As we look around on this fine spring day, we see every structure and pillar of America in what amounts to a giant pile of rubble.
The financial structure, the political structure, the moral structure.
The Republicans succeeded in destroying it all. Let it NEVER be forgotten that it was the years of unfettered Republican Rule that brought us here, that destroyed America to this extent. NEVER.
When we remember 9/11 and the pile of rubble that resulted from it, both real and metaphorical, let us remember in the same mental breath the Presidential Daily Briefing of August 6th: bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US. And George Bush’s reply to it. “Ok, you have covered your ass.” He was you see, on vacation.
Typical. In fact…..definitional.
He was on vacation and didn’t want to be bothered. Selfishness. He responded AS IF the people who worked frantically to get the memo in front of him weren’t doing it to actually protect the country, but to cover their own ass. He assumed that they were being….Selfish.
Because that is the only frame of reference that his kind of Republicanism (the kind that has destroyed the country) has. Selfishness.
They are Selfish. They think only of them self. It is the position that they proceed from. It is all they have known their entire life. It IS their only frame of reference. It is the lens through which they see the world.
Every action they take and every thought that they have is rooted in selfishness. Thus, every action that anyone else ever takes HAS TO be rooted in selfishness. Because every action they take is, and they are literally incapable of seeing any other motivation. They are selfish. All of their friends are selfish. And so they see every other human being through that lens.
When Rush wants the president, and thus the country, and thus everyone in the country to fail. That is selfish. So when they see Obama trying to fix the problems that they caused through their selfishness, all they can see it as is the Democrats being selfish. If the Democrats are trying to fix the country, they are OBVIOUSLY doing it to increase their own political power….
Why else would they do it???
They ask. Because the very concept of someone trying to fix the country to, ya know…….actually fix the country! is alien to them. Literally inconceivable. They can NOT conceive of any body anywhere doing something because it is the right thing to do. Because it would help someone else. Because it would make things better for someone other than them.
That is outside of their frame of reference. When something is outside your frame of reference you just cannot see it. And if you can’t see it it doesn’t exist.
Which Brings us to Jim Cramer and Wall St. and Jon Stewart’s point. Selfishness.
They had the entire financial system, the entire economy of the world, in their hands. They had a responsibility to others. To everyone who has a 401K or owned stock or relied on credit to run their business or buy a house or a car….and anyone whose livelihood depended on those things.
Which is in fact…..everybody.
When you have a serious responsibility like that to others, when other people rely on you, that responsibility is more important than your own self-interest. More important than yourself. More important than your selfishness.
That concept got lost in the Bush years. No, it got destroyed.
Just as the Republican brand of selfishness has destroyed everything else. And left a pile of rubble behind.
This is how it works, and you, each and everyone of you knows this from your families, from growing up. If one member of the family is selfish….acts only to get what they want…then everyone else in the family is forced to be selfish. To act selfishly. Or else they won’t get what they want, or even what they need.
That starts a spiral of selfishness. Instead of what can be very loosely called the Democratic culture, everyone working together to make things better for everyone, we spiral down to where everyone is forced to claw and scratch and fight against everyone else to get their needs met. Selfishness. The spiral becomes pervasive. The dynamic becomes overpowering. And it reaches down into the deepest parts of the brain, the psyche, the collective psyche, the national psyche. It becomes about survival.
All other considerations get shoved aside as the primal survival center becomes paramount. If anyone else gets anything or does well, that becomes a threat to YOUR survival. Even the few pennies from your taxes that go to feed a hungry child become, at the bottom of this cycle, a threat to YOUR survival. Welfare Queens. And once you get to the bottom of the spiral….you can NEVER have enough. Never. No matter who suffers for it. Bernie Madoff.
Selfishness becomes the culture. And thus forces us all to become selfish to survive, lest someone somewhere takes something from us. We must then design the entire culture to make sure no one ever takes anything from us. If someone is happy or doing well….they have OBVIOUSLY taken something from us. What else would make them happy? How else could they be doing well?
When you are selfish, when you view the world through the lens of your own selfishness, when everything becomes a matter of your survival….you get to a place where everything everyone does is merely to take something away from YOU. That has to be their motive, because it is your motive and you can’t see it through any other lens.
So if gay people want to marry, they are taking something away from you. Somehow. They must be stopped. If someone believes in a different God (or no God) than you, they are trying to take something from you. Somehow. They must be stopped. And you must become pro-active in your selfishness. If there is even a 1% chance that someone MIGHT take something from you, they must be pre-emptively destroyed. If they may have information that could take something from you, they MUST be tortured to make sure it doesn’t happen.
As soon as someone is selfish, it forces other people to be selfish. If our leaders are selfish, selfishness pervades the culture. And that selfishness destroys everything. Every structure and pillar of society.
The financial structure, the political structure, the moral structure.
And here we are.
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1) They did NOT destroy the country. They did NOT affect everybody. You ascribe too much credit and too much power to these con artists, neither of which they deserve. You might think that when I refer to those who are not affected by this crisis that I mean those who have done their best to steal their financial insulatation from the problem, but it’s important also not to leave out those who already have nothing left to lose. The jobless. Those without bank accounts, without a mortgage, without cable television. Those who don’t cry over the price of gas because they don’t have a car in the first place. Those who have chosen to remove themselves from the lemminglike march to the Rethuglican killing floor. Those who are not above taking their share from the endless stream of consumer waste by using Freecycle and CraigsList rather than buying it new. Those like me.
They have not destroyed me or mine. I am not weeping as I walk the abandoned railroad tracks, I’m giggling while I pick gallons of berries that are selling for a dollar an ounce at the stupormarket less than a mile away. I don’t NEED to define my version of success or failure by anyone else’s terms, especially when such people have earned my mislike and mistrust in other areas. I am the LOLrus, the world is my oyster and the ocean is my bucket, baby! (Cue Firefly theme song here, heh.)
I agree with Heinlein in the belief that in general the American people are intelligent and resourceful, honorable and kind, hard working and compassionate. All they need is to be reminded of it. America’s not done yet, and it will take more than a parcel of rogues to bring down THIS nation.
2) The problem isn’t JUST selfishness. In some ways, it is a severe lack thereof. As we saw with Stewart’s vivisection of Cramer, the problem is propagandists who have encouraged people to trust, to give, to invest their time and energy and labor and money when a touch more selfishness might have SAVED them.
Charlie Brown doesn’t just land on his ass because Lucy is a bitch and swipes the football away. Charlie lands on his ass BECAUSE HE TRUSTS LUCY.
He cares more about succeeding in her world than he does about existing in his own. She dangles something he wants and he goes for it without thinking about the risk, and stupid part is he keeps taking that risk despite what his prior experience has told him. He invests more in the desire to fit into her paradigm of reality than he does about his own ass.
Therefore, he lands on it. Hard.
of Republicanism as a selfish, market worshipping, logic defying paradigm really started under Reagan. Bush just perfected it.
We used to say “Speed kills,” but at least that was a reference to the person who used the speed dying.
Greedism kills everything it touches.