid, I knew things would work out. And they did, mostly. Much more so than they will for that guy who came to charge my battery.

American exceptionalism started to unravel in the late 1960s and 1970s. A growing awareness of our failings – the ongoing racism and destruction of the Native American culture, the Mad Men mentality in our workplaces, the wrongheaded foreign policies that brought about Vietnam and, later, the fall of the Shah of Iran and the rise of Iranian nationalism, and on, and on – all conspired to seriously smear that happy image we had of life in the Home of the Brave and the Land of the Free. But even then, hey, this is the good old USA. We can fix things. It’s what we do.

David Brooks, in a recent essay (The Crisis of Western Civ: HERE) suggests that we went too far, that we discredited our own civilization to the extent that we sowed the seeds for its eventual downfall -- that we threw the baby out with the bathwater. He may be right.

But here’s the thing – that can-do spirit is hard to kill. We fix things, right? Americans still believe that the ship of state is somehow self-correcting, like those Coast Guard boats that can roll over in the waves and come out right side up. We refuse to admit that bad political choices will have long-term consequences. Why else would we elect representatives like Pastor(!) Larry Pittman of Concord, N.C. Pittman was fighting a lost cause (trying to outlaw same-sex marriage, Supreme Court ruling notwithstanding) and someone told him to “get over it.” Pittman doubled down in his war on lost causes: “. . . and if Hitler had won, should the world just get over it? Lincoln was the same sort (of) tyrant, and personally responsible for the deaths of over 800,000 Americans in a war that was unnecessary and unconstitutional.”

This guy is still fighting the Civil War, and he’s still on the wrong side of history. What the hell, let’s elect him to office.

Well, we’ve put our faith to the test. We have elected the most venal, corrupt, self-serving, fundamentally ignorant and flawed group of politicians in the history of this great republic. They hold our state houses and they run our federal government. Our “president” is not the anti-Christ, he’s the anti-Lincoln.

The short explanation for this among the various supporters of these miscreants is, well, we tried competence and that didn’t work – the old industrial jobs went away all the same, the immigrants are still taking all those good jobs picking lettuce. Jim Wright got this exact response to his latest blog post (The Hubris of Ignorance: HERE). In reply to his essay, someone wrote:

“. . . that is what happens when the ones that are qualified start taking us down the wrong road. The people that were leading us, they were flooding our streets with illegals, gang members, refugees, Muslims, they were endangering our very existence. They were destroying us, everything we stood for, our beliefs, our religion, our values, wanted to take our guns.” (Italics added.)

Let me unpack that for you. First reason – Mexicans, Blacks, foreigners, Muslims. Second reason – abortion, Christians, gays, guns.

Guns. Cause, you know, come the revolution . . .

I’m sad (So Sad! – maybe even 4) to note that the first and final refuge of these defenders of all that is unholy is a modest document, designed more as a lighthouse than a map – the Constitution. The wise founders of this great nation knew politics, and they understood the need for checks on power. That’s what the Constitution is all about – the things over which the different branches of government and the states hold sway. Most folks can quote the Second Amendment but haven’t read any other part of the document. And for people at any extreme of the political spectrum, the Constitution is like a bible – that is, stare at it long enough and you’ll find some way to make it fit your crackpot philosophy.

American politics are not self-righting. The system only works in the context of an intelligent and truthfully informed electorate, choosing candidates that act in the interest of their country and their constituents – including the poor and disenfranchised. Including, even, the people who voted for the opposition. That is what the Constitution anticipates. Unfortunately, those conditions are long past.

The Constitution is not going to save this ship of state. If I had to predict, I’d say the likely next move of the criminals in power is to call a Constitutional Convention. They’re not far from having control over enough state legislatures to pull it off. Just imagine: The Constitutional Convention of 1787 had Washington, Madison, Franklin, Hamilton. We’ll get Trump, Bannon, McConnell, Ryan. Maybe Burr, on the North Carolina delegation. Constitutional Convention 2020, starring Scott Baio and Ted Nugent and brought to you by AT&T.

And that will be a 5.