Saturday, October 14, 2006

Dysfunction in Action


I recently traded my self-proclaimed status as a writer, activist and dilettante for the mundane title of Operations and Financial Controller.

My first day on the job, while sorting through loose papers to find critical information, it occurred to me that the situation I had just walked into is a microcosm of the current state of our country. Most of the people still employed at my new company are stellar. They work hard and they jump through hoops to make things happen. However, certain key people (who were previously given the opportunity to control important functions, like operations and finance) apparently had a long history of denying, ignoring and/or withholding pertinent information from their co-workers.

The disastrous results of their behavior are such that one might be tempted to accuse said people of outright sabotage. Had the fiasco involved a team effort, rather than a series of individual failures, one might even suspect a conspiracy.

The truth, however, is much less dramatic. The real source of the clusterfuck I'm currently trying to manage is due to nothing more sinister than my predecessors' (there were several) inability to perform the work required, and their failure to take ownership of their respective positions within the organization.

I think this Foley business is an example of the same kind of failure. The group of insiders who chose not to address the "overly-friendly" emails Foley sent to underage pages were not intentionally trying to sacrifice kids so Foley could get his jollies. Their goal was not to destroy the program nor conspire to cover up Foley's indescretions. They are simply ignorant people. They are uneducated regarding the nature of sexual addition, sexual abuse and, well, sex. And as sex is a fundamental aspect of being human, I believe ignorance in this area makes for a fundamentally ignorant person.

It is my personal opinion that the Republican party is largely comprised of people who are sexually repressed and undereducated. They are committed to maintaining a superficially wholesome image, but the need to appear wholesome is so great that it gets in the way of their ability to solve problems. They can't acknowledge (let alone deal with) something as complicated and emotionally charged as pedophilia. They are so busy following up their knee-jerk reactions to inconsequential sexual titillations (Clinton's blow jobs and Janet Jackson's right tit) that they have no time left to address more substantial issues.

I was amused at Cokie Roberts' comment last Sunday on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, when she said the Democrats would have handled the Foley scandal the same way the Republicans did. I disagree. While this is a gross over-generalization, I believe that Democrats are champions of information and education; whereas, Republicans seem to handle crises by resorting to repression and denial.

Democrats are more focused on Democratic principles than they are on following their leader. They tend to place their loyalty where those principles can best be served. If that means changing leaders, so be it. Howard Dean's amazing disappearing act after the so-called "Dean Scream" is evidence of that.

Republicans, on the other hand, place their loyalty on people vs. principle and will discard their principles immediately if they are forced to choose between backing their own and standing up to injustice. They do not solve problems as much as they use their power, as a group, to coerce their members to behave in ways that maintain their power in unity, and promote their group's special interests.

This explains (to me anyway) why it is such an important part of the Republican mindset that people be loyal to each other. Their only power rests in their ability to keep their numbers up. If they lose numbers, they lose power, and then they lose everything. They are woefully short on original ideas, information, education, creative thinking and problem solving skills. What they do have is a lot of people willing to do what is asked of them. (I am not a Democrat, by the way, I am an Independent.)

It has recently come out that the White House asked Foley to stay in Congress until 2008, despite the fact that Foley, himself, wished to retire and take up a career as a lobbyist. Specifically, I read that Foley was told that his lobbying career would be greatly enhanced if he agreed to do as asked. (Which is the gracious way of saying that it won't be, if he doesn't.) So Foley stayed. And look what happened.

If we really want a Democracy in America, we're going to have to elect officials who will refrain from using coercion and will instead rely on critical thinking skills to effectively manage this country. We are also going to have to insist that, Democrat or Republican, when elected officials take on the responsibility of representing the citizenry, they are made accountable for their actions and the actions of the people they put in place. This means that before anybody gets a job, they need to be vetted, thoroughly--not to test their loyalty--but to test their competence.

As long as we allow political strategists to influence our vote, rather than using our own critical thinking skills to elect competent, experienced people, with a loyalty to the principles this country was founded on (as opposed to those motivated by a rabid a desire to align themselves with power at any cost) we will continue to get exactly what we have now: an administration that punishes truth-tellers and awards unquestioned obedience, while the real issues of concern to the citizens of this country are largely ignored.

1 Comments:

Blogger crenshaw sepulveda said...

Good to see you back in print. I always appreciate your voice to augment my own.

8:09 PM  

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