I am a Libertarian. This blog, however, is not a Libertarian blog. It is a blog exploring the concept of thinking for yourself. The idea of not letting other people dictate the agenda or tell you what you should care about. I am not a professional journalist, nor do I wish to be. What I am, is an activist. I seek to inspire dialogue, independent thinking and action.
What I find frustrating about the current political climate, is that the issues being discussed in the mainstream are not necessarily issues that would compel me to act or even care. Sometimes its because the concepts are so large, so overwhelming, that I don't even have the vaguest idea of what I would do, assuming I was even in a position to do anything in the first place. These issues are absolutely enormous in scope. There are so many moving parts. So many details. And to complicate matters further, the political landscape seems to change so quickly, that by the time one gains even a fundamental understanding of whats going on, the dynamic has already shifted. Then, oddly, those very same situations appear to drag on indefinitely, devoid of any meaningful resolution. It is as if things are simultaneously flying by yet somehow, not progressing at all.
In many ways, politics is merely another aspect of life, no different than any other big picture experience. One could take any crucial moment in time, break that experience down, try to understand what it means in your life, then subsequently take the appropriate action. This is the entire purpose of rational thought. First, reason. Then, act. Let's take, for example, the birth of a child. If you examined your role as a new parent to this baby, you would see conflicting perspectives. You could be (as I was) intimidated by the enormity of the undertaking. A baby brings excitement and energy, and creates a shift in your responsibility in the world. In that way, the new life brings with it forward momentum. Taken from another point of view, that same child will require a lifetime of commitment and consistency, which grounds you. The event brings weight and seriousness to your life and slows your pace in certain respects. Therefore, the experience becomes two sides of the same coin. It pushes you forward in incremental ways, yet in the macro sense, it forces you to be stable. This is a delicate balance. Frequently by the time you have figured out what to do in a specific scenario, the baby is older, and already has an entirely different set of needs. And so you miss your window. You make mistakes. Whatever. And that is frustrating.
Upon closer examination, the flip side of this issue illustrates that while the specific circumstances of child rearing may not have gone exactly the way you intended moment to moment, your child grows to a different stage, and you know what? You get another chance. You build on your past success and failure. You learn. You keep at it. And in that way, the child goes from being a daily project, to becoming a defining aspect of your overall person. The incremental gives way to the large scale. Things start to make more sense. You still make mistakes. But the child keeps growing and you keep getting more chances. And with each new chance, you can draw on the benefit of your past experience. The forward motion that the small daily regimen brings propels your life onward. And the aggregate of the compounded experience, when understood, lends stability to your overall life. It is progress tempered by steadiness.
This is not dissimilar from the thought process that, when applied accurately, allows us to form useable political opinions. Much like a child, the political arena is unpredictable, ever changing, varied, exciting and at times, frustrating. By the time we believe we have a grasp on whats going on, often the climate has changed. But we do have the benefit of experience in this scenario, as well. Perhaps even more so because politics is such an all encompassing topic. Examining individual issues that are of importance can make the larger concepts manageable. It is easy to throw your hands up and scowl because you have no idea what derivatives are, let alone how they contributed to our current financial crisis. It is even easier to feel helpless in the face of yet another conflict brewing in the middle east after billions have been spent in that area to date with seemingly no benefit and no end in sight. You may ask yourself, as one person, what can I possibly do to affect any kind of change? I ask myself the same thing. And I have concluded, more than once, that the bulk of political issues are so complex and specific, it would be difficult to formulate any kind of actionable plan beyond voting. I mean, we all know we can vote. That is our gift. Our mandate. Our voice. Our weapon. But it is one thing to vote. And it is quite another to take the time to understand how to make your vote count.
In my opinion, the best way to begin to become more politically active, is to realize that no matter how intimidating an issue may be, there are ways to understand the concepts behind it. I still don't know exactly how to potty train a child, I fail miserably at parent teacher conferences, and have yet to master the art of listening to my children's full explanations before getting prematurely angry. But I am learning. Parenting is a long haul. It requires discipline. And I know that I cannot allow the weight of the responsibility nor the expansiveness of the idea to keep me from trying to use my rational mind to reflect on specific situations and apply them to my overall experience.
In short, I approach parenting the same way I approach politics.
What becomes evident over time, is that whether it is your personal life or a public policy issue, there is no such thing as a "right answer". The experiences are fluid. Conditions change. Things you thought would always be there in life disappear or become unrecognizable. The same way you learn to manage your children and shepherd them through life's many difficulties, you can also learn to apply your individual experience in this world to more global issues, decide FOR YOURSELF how you feel about them and act accordingly. You didn't know anything about parenting that child when you started. But the lack of specifics didn't stop you from moving forward. That same logic applies here.
Your child, your way. Your world, your way.
Membership in a labor union, a church, or any other group does not dictate your individual value system. In that same vein, no political party can fully encompass any individual persons needs. So try to explore issues for yourself, break them down, and apply your own experience. And THEN vote. If you discover that voting alone is not enough, find other ways to contribute. Recognize that your individuality is an asset. Be willing to argue. Get passionate about things that are important to you. Respect issues that are important to others and ask them why they care about those issues. Then listen to the answer. Don't just sit there and think about what you are going to say next. Read. Communicate. Reason it out.
Not everyone can be a politician or a journalist. But everyone can be an activist. It's your country. Its your world. What are you doing to align your big picture experience with your individual values? Don't spend so much time worrying about the details of things that are so far reaching you cannot change them. Instead, think about how you can use your individuality to make a difference within your own sphere of influence. Politicians don't have every answer or even any answer. They simply have a forum.
Find your forum.
BB
Saturday, April 28, 2012
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Framers Intent
Given that this is an election year, it seems like a good time to think about the idea of context. It is easy to get caught up in the specifics of whatever issues you personally value with regard to parties or candidates, we all know what the "hot button" issues of the day are in 2012. Gas prices. Unemployment. Military spending. Abortion. In truth, these issues have been on the table my entire adult life in one form or another. The details change. But the major concerns in American life remain somewhat constant. Of course you have some new challenges. Immigration. Internet regulation. Healthcare reform. But in many ways, the core economic and value propositions in elections remain the same for most Americans.
We are told during every election cycle, that Americans "vote their pocketbooks". We are told that. Every. Single. Year. By every media source. And from a statistical perspective, that may be true. Certainly the basic notion of survival is always paramount. It's simply Darwinism. It's difficult to care about the space program when you can't afford to fill up your car. That said, it seems to me that in many ways, the two major parties are so similar in the execution of their specific policies, we have reached a point in time where it is basically irrelevant which party wins. There are hardcore Republicans who will swear on a stack of the bibles they so love to quote that Obama is a Marxist who is destroying capitalism. And there is the left, who shamelessly race bait every single public policy issue to the point that one might think that the Emancipation Proclamation had never been signed. These toxic elements of American politics provide such great political theater, that the important issues of the day never receive the full attention of the electorate.
The most bothersome aspect of this public bare knuckle boxing match we call an election cycle, is that whatever the issues of the day appear to be, they are for the most part dictated by either media outlets or party mouthpieces. We are TOLD that these are the important issues. And they are important. But what is more important is taking a few moments to ask yourself how these issues came to be issues. I mean, lets face it. Can you, as an individual, solve the debt crisis? Can you achieve peace in the Middle East? Can you make labor in America more affordable? No. And that is the underlying premise of representative government. The promise that somehow, the conglomerate is more powerful than the individual. So we elect people to execute our collective will. And by proxy, they are supposed to implement ideas that benefit the constituency. That's the idea.
So take a moment and ask yourself, do you feel represented?
I, for one, do not. My first clear memory of an election was Carter beating Ford in 1976 when I was in fourth grade. One of the major issues of the day, was oil prices. This was the first time I heard about OPEC. I remember people being frightened that we, as a nation, were going to run out of gas. People actually thought that. Then you had the issue of the Middle East. The Camp David Accords, where Carter presided over Sadat and Begin's attempt to reach some level of understanding. Women's rights were on the forefront, and I became interested in Gloria Steinem for the first time (although probably for her cool hippie hair and aviator glasses more than her politics). Military aggressiveness in Vietnam was still on everyones mind because be were just barely out of Cambodia. These were issues that were framing political elections in the late seventies/early eighties. And guess what? They are STILL framing elections three decades later. WHY?
Because the same people are still in office.
That is an oversimplification and hyperbole, of course. These issues would still, no doubt, be around in some form. They are complex. And in many ways, becoming more complex as our world view expands. But lets take just one issue. Dependance on foreign oil. Or maybe just dependence on oil in general. Why, nearly forty years after the first oil crisis, do we not have sustainable alternative energy available for mass consumption? You know what? I don't know. I really don't. I could guess that oil companies and car manufacturers have huge lobbies and billions to spend on keeping us dependent. And that might be a pretty good guess. But do I KNOW why? No. What I DO know, is that none of the elected officials who have been holding court in Washington on either side of the aisle has been able to get us off the teat. I do know that. So if I care about gas prices, if that bothers me, if I am "voting my pocketbook" as the media likes to say I do, why do I keep sending the same ineffective drones back to DC year after year?
Because my options are limited. There are no term limits in congress. And elections are so expensive that there are very few people who are even in a position to run for office. And every year, people in the mainstream say the same thing. Voting for a third party is a wasted vote.
Respectfully, people, I must disagree.
I became a Libertarian in 1993. As a young person, I had admired Reagan for many of his policies, and considered myself to be a Republican. I liked the idea of states rights and small government. But as I started out into the world after college, I noticed a disturbing reality. Republicans legislated just as much as their liberal counterparts. They simply legislated about different things. In fact, Reagan himself had championed one of the most anti-federalist movements of my young life by forcing the states to change the legal drinking age from whatever they each individually had determined, to a federally mandated age of twenty-one. He threatened to withhold federal infrastructure funding if the states didn't comply. This was not MY idea of the Republican party. And with each successive election cycle, the legislation got more and more intrusive into private life. Both sides were doing it. Government was growing larger and more unrestrained by the day. I began investigating options. And I realized, that my viewpoint was aligned much better with the Libertarian philosophy than the modern Republican point of view. So I changed parties. And every year, some jackass has to tell me I am wasting my vote.
Really? And you don't feel like your vote for the "same shit different day" was wasted?
Twenty years later, we are still locked firmly into a two party system, and no doubt it will be this way for years to come. And that is as it should be. I would never advocate any kind of immediate, sweeping change in our government because we need stability. There are many good things that have come out of our current system. But the hallmark of American government is that we have a constitution that is both strong and flexible. The flexibility allows for incremental yet meaningful adaptations that are necessary in order to protect individuals from being overpowered by the force of the group. The reality is that government is a business and has been for generations. The original idea of a loosely constructed federation of colonies is long gone. And in its place, we now have a corporation, selling shares to fund itself, seeking to expand its reach and power in every conceivable direction both domestically and internationally. Thanks to the genius of our founding fathers, we, as individuals retain the ability to reign this behemoth in. We do not have to be TOLD by the media nor by leaders of the two major parties what we SHOULD care about. They want to dictate the agenda, and then give you the illusion of choice. When really, its just the same choice. Over. And over. And over. And over. So nothing really changes.
For my part, I have broken from the two party system. I "waste" my vote every chance I get by aligning myself with ideals that most closely match my own in an attempt to further a big picture agenda. I do this in part because I really believe that the two major parties are so similar, that whichever one furthers its own immediate cause in the near term is not that important to me. What is important to me, is to think about context. Not so much how to answer these specific overwhelming political conundrums, but to figure out why they are conundrums in the first place. I am not advocating that everyone become Libertarian. But I am advocating that everyone stop letting the system, whether its the public or private sector, frame the issues that you, as an individual, care about. And perhaps more importantly I am advocating that if you don't see a remedy within the confines of a two party system, use the freedom you have been given to add momentum to solutions outside the system.
In other words, as I told my oldest daughter when she was choosing a college, whatever you do, don't let "The Man" keep you down.
BB
We are told during every election cycle, that Americans "vote their pocketbooks". We are told that. Every. Single. Year. By every media source. And from a statistical perspective, that may be true. Certainly the basic notion of survival is always paramount. It's simply Darwinism. It's difficult to care about the space program when you can't afford to fill up your car. That said, it seems to me that in many ways, the two major parties are so similar in the execution of their specific policies, we have reached a point in time where it is basically irrelevant which party wins. There are hardcore Republicans who will swear on a stack of the bibles they so love to quote that Obama is a Marxist who is destroying capitalism. And there is the left, who shamelessly race bait every single public policy issue to the point that one might think that the Emancipation Proclamation had never been signed. These toxic elements of American politics provide such great political theater, that the important issues of the day never receive the full attention of the electorate.
The most bothersome aspect of this public bare knuckle boxing match we call an election cycle, is that whatever the issues of the day appear to be, they are for the most part dictated by either media outlets or party mouthpieces. We are TOLD that these are the important issues. And they are important. But what is more important is taking a few moments to ask yourself how these issues came to be issues. I mean, lets face it. Can you, as an individual, solve the debt crisis? Can you achieve peace in the Middle East? Can you make labor in America more affordable? No. And that is the underlying premise of representative government. The promise that somehow, the conglomerate is more powerful than the individual. So we elect people to execute our collective will. And by proxy, they are supposed to implement ideas that benefit the constituency. That's the idea.
So take a moment and ask yourself, do you feel represented?
I, for one, do not. My first clear memory of an election was Carter beating Ford in 1976 when I was in fourth grade. One of the major issues of the day, was oil prices. This was the first time I heard about OPEC. I remember people being frightened that we, as a nation, were going to run out of gas. People actually thought that. Then you had the issue of the Middle East. The Camp David Accords, where Carter presided over Sadat and Begin's attempt to reach some level of understanding. Women's rights were on the forefront, and I became interested in Gloria Steinem for the first time (although probably for her cool hippie hair and aviator glasses more than her politics). Military aggressiveness in Vietnam was still on everyones mind because be were just barely out of Cambodia. These were issues that were framing political elections in the late seventies/early eighties. And guess what? They are STILL framing elections three decades later. WHY?
Because the same people are still in office.
That is an oversimplification and hyperbole, of course. These issues would still, no doubt, be around in some form. They are complex. And in many ways, becoming more complex as our world view expands. But lets take just one issue. Dependance on foreign oil. Or maybe just dependence on oil in general. Why, nearly forty years after the first oil crisis, do we not have sustainable alternative energy available for mass consumption? You know what? I don't know. I really don't. I could guess that oil companies and car manufacturers have huge lobbies and billions to spend on keeping us dependent. And that might be a pretty good guess. But do I KNOW why? No. What I DO know, is that none of the elected officials who have been holding court in Washington on either side of the aisle has been able to get us off the teat. I do know that. So if I care about gas prices, if that bothers me, if I am "voting my pocketbook" as the media likes to say I do, why do I keep sending the same ineffective drones back to DC year after year?
Because my options are limited. There are no term limits in congress. And elections are so expensive that there are very few people who are even in a position to run for office. And every year, people in the mainstream say the same thing. Voting for a third party is a wasted vote.
Respectfully, people, I must disagree.
I became a Libertarian in 1993. As a young person, I had admired Reagan for many of his policies, and considered myself to be a Republican. I liked the idea of states rights and small government. But as I started out into the world after college, I noticed a disturbing reality. Republicans legislated just as much as their liberal counterparts. They simply legislated about different things. In fact, Reagan himself had championed one of the most anti-federalist movements of my young life by forcing the states to change the legal drinking age from whatever they each individually had determined, to a federally mandated age of twenty-one. He threatened to withhold federal infrastructure funding if the states didn't comply. This was not MY idea of the Republican party. And with each successive election cycle, the legislation got more and more intrusive into private life. Both sides were doing it. Government was growing larger and more unrestrained by the day. I began investigating options. And I realized, that my viewpoint was aligned much better with the Libertarian philosophy than the modern Republican point of view. So I changed parties. And every year, some jackass has to tell me I am wasting my vote.
Really? And you don't feel like your vote for the "same shit different day" was wasted?
Twenty years later, we are still locked firmly into a two party system, and no doubt it will be this way for years to come. And that is as it should be. I would never advocate any kind of immediate, sweeping change in our government because we need stability. There are many good things that have come out of our current system. But the hallmark of American government is that we have a constitution that is both strong and flexible. The flexibility allows for incremental yet meaningful adaptations that are necessary in order to protect individuals from being overpowered by the force of the group. The reality is that government is a business and has been for generations. The original idea of a loosely constructed federation of colonies is long gone. And in its place, we now have a corporation, selling shares to fund itself, seeking to expand its reach and power in every conceivable direction both domestically and internationally. Thanks to the genius of our founding fathers, we, as individuals retain the ability to reign this behemoth in. We do not have to be TOLD by the media nor by leaders of the two major parties what we SHOULD care about. They want to dictate the agenda, and then give you the illusion of choice. When really, its just the same choice. Over. And over. And over. And over. So nothing really changes.
For my part, I have broken from the two party system. I "waste" my vote every chance I get by aligning myself with ideals that most closely match my own in an attempt to further a big picture agenda. I do this in part because I really believe that the two major parties are so similar, that whichever one furthers its own immediate cause in the near term is not that important to me. What is important to me, is to think about context. Not so much how to answer these specific overwhelming political conundrums, but to figure out why they are conundrums in the first place. I am not advocating that everyone become Libertarian. But I am advocating that everyone stop letting the system, whether its the public or private sector, frame the issues that you, as an individual, care about. And perhaps more importantly I am advocating that if you don't see a remedy within the confines of a two party system, use the freedom you have been given to add momentum to solutions outside the system.
In other words, as I told my oldest daughter when she was choosing a college, whatever you do, don't let "The Man" keep you down.
BB
Monday, April 23, 2012
Just Do It.
One thing I greatly admire about good salespeople is that, unlike me, they are willing to put themselves out there in situations regardless of whether or not the conditions are ideal. I have intended to start this political blog for well over a year, yet haven't managed to get anything accomplished because I keep telling myself that I need some sort of perfect construct in order to present myself the "correct" way. So the other day, when I was buying shoes (natch), the salesgirl Liz asked me why I hadn't started yet, and I mumbled some sort of nonsense about getting an official website and she looked at me, incredulously, and said "Why don't you just go on Blogspot for free and then change it later? Who cares?"
Indeed. Who does care?
When I was in college, most people I knew were in liberal arts pursuing History, Psychology or maybe Economics with an eye towards some level of graduate school. Large companies like IBM and GE came to campuses routinely to recruit. People went into professions. You might become a doctor. A lawyer. An engineer. An advertising executive. The idea was that you should learn to specialize in something, thus ensuring economic prosperity in a post World War II economy built on a combination of corporate expansion mixed with entrepreneurship. Higher education was billed as a "magic bullet" of sorts. An opportunity afforded my generation by our parents who, through much sacrifice, made it possible for us to have professional stability. Steelworkers and farmers who had broken their bodies in physically demanding and often lousy paying jobs, took on second jobs and debt to enable their children to have access to professions that would allow them to use their minds long after their bodies were worn out. This was, simply put, progress. The American dream. Sacrifice yielding stability. This was the gift my generation received.
Now twenty or so years later, it is my oldest daughters turn to go to college. The world she is entering is far different from the world laid at my feet when I was eighteen. The Cold War is over. We live in a world more global in scope than most of us could have ever imagined. Professions like medicine and law are not the idyllic paths to stability and prosperity that we once believed them to be. The government, not large private corporations, is the largest employer of Americans. Companies that were once thought too big to fail and provided thousands of jobs each year to college graduates are now insolvent, non-existent or outsourced. And higher education has itself become a business so large in scope that it has lost much of it's intended purpose.
What to do...
The financial meltdown and housing crisis that this country has experienced in the last decade has been nothing if not thought provoking. It is a clear sign that the financial models, government controls and economic ideals that our parents generation had put in place are evolving. Due to the loss of standard of living that so many people have experienced, it is easy to say that this transition is a failure. And to some degree, it is. But when taken in a macro perspective, it becomes clear that we are, in fact on the precipice of something that could be even greater.
The opportunity to think as individuals.
Companies like Apple, Google and Facebook are examples of forward thinking financial modeling. The implosion of companies like Merrill Lynch and General Motors indicates that their style of doing business is no longer feasible in a global economy. This is a difficult thing to accept. But it is a reality. The idea that large companies are always going to be there to provide jobs is now archaic. And while this may be stressful to my generation, trying to provide for their children while simultaneously staring down the barrel of aging baby-boomer parents many of whom have dwindling pensions and long life expectancies; it is an opportunity for our children. The key is to not allow yourself to get stuck in an outdated mode of thinking.
To wit. How much money should the average high school graduate be willing to spend to get a four-year degree? What will this degree yield? No one knows. On it's face, it would appear, given current economic conditions, that a degree in engineering or computers would be a good bet. But ask yourself, isn't that what we thought twenty years ago about a legal or medical degree? Not to say that those degrees have no value. They do. And the world will still need doctors and lawyers. But at what cost? What percentage of your adult life do you intend to delegate to you or your parents paying off your education? It's a real dilemma for today's youth. So I am telling my daughter, what I believe to be true:
You must learn to sell.
Sell widgets. Sell clothing. Sell cars. Sell yourself. Sell your ideas. Whatever it takes. One basic concept that holds true in America is that if you can gain the confidence to sell, you will probably always have a job. It might be at McDonald's. It might be at Goldman Sachs. Or it might be acting in a movie. But whatever you are doing, you have to sell it. And you have to realize that you are never too good for any job. Whatever needs to be done, you must do it. You must have the confidence to take a job you feel overqualified for until something better comes along. And if it never comes along, you must use your free time to think about how to make it come along. If you want to get a PhD in Classics and English Literature, I support that. But you are going to have to sell something in order to make that work in our economy. Sell a book. Sell your expertise. Whatever. And if English Literature doesn't pay, you are going to have to use your sales skills elsewhere to support yourself and write your book on the side. I support the idea of going to an institution to become educated. But I do NOT support institutional thinking. College is a business. They are no more enlightened in their approach than any other corporate dinosaur. So get your degree. Have some fun. But don't fall into the trap of believing that ANY institution has the answer. Try to harness this current breakdown in the economy in a creative way by thinking of new approaches. This is not a difficult time to be young. It is an exciting time. Because you are at the beginning of a new dynamic. Embrace the chaos and look for opportunities in the gaps being created by the decimation of old ideas. You can publish your OWN book online now. The corporate stranglehold on creative ideas is waning. And that might be bad news for Wall Street, but it's very good news for a young aspiring author.
So today, I start this blog, in my own attempt to sell. Because a salesperson lent me her enthusiasm and confidence.
Thanks, Liz.
BB
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