Accelerated Decrepitude

When it comes to politics, I usually vote Democrat. For years I called myself a Socialist, although I know full well that Socialism died with Sartre in 1980. I'm sure he sat by its bedside during those last few years of sputtering and coughing. No easy thing, to watch your ideology die. France was that last great hope, and when Sartre died, so did that hope. True existentialism: being, then nothingness.

Meanwhile, in the United States, we voted for a conservative Republican movie actor. That was the final death nail for any hope of social change in the United States. Unfortunately, for me, I was too wrapped up in being “mommy” to pay much attention. All I knew then—as did so many others my age—was that the world was a scary place to raise children, and I just wanted safety, security, and sweetness to surround my baby girl. I was just so busy changing diapers and watching Sesame Street that I let activism go. I let collectivism go. No more rallies, no more marches. Just a walk in the park with the stroller. Intellectually, I fell into a deep sleep. In that sleep I dreamed I was a good mother creating a safe environment in which to raise my child. Now I feel as if I have awakened from a coma. I find myself living in a country I don’t recognize anymore. I don’t trust anyone anymore. I am continually in a state of ennui, at best, or despair, at worst.

I cry for the BP oil spill. I cry for the wildlife that will soon go extinct, and for the life forms that we will never know about because we’ve already killed them. I cry for the plight of women in countries that continue to allow disfiguration. I cry for the victims of suicide bombers. I cry for the misguided souls who murder in the name of their god. I cry, because I am powerless. I am defenseless against a huge, corporate machine. I am angry, but my anger is impotent.

There was a time when I was so full of hope. I loved the show “Star Trek” because it showed us a future that was wonderful, filled with people who were adventuresome and innovative. Captain Kirk showed us that social democracy could work, not just in the United States, but in the Cosmos. During that time I really trusted people to make the right decisions, that sooner or later, the whole planet Earth would realize that life was so much better once we ALL became democratic. I have to admit, that was another component of my comatose dream. Unlike others I know, I did wake up. I did not become a neo-con. I now know that social democracy is a tenuous endeavor. It is so fragile, in fact, that it can disappear before our very eyes, and we don’t even notice.

Socialism is an elegant and beautiful idea, with one serious flaw. As a political system, it can only work in a fully cooperative and collective society. Very few humans are willing to work cooperatively and collectively. Perhaps there are hunter-gatherer tribes in Africa that do so. Even so, I'm sure that there's a lot of bickering and squabbling over who should be entitled to what. Plus, hunter-gatherer groups are usually very small. Twenty people may be able to pull off collectively making decisions, but any group bigger than that will have at least one bully, one person that feels a little more entitled than the others.

This is where I feel great sadness for the state of mankind. In a way, I think we have a built-in propensity to self-destruct. The other day my daughter and I were having a discussion about the role of the government in regulating business. She said that we should really look at corporations the way we look at unruly children. We would not trust children to govern themselves; yet we not only trust, but expect corporations to govern themselves. Our government has severely let us down in that regard. There are no regulations that truly protect us, and then when corporations do really bad things—Enron, for example—we are hurt and surprised. So now that millions of gallons of oil are leaking into the Gulf of Mexico, we slap the hands of B.P. and other oil companies. We can shut the company down if we want to, but that still wouldn’t bring back all the lives (human as well as animals) that were lost, not to mention the livelihoods that were lost. The point is that the accident was preventable, and steps should have already been taken so that this kind of accident wouldn’t have happened in the first place. In the same vein, regulations and enforcement should have already been in place to prevent the real estate bust. Regulations and enforcement should have already been in place to prevent the coal mine disasters. Regulations and enforcement should have already been in place to prevent the tragedy of Katrina.

A friend of mine, who tends to vote Republican, brought up an interesting fact. He said “People seem to have a misguided concept of what small government means. When I say that I want small government, I mean I don’t want the government in my house. I don’t want the government telling me what to wear, who to marry, how I wear my hair, or what I choose to do for recreation. But I DO want the government to make sure that the food I eat is safe, that I can go to the hospital when I’m sick and be sure that I’ll be given good care. I DO want the government to protect our kids from harm.”

Our government is simply doing a piss-poor job at its prime directive: to guarantee its citizens those basic rights of life, liberty, and property (I know, the terminology is “pursuit of happiness” but John Locke said “property” and I’m sticking to that, because it is the “pursuit of happiness” part that got us into trouble in the first place).

The fact is, our “democratic” government hasn’t been truly democratic since 1972. We vote for bumper stickers, not policy. We sleep to the hum of CNN, FOX, and MSNBC. We have allowed government to be a subsidiary of a major corporative network. We’re not even shareholders anymore. We’re squatters on our own land.

I don’t have a solution. I only have a sense of doom. I feel like this wonderful endeavor called “democracy” has a big neon sign on it: FAIL. Even the neon is leaking out of it. The “F” is gone, so the sign says “ AIL.”

So Happy Bastille Day. C’est la vie. C’est la guerre. C’est la mort.