Sojourn: Part II – Rant
Once again, I’ve been away too long. I’ve had my hands full elsewhere and just completed a draft of a script so my initial time has been devoted to that. This is not to say that I haven’t wasted time with various forms of sulking and diversion and kicking myself for sulking and being diverted, but, “back on the horse”, so to speak…
Much of this particular exercise (blog) is about “getting things done”, so I apologize in advance for the fragmentary nature of the following, but there are quite a few seemingly unrelated bits that I accumulated over the hiatus and that I have on my mind. I’ll now attempt to string together those ideas in a somewhat coherent essay in the interest of obsessive compulsion.
I guess what gets me off my ass this evening – as often is the case – is the general nonsense that’s amped up to eleven thanks to the upcoming election.
I was reluctant to join Facebook but that reluctance actually makes me worse and more cowardly than the folks that fully embrace it because I’m still on there and kind of hate myself a little bit for it. But that’s another story. I’ve found that my collection of “friends” represent the spectrum of political thought in this country and while I certainly lean to left (which used to be called “the middle”), I’m desperately trying to understand the disconnect in this country.
I, like the two gentlemen running for president, don’t really have any solutions, but I’m puzzled by quite a few things.
I won’t say whom I’m referring to, but my friends on the left will think I’m referring to right, my friends on the right will think I’m referring to the left. Such is cognitive dissonance.
I’m puzzled as to why when someone lies for some reason we’re not able to call that person a liar. Perhaps this is too strong, but it seems like we’re not able to say – “You’re lying.”
Since not telling the truth is also called lying, why can’t we simply say, for example when a candidate lies in a debate: “You’re lying.”?
It is, of course, a debate and therefore the individual should certainly be afforded the opportunity to defend his position, but it seems like we knock around the issue quite a bit when folks just flat out lie.
Whether you love or hate Newt Gingrich, I actually liked the fact that when a reporter pressed him on whether or not he was calling Mitt Romney a liar, he simply said: “Yes”.
Which is probably why you don’t want to call somebody a liar. You don’t want to be perceived like Newt and I don’t particularly think Mitt Romney is a “liar”.
As many have suggested, and I’m paraphrasing, he’s in the unfortunate position of having to pretend to be someone he’s not. And ironically, the people that don’t like him the most, would probably like the guy he’s pretending not to be a lot better.
But I do think “liar” in Mitt’s case is too strong. Just as Obama’s handling of recent flare ups in the Middle East is troublesome, “liar” – or in the words of South Carolina Senator Joe Wilson “You lie!” on another issue – is too strong.
So I guess you don’t call someone a liar because it’s just rude.
I also think, and this is across the board, but certainly more blatant in some areas, that there is an ignorance of facts. And specifically, complete facts. I seem to notice there’s a lot of referencing of portions of stuff. So that makes things not quite true. So perhaps that’s why you can’t completely call someone a liar.
But when folks post the stuff on Facebook, it’s often fragmented and filtered. Either way, these folks seem to forget that correlation is not necessarily cause or that absence of evidence isn’t necessarily evidence of absence.
There’s also an assumption that seems to ignore certain factors.
This is from the White House page:
The Affordable Care Act does not include
an employer mandate. In 2014, as a matter of fairness, the Affordable Care Act requires large employers to pay a shared responsibility fee only if they don’t provide affordable coverage and taxpayers are supporting the cost of health insurance for their workers through premium tax credits for middle to low income families.
• The law specifically exempts all firms that have fewer than 50 employees – 96 percent of all firms in the United States or 5.8 million out of 6 million total firms – from any employer responsibility requirements. These 5.8 million firms employ nearly 34 million workers. More than 96 percent of firms with 50 or more employees already offer health insurance to their workers. Less than 0.2 percent of all firms (about 10,000 out of 6 million) may face employer responsibility requirements. Many firms that do not currently offer coverage will be more likely to do so because of lower premiums and wider choices in the Exchange.
Maybe it’s unlikely, but how many companies have, say 60 employees or 51 or 46? I’m not sure what the cost analysis for the companies are, but that number essentially assumes that Bossman is not going to lay off worker number 51. Or conversely, that Bossman will go ahead and hire worker number 51.
Of course, I’m playing devil’s advocate here. I’m completely in favor of a public option that’s sadly missing from the bill and as a result, part of the reason I believe it to be dysfunctional. That said, I also believe something had to be done and I hope, probably foolishly, that things will work themselves out.
That last sentence is a glowing example of, honest as it may be, what most people refer to as naivety.
On the other side, the assumption that once taxes are cut on the rich, the benefits will trickle down to the middle class, because…Well, I don’t think this has ever really been proven to work, at least not in the current global financial climate. In fact the last time we did it, we found ourselves in the greatest recession in nearly a century. So I believe that people that think that this will work are probably just thinking to themselves something has to be done and are hoping, probably foolishly, that things will work themselves out.
Again, this is naivety.
I believe a little more in the first batch of bullshit and a lot less in the second and I think at the end of the day, that’s how we all wind up rolling. But ultimately, I’m still concerned.
But I wonder though if this concern, essentially this fear, is not a political failure by our leaders, but rather a public failure by our citizens.
Are we not a hell of a lot like children that simply placed in the event and are given a trophy and are told we are “exceptional” when we’re really not when leaders simply tell us what we want to hear rather than what we need to hear? This, of course, presupposes that we would actually listen but if my Facebook feed is any indicator, about 50 percent of us wouldn’t – no matter which side you’re on.
Again, such is cognitive dissonance.
I’m not sure who, but someone said if everyone is exceptional, no one is. And if every citizen is entitled – doesn’t that also include the rich? If one is out of work and they’re able to get government help to get back on their feet, how much different is that from a handsome severance package? Of course, in reality, in sheer numbers, it’s an enormous almost unfathomable difference, and not entirely analagous – but there is a system in place just as there are contracts signed. People are entitled to bonuses, people are entitled to welfare. Each “side” would like to see cuts. Each “side” sees the opposite as “unfair”.
How unfair is it really?
And in the question above, am I talking about welfare or the severance?
Depends on who you ask.
Are we perhaps in a situation that things “are the way they are”? That no matter how much we “hope”, things aren’t really going to “change”. Probably. And therefore We, the people must adapt.
We speak so romantically and nostalgically about The American Dream and how America “used to be”. Well, some of us do.
But let’s put this into perspective:
My Grandmother passed away last month. She lived to be 91 years old. I actually was away in August, back home for my son’s first birthday and fortunately he got to meet his Great Grandmother a few days before she passed on.
While celebrating my son’s first birthday was one reason for the trip, meeting his Great Grandmother (and Great Grandfather) and visiting with his grandparents was the main reason for the visit.
I now have one Grandparent left, my mother’s father. My father’s father was the first to go, followed by my mother’s mother…and it’s only now that I see some symmetry to that.
It was my father’s mom that passed away this month, leaving only my mom’s dad. He’s 92.
When my Grandfather, my father’s dad, passed away, a few months later, the world changed. He died in June of 2001.
That particular time in my life felt like a crossroads of sorts even before he passed away, and most certainly before the seismic shift of September 11th.
And it seems like that transition began and continues to this day, both personally and nationally.
My Grandparents are part of that “Greatest Generation” as Tom Brokaw has dubbed them. They certainly, from my view, seem to be the most interesting, this group of people that grew up in homes without bathrooms and eventually ran businesses.
And as I said, we certainly romanticize these people and this time, even to some degree the lack of bathrooms. But it is truly one hell of a story. These were truly amazing, wonderful people. At least the ones I knew.
But everyone didn’t succeed. Everyone wasn’t happy. And it was a single generation. We most certainly owe them gratitude, respect and reverence, as a generation, but I’m certain, just as with every generation, there was good and bad.
They were a single generation that faced the very real prospect that this country would collapse during the Great Depression. Just as a few generations before faced that very real possibility during the Civil War, just as not even one hundred years prior there was uncertainty that we would become a country at all.
All the while, bitter fighting, harsh words, a lot of fire and brimstone and even lying.
But we survived because we adapted.
The past often looks better, easier, but this is almost always because we are on the other side of the equation by then. We know what the right answer is, the right choice, even if we didn’t make it. Sure, there’s not always a clear-cut “right” answer, but there’s always a clearer view, a way we could have done better. So sometimes we take a few liberties and simply graft that presnt day perception on the past creating a false reality that we, in fact, did do better then. When in fact, the truth isn’t as clear.
We are still truly a very young country, comparatively, and it seems, especially recently, that we seem to cherry pick this false perception of “how things were”.
So I look at the Facebook posts and find that gray doesn’t stand out as much as solid Red and solid Blue. A lot of us seem to believe what we want to believe just because it’s simply said. We attribute quotes to people that didn’t say them. Make up stories about teachers saying things in class they didn’t say. Make up things about candidates that aren’t really true. And if they are true, they said things years ago or perhaps months ago.
And while it’s important to take into consideration what was said in the past, an opportunity to clarify is reasonable and perhaps even the benefit of the doubt. Filters almost always have an agenda.
I also find it curious if someone who is currently in their 50’s wrote a paper while in college, some people don’t consider the possibility that they may have learned some things in thirty years and perhaps changed their mind.
All of this bullshit keeps us occupied so the candidates don’t really have to talk about anything of substance and simply try to solve the very complicated problems.
And maybe they’re really not even that complicated, maybe the folks in charge are just incompetent.
Think of your line of work. Things running like a swiss watch where you are?
A great man once said “baseball is 90 % mental, the other half is physical”.
People got a kick out of the way Yogi Berra mucked up his math because it was just baseball, but I’m curious how much different his formula for success in baseball is from both candidates’ economic solution. Whatever that may be.
It comes down to nuance and perception, understanding what is meant by those numbers. But in this case, the words.
Lot of words now days, as my babbling on can surely attest, but two opposing views seldom add up to anything other than cognitive dissonance anymore.
To me, this gray area – figuring out a way to clearly and concisely convey why the other side believes what they do, discovering, if possible the cognitive resonance, perhaps we can get on track and recover our public discourse because I’m beginning to think that that common ground is probably the most valuable real estate in the country right now.
Until then, cooler heads must adapt.
C I P R I A N I 
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