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.

Monday, October 02, 2006

Where Have I Been?


I got a nice email from a friend today. He wrote asking where I've been lately. The truth is, I've been taking a little break. Okay, a big break. You see, for about a minute, it actually looked like the cat was out of the bag, so to speak, regarding the general state of the Union and everything I would normally have wanted to say was already being said.

What with all the noise about Iraq making terrorism worse, the business of Bush crusading for torture and the number of people now willing to say that they just don't think Congress is doing what they are supposed to do, I thought I'd said enough and could take a break. If it was all common knowledge now, why keep beating a dead horse?

Everything so many of us (bloggers, alternative media, etc.) have been spouting, since the war in Iraq began, is being accepted as fact now (Saddam was not a threat to Americans. There are/were no WMDs in Iraq. Invading Iraq will make terrorism worse. Even with the best intentions, Iraq will become a mess because our government is incompetent and greedy.) Frankly, I didn't think there was much more to say.

I was wrong.

Despite the fact that we can now all agree on what the facts were before the war, it hasn't seemed to make any difference. The reaction to the information, though it took several years to be accepted by the majority in this country, is so mind-numbingly inadequate to the effects of the situation on the ground, that it was almost better before we all knew how misled we had been.

At least before we could comfort ourselves with the knowledge (albeit, somewhat naïvely) that once people understood how inadequate to the task our leadership has been, at every level, they'd be fuming mad and ready for a change. But no, it appears not. All we can do now is lambaste Bill Clinton for "losing it," when recently questioned about why he didn't "do more" to capture/kill Osama bin Laden.

Frankly, I was proud of Bill. Just like I was proud of Howard Dean for screaming his fool head off at the now infamous Democratic event that was his last shining moment in the sun. I'm sick to death of denial. I'm ready to puke at the number of "gracious" comments I've heard from self-serving politicians who would happy to see you and me tarred and feathered for no good reason before they'd say anything that might be construed as "disloyal."

Both Bill Clinton and Howard Dean have something real and important to offer: They have a sense of self-respect and dignity that forces them to speak up--even when what they have to say might not please others. They have something else too: an innate ability to call things like they see them and an unwillingness to pretend otherwise.

Bill Clinton's problem wasn't that he screwed Monica Lewinsky; it was that Republicans preferred to focus on his sex life, rather than assisting him in finding and stopping Osama bin Laden. I just wish he'd had the guts to simply do what Joan Allen's character in The Contender did under similar circumstances: announce that his sex life is none of their damned business. That would have been the smart thing to do--highlight the idiocy of the request, rather than defend accusations that simply allowed the bullies who made the request to win by smearing their victim.

Our latest debacle is a charade in which key members of Congress pretend to protect the rights of innocent civilians, yet continue to support a barbaric policy which allows untried "enemies of state" to be fingered, by the administration, with no chance to address their accusers. What's more, the specifics of the torture that will be allowed under this so-called "clarification" process aren't going to be discussed. How does that clarify anything?

Bottom line: the semantics of the discussion have changed. That's all. Bush, et al, will continue to do what they've been doing. The only difference is that Congress has essentially ratified the Bush version of terrorism. This way we can pretend we are still the "good guys."

Meanwhile, our pundits are happily pointing the finger at the likes of Hugo Chavez and that guy from Iran (whose name I can say, but never spell) calling them "hotheads" and "buffoons." Why? Because they say things like "Bush is Satan." Well, Bush says things like Iraq, Iran and N. Korea are part of an "axis of evil." Where were the pundits then?

Things have not improved. They have simply degraded to the point where people are no longer arguing over how bad it is. Now they are simply arguing over how to make it sound better.

--Laurie