Of course, everyone has a different idea of the path to the solution, but the debate ultimately gets dominated by the most dogmatic and ideological voices in the arena, and common sense solutions based on reason, science, and facts are scoffed at and dismissed. Inevitably, we declare war on that problem, throw an obscene amount of money at it, creating a bureaucratic monster that only serves to exacerbate the problem. It happens over, and over, and over again. The examples in my lifetime are countless: Vietnam, the War on Drugs, the War on Crime, the War on Poverty, the War on Terror. The list goes on and on.
When faced with a problem, many of the native American tribes based their decisions on how it would affect the seventh generation. They had that concern, vision, and temperance in mind before they acted. We don't even consider how our decisions or inaction will affect the next generation much less the seventh. We have lost our sense of obligation to pass this world on to the next generation in a condition that is better than that which we were given. We seem only to be concerned with our own satisfaction in this very moment. We have become selfish, gluttonous, irresponsible, and lazy. We don't care about anything until it affects us directly.
As a child, I listened to my grandfather's stories of the Great Depression. He warned me that it would happen again. He taught me the value of money and hard work. He taught me to conserve and not to be wasteful. He taught me about sacrifice and responsibility to those who depended upon me. He taught me that people should look out for one another. That was the only way they could survive in the conditions of that time. Family. Community. Working together. Sacrificing together. Fighting together. Prospering together.
It was a very different message than I was getting from those around me. I was often ridiculed in school for saving my paper lunch bags, folding them and putting them in my back pants pocket after lunch. I remember saying, "Yeah? Wait until the next depression comes. I'll know how to survive!" That statement did nothing to quell the mockery.
My grandfather's message was especially different than the one I received from those with whom I attended college. The future Gordon Gekko's around me were often amused as they saw me stacking books in the library, by my hair net as I served them lunch and dinner, by my grass stained sneakers as I cut the lawn of their fraternity house, by the steel-toed work books I still had on in class after unloading trucks overnight, or by the gin-soaked tie that I wore when I served them drinks at the bar downtown. "How many jobs do you have, man?," they often howled. "Just wait until the next depression...," I thought to myself.
The "greatest generation" of Americans, which included my grandparents, defeated the Axis powers and liberated Europe. They came together in an unprecedented way, in a common cause. While the able-bodied men went to war, their wives went to work in the factories. Those unable to serve in the military also sacrificed for that effort. They rationed gasoline. They collected tires and scrap metal for that effort. They collected pennies to turn them into copper wire. They bought war bonds. The entire nation sacrificed.
After 9/11, George Bush told us that our War on Terror was every bit as vital as defeating Nazi Germany and Japan, yet he asked no one but our volunteer military and their families to sacrifice. Instead he told us to shop. We are financing this war by borrowing, sending our national deficit into unimaginable figures, and mortgaging the future of our seventh generation and beyond.
To double the price of their home took our grandparents 30 years or more to do. We have been doing it in less than a year. To earn a modest profit on investment, our grandparents bought war bonds and invested in companies who actually built things that bettered the lives of people. We, instead, want instant profit. We invest in companies and financial instruments that create nothing. Wall Street is a casino, and our economy is a Ponzi scheme. We have been cooking the books for decades.
When Jimmy Carter spoke to the nation in the last hours of his Presidency, warning us of our rabid consumerism, especially our addiction to oil, we responded by running him out of town and by injecting our consumption with steroids. Ronald Reagan's first act in office was to remove the solar panels President Carter had installed on the roof of the White House, and then he proceeded to begin the still ongoing process of dismantling every New Deal policy of F.D.R. and every environmental and financial regulation that stood in the way of unbridled corporate profit. We consumed even more oil. We built even bigger, less fuel efficient cars. We borrowed even more money. We adopted the mantra that "greed is good."
Time and again, we have put profit over responsibility and have chosen to ignore the warning signs of impending doom. The Savings and Loan scandal, the dot com bubble, Enron. We were warned that the levees of New Orleans were inadequate. We chose to ignore the warnings. We chose not to spend the money to improve them, and the cost of that decision was multiplied by a factor in the hundreds. Financial deregulation allowed Wall Street to run amok, and its irresponsible actions have nearly destroyed our nation. It very well may do just that, because the same players are continuing the very practices that got us into this crisis. In the name of profit, BP chose to ignore the warning signs of impending disaster, and now we have an environmental catastrophe, the costs of which will never fully be realized. We have been warned of the effects of dumping CO2 into the atmosphere, of destroying the rain forests, of polluting and over-fishing our oceans. We refuse to listen.
We are seemingly incapable of solving any problem now. Health care. Education. Immigration. Our addiction to oil. Global Warming. Poverty. Homelessness. Starvation. Every one of these things has a common sense solution based on reason, sound science, factual information, human nature, and a history of what hasn't worked so far. We insist on kicking the can farther and farther down the road. We ignored the early warning signs of disease, and now we can't afford the surgery. We refuse to make sacrifices. We refuse to spend the necessary money today, and invariably it ends up costing exponentially more to fix a problem by the time inaction is no longer an option.
So what can we do?
Firstly, we can reject the current divisive atmosphere of our politics which has given us a false choice between unbridled corporate greed and absolute government control of our economy and our lives. We have witnessed all too well the ill effects of decades of deregulation of banking and our financial markets and the destruction that results from the dismantling of environmental protections. We have also witnessed the wastefulness and ineptness of big government in solving problems. We can reject the false choices between red and blue, Democrats and Republicans, Capitalism and Socialism. We must take back the control of our destiny as a nation from those on both sides of the political aisle whose only concerns are protecting their own self interests and those of their corporate contributors, party loyalties, and absolute fealty to long disproved ideologies. We must pay much stricter attention to those who represent us at every level of government, especially in Washington, and exercise our collective power with both our votes and our dollars. We can end the stranglehold of the two party system on our democracy by voting for independents whose only allegiance is to the American people and to sound policy based on reason and fact. We can end the unfettered access and influence of corporate lobbyists by adopting public financing of elections, demanding absolute transparency in government, and creating term limits on Congress.
Secondly, it is vital to our national security, our economy, and our environment that we end our addiction to oil and fossil fuels and begin to embrace new sustainable forms of energy and environmentally responsible technologies. This is where we can exercise our power with our dollars and create lasting change. We can purchase more fuel efficient cars and cars that run on electricity and alternate fuels, weatherproof our homes and businesses, put solar panels on all public buildings, invest in green technologies and companies, and support legislation that moves us away from the dirty, wasteful, and antiquated technologies of the 19th century.
Thirdly, we must support sensible legislation that restricts the risky and potentially destructive practices of our financial institutions. We should support legislation that restricts companies "too big to fail" from the kinds of practices that have the potential to take down our entire economy. Frankly, if a company is too big to fail, it should not exist. We have broken up monopolies in the past which created more competition, created jobs, and benefitted consumers. There is no reason it cannot be done again.
Lastly, we must take a deep look within ourselves and take personal responsibility for our choices and actions that affect us all. We must end our rabid consumerism, our wastefulness, and selfishness- the idea that we can live indefinitely beyond our means. We need to understand that no action is without consequence, that we are all connected to one another in profound ways, and that if the rest of the world were to live as we Americans do, we would need 8 Earths to sustain us.
Our history books, at least those that have not been revised yet, are full of examples of individuals, cultures, societies, and empires who did not heed the warnings of their impending demise. Will we learn from our mistakes and change our ways, or will it be, as Yogi Berra once quipped, deja vu all over again?
Chris "Breeze" Barczynski
