Arranged Delirium

Now that our country can actually pay the bills that we are obligated to cover, I wanted to throw out a few final thoughts because this has bothered me more than anything since the Iraq War. My biggest concern is the amount of misinformation that informed the invective around this entirely concocted debacle - much of it helped along by the ignorance of the supposed “Tea Party” caucus. I have yet to hear one of these members of Congress be able to speak intelligently on the issue. So, I have real fears when I think that some of these folks are responsible for making major decisions regarding the running of the country and the direction of our collective future. It true - we voted them in. But I hope we’ll just as enthusiastically vote them out…

Despite that, I’m sensitive to their ideological position: we have too much debt and as a nation we are overextended in our obligations. But the way in which we handled the situation with this near-default only weakens us and likely sends us into another stage of recession. But enough on all this. I did find a couple of other articles that I found of interest during the ‘debate’ and I list them here:

Fiddling While Rome Burns and
Wake up GOP: Smashing system doesn’t fix it

Oh, and you might be interested on this quiz to examine your knowledge of the debt.

Don’t get me wrong - the Democrats didn’t have the right of it here. Our entire representative government failed us - but the folks who couldn’t compromise and held to positions based on ignorance pushed the gridlock into crisis. Compromise is the only way to work through large issues in a representative democracy - everyone gets an opinion. Is it the most direct way to address an issue? Hardly ever. But its the only way to make sure everyone gets a say. Even the Tea Party Caucus should have a say; but they should not have been able to hold the entire country hostage.

In the end the US has to pay its bills. We incurred the debt, and now we have to pay it off. Its tough - there’s no good solution and everyone is going to lose. But this has to be done through thoughtful budgeting. That’s the place for this discourse. In the end this debt-ceiling debate wasn’t about the debt - we already have the debt, and we have to pay it - this brinkmanship should have happened during the budget process and not cast the credit-worthiness of the country into debate. We’re all going to suffer from an effective tax of higher interest rates when the economy heads south again. Perhaps we should that the Tea Party for raising our taxes : )

Its been a while since I’ve written about political issues - primarily just because of time. But my frustration with our government’s ongoing inability to do its job has driven me to write something just to vent my own disgust with our elected representation. There is more than enough coverage - from he left and the right - to cover the basics of the topic. So, I won’t repackage those here. I will however, link to a commentary by John Avlon hosted at CNN. In it, he does a good job of reflecting the anger and frustration that I think most centrist citizens feel right now. I would underline one of his central points here:

America is now in serious risk of defaulting on our debt because we cannot reason together. Reasoning together requires that everybody be willing to give a bit on their ideal position.

A lot of my conservative friends will flout at this source saying that it is liberal media (ironic, given the strength of conservative media) but that misses the point. In fact, I’ll acknowledge the left leaning of this author just as I recognize the right leanings of David Brooks, another of my favorites. My point is that our representatives cannot compromise. Its reflective of the extremist make-up of the officials that get elected. As a country, we’ve failed because we’ve elected people who cannot work together - can’t compromise.

I’m opposed to taxes, and I think the government spends to much. But I’m not stupid enough to think that a solution won’t require give on both of these positions. I acknowledge that at times, government gridlock is a very good thing - it stops us from doing the crazy things that extremists propose. But there are times where all the political invective needs to be put aside, and government just needs to get the job done. That time is now, or the continuing decline of America will take a pretty steep step forward.

Thanks to a friend on Facebook for pointing me toward the Political Typology Quiz from the Pew Research Center. I like this tool because it does a good job of representing the broader spectrum of political interests within the US, and this is important for all of us to recognize are we are repeatedly disappointed with our representation that typically falls on both far ends of the spectrum. Until we can get more moderates in office, I think we are likely to continue being failed by our government.

Not surprisingly, I am a Postmodern. Unfortunately, only 13% of the public is so enlightened! Ironically, this is the youngest of the typology groups with 32% under age 30. My conservative friends will suggest that this means I’ve never grown up; but I would argue that it simply indicates that I remain young at heart…

Where do you fall? Feel free to leave the results in a comment - I’m interested in seeing how accurate you believe the results might be.

A lot of my colleagues complain about our students needing too much hand-holding; but I tend to take a different approach. I think there is a lot to be learned through failure. But that means you also need to be able to tell someone when they are not performing well. It seems to me that a lot of today’s student’s don’t always take that criticism well - and a lot of my colleagues concur. The problem though is that critiquing someone’s work doesn’t mean that they are a horrible person. It just means that they could improve is some ways. I can hardly think of any area in my life where I couldn’t do something better. (Aside from teaching - obviously I’m great at that!) I struggle though with that fine line between real encouragement and valuable critique.

In any event, this has been on my mind a lot lately, and I recently read The Modesty Manifesto - an OpEd piece by David Brooks. In it he pulls together statistics from several studies but sums it all up here:

there’s abundant evidence to suggest that we have shifted a bit from a culture that emphasized self-effacement — I’m no better than anybody else, but nobody is better than me — to a culture that emphasizes self-expansion.

...and there seems to be some evidence for that. I’m not trying to make the whole “this generation doesn’t respect…” argument, but I do think that the obsession of self that we see reflected through “social” media is rather evident and pervasive within culture today. I’d even suggest that it isn’t simply about youth: the majority of Twitter users are actually over 30.

Brooks continues to extend his point to the prevalence of the individual over the concept of the virtuous citizen. I’m not trying to continue that discourse, but the article did make for interesting reading.

Students in ITL 361 are working on their political poster assignments. For some its a challenge to become engaged in a topic; for others, it’s a challenge to think through the process of communicating visually. For all, its a chance to face discourse that it frequently contentious and try to find a way to talk about the issues without descending into invective and platitudes.

As I consider on the nature of political discourse in this country - and especially the polarizing process of the last decade or so - I often reflect on the role that media has played in shaping that discourse. I’m appalled by folks like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’reilly, and concerned that FoxNews enjoys the viewership that it seems to possess given its extreme bias in programming. But before you label me as a liberal extremist, let me say that I’m also concerned some of the writing in the New York Times.

But at least with the Times, I can get access to David Brooks. He’s an example of a thoughtful conservative. I may find myself frequently drawn to his writing even if I disagree ideologically. At least I can see his point of view. One recent article of his actually relates to my earlier topic above: the power of the mediated voice of Conservatism. The perceived power is a result of the medium; and I need to relax when I get frustrated by idiots like Limbaugh or O’reilly. They don’t have any real power. The great fallacy is to believe that they do. That’s a failure that draw conservatives and liberals together!