Monday, July 18, 2005
Hovering Hardships
Having read recently about the vast medicare fraud at the University of Washington school of medicine, I was thinking last night about how the Reagan administration initiated the criminalization of our economy, culminating in the present war for profit. And I couldn't help but reflect on how this demoralization of our entire society over the past twenty-five years has affected the young people in both their aspirations and attitudes.
Now that the "greed is good" philosophy has brought ruin in spades on our land and others, I wonder how our people will ever surmount the malaise now upon us. But then, I think, humans are a resilient species--especially the foolishly optimistic American specimen--and somehow we'll probably endure the horrendous hardships hovering on the horizon.
Yet, within this new morality we've inherited, lies a challenge to our old way of thinking, and that is in our habits of punishment for transgressions of law and respect for its rule. Admittedly, these have been in long decline for good reason--particularly among the economically excluded--but now even those who played by the former rules are finding no way to get by any more, and that fact of present life portends a not-too-distant future where more and more of us will inevitably be involved in some form of criminal activity as a means of survival.
Indeed, this transition is well underway.
Of course, when laws are bad--as with prohibition and other laws of intolerance--they'll be widely if not openly disregarded, but this new criminality is somewhat different from the Puritan-induced version. Although related, the new lawlessness among the decent citizenry as a consequence of high-level looting and fraud--while justified as a matter of survival--is likely to plunge us into a domestic discord and brutality we haven't seen in three or four generations. Flag-waving aside, many Americans no longer believe in the United States, or hope, or the potential for justice. And that is a change of enormous magnitude, one for which there is no contingency plan or roadmap.
In fact, as I sit here contemplating the next twenty-five years, all I can imagine is chaos, strife, and disorder and if we're lucky a slow disintegration of our society. But then, I think of how quickly the social structures of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia and Iraq crumbled before this new amorality, and I know this current corruption of values can accelerate our demise beyond anything we can presently imagine. And I lament what lies in store.
Now that the "greed is good" philosophy has brought ruin in spades on our land and others, I wonder how our people will ever surmount the malaise now upon us. But then, I think, humans are a resilient species--especially the foolishly optimistic American specimen--and somehow we'll probably endure the horrendous hardships hovering on the horizon.
Yet, within this new morality we've inherited, lies a challenge to our old way of thinking, and that is in our habits of punishment for transgressions of law and respect for its rule. Admittedly, these have been in long decline for good reason--particularly among the economically excluded--but now even those who played by the former rules are finding no way to get by any more, and that fact of present life portends a not-too-distant future where more and more of us will inevitably be involved in some form of criminal activity as a means of survival.
Indeed, this transition is well underway.
Of course, when laws are bad--as with prohibition and other laws of intolerance--they'll be widely if not openly disregarded, but this new criminality is somewhat different from the Puritan-induced version. Although related, the new lawlessness among the decent citizenry as a consequence of high-level looting and fraud--while justified as a matter of survival--is likely to plunge us into a domestic discord and brutality we haven't seen in three or four generations. Flag-waving aside, many Americans no longer believe in the United States, or hope, or the potential for justice. And that is a change of enormous magnitude, one for which there is no contingency plan or roadmap.
In fact, as I sit here contemplating the next twenty-five years, all I can imagine is chaos, strife, and disorder and if we're lucky a slow disintegration of our society. But then, I think of how quickly the social structures of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia and Iraq crumbled before this new amorality, and I know this current corruption of values can accelerate our demise beyond anything we can presently imagine. And I lament what lies in store.
