filkertom | Overheard From Another World

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Overheard From Another World

The biggest reason I haven't indulged in as much political stuff lately is that there has been so much outrageous bullshit happening that I would spend all my time documenting it. (I follow a number of excellent blogs:

They really seem to have their fingers on the pulse, and they link to lots of other excellent blogs when someone gets a scoop or an insight that needs more notice. I also get e-mailings from Salon.com and the Huffington Post.)

In any case, not as much politicking, 'cause life's too short. But some stuff just cries out for attention. Like this:

Don Larsen, chairman of legislative District 65 for the Utah County Republican Party, had submitted a resolution warning that Satan’s minions want to eliminate national borders and do away with sovereignty.

In a speech at the convention, Larsen told those gathered that illegal immigrants “hate American people” and “are determined to destroy this country, and there is nothing they won’t do.”

Illegal aliens are in control of the media, and working in tandem with Democrats, are trying to “destroy Christian America” and replace it with “a godless new world order — and that is not extremism, that is fact,” Larsen said. […]

Republican officials then allowed speakers to defend and refute the resolution. One speaker, who was identified as “Joe,” said illegal immigrants were Marxist and under the influence of the devil. Another, who declined to give her name to the Daily Herald, said illegal immigrants should not be allowed because “they are not going to become Republicans….”

Read the whole story, if you've had your morning caffeine. In my view, it's symptomatic of The Great Problem, the one that's really been plaguing the whole country since 9/11, and you can probably guess it: fear. So many people afraid of so much. Especially afraid of what they perceive to be different from them. Fear paralyzes them, prevents them from seeing and admitting the truth, makes them easier to control.

Sad, really.

What do you perceive as the biggest problem we face at this point? Any damn thing, just be serious about it. It's easy to say some politician's or celebrity's name or a bad TV show as a quick one-liner, but if you actually have reasons, please lay 'em out.

ETA: A couple of people suggested I add Digby's Hullabaloo to the blogs, and they're right. I usually just read it by way of links from Atrios, but it's truly brilliant.

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...I've gone through three or four choices and can't identify any one of them as 'the biggest'.

I'm tossing around...
1) Impending economic collapse; I think the sub-prime mortgage default problem will eventually spread through the entire (global? How many countries are we keeping afloat by means of buying their cheap crap?) economy, compounded by the potential of $4/gallon gasoline. Won't touch the fabulously wealthy, but Joe Average is going to feel the pinch. Maybe he'll notice that corporate profits are up by about the same percentage as his productivity, while his wages are flat.

2) We are damaging our planet to an extent that might require a reboot of civilization to fix it, unless someone comes up with a cheap, clean source of energy in a hurry. I am hoping that my ability to turn string into clothing will make me more valuable alive than dead when the apocalypse comes, and wondering if I should learn to turn sheep hair into string just in case.

3) President Bush seems to feel the Executive Branch is above and beyond the reach of Congress, and he's right, until someone is willing to put impeachment back on the table. As an example, nobody's quite sure what to do about Condoleezza Rice being 'not inclined to answer' the subpoena that was just issued for her to come talk to a House committee... the fact that Alberto Gonzales appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee indicates to me that either a) they were checking to see how far the 'I don't recall' defense will fly or b) they intend to throw him under the bus.

Ignorance. Education used to involve being force-fed a whole lot of stuff that wasn't relevant to getting a job. It wasn't fun, it wasn't enjoyable, and it wasn't cheap. But boy, it taught you to think. It gave you the tools to make valid decisions.

Now, the only people in possession of those tools are the ones who had the sense to make their own. Education was the first thing to be sold out, sold to the glib theorists with the soundbites like "learning through discovery." Yeah, right. If they trained soldiers and sailors and marines the way they teach kids...well, just imagine.

Rote learning, dates and kings, dead languages and dead composers and dead painters...it may be boring, it may be unpleasant, and it may have to be enforced by (el gaspo) discipline. But it gets the stuff in there and gives the brain something to deal with. It's bran flakes for the mind. And the constipated minds we see running the world today, the legacy of modern education, are its greatest advertisement.

I'd say the biggest problem in this country is untruthfulness. (Or is that truthiness :-( Not just from the politicians, whom we can expect to lie (though never, in historical terms, to the extent that this administration has), but also from the media (who seem to have abandoned, in large measure, their watchdog role for cocktail-weenie treats and "access" -- that is, not having to actually WORK to get the story).

I'm surprised you don't have Hullaballoo on your list. The writing over there is among the best on the net (on a par with Greenwald). I also, personally, have David Neiwert and Sara Robinson at Orcinus on my must-read list, though I do sometimes put them off for a day or two until I can really focus. Also, if you don't have her on your list, Avedon Carol's The Sideshow has some of the best, and less noted, political links around.

I'm not sure quite what word I want (in itself a scary thing) - apathy, perhaps, or disenfranchisement. Most people just shrug and go on with their lives, because their sense is that absolutely nothing they do is going to matter/ make a difference/ change anything. The sense is that the monolith is too big, and that the steamroller is going to run right over the little guy who's watching his savings and his security go into his gas tank, 50 bucks at a time. But if people believe they are helpless to effect change...then they are.

Loss of faith in the system. After the last two elections, and a war that should have ended 4 years ago, people really feel like their voice just does not matter. It makes no difference how you vote, the people with the most money and connections get elected, period. It does not matter how loud the people shout "end this war NOW!!", it goes on and on and on costing the country too much in money and lives lost. At this point, we should have total control of the oil fields, and gas here should be under a dollar a gallon since we control the source of the crude (yes, I know that was never the plan, but after 7 years we should have SOMETHING to show for the cost). We won, a new Iraqi government is in place, why are we still over there in force? (I can see keeping some helper force over there, but not to the level we are at, and definitely not at mandatory extensions to time there for the soldiers in the field. And isn't the National Guard the sub-branch of the Army that STAYS ON US SOIL to defend and help out here? It is the main part of the army that goes overseas, not the National Guard!). Even after putting a change of the guard in office last year, nothing has changed nor does it look like it will ever change. Both sides are just as bad and there is no third choice, just "damned if you do, damned if you don't".

Worst problem right now? Wrapping up many into one omnibus package/sentence, I'd say it's the deliberate and systematic subversion and corruption of the legitimate functions and processes of the Federal government across all 3 branches.

I highly recommend adding the excellent Digby at Hullabaloo (http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/) to your list of blogs. Good stuff, frequently quoted by the other worthy sites you mention.

My favorite not-so-guilty blog pleasure is Slacktivist (http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist//),where each Friday a Baptist seminary graduate and journalist named Fred Clark and a gang of witty commenters (many of them atheist) hilariously deconstruct the Left Behind books (including the sad fact that people who base their entire worldview on this crap hold actual political power).

In another recent thread (http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/2007/03/all_the_good_mu.html), the usual suspects analyze an amazing video of a preacher explaining in great detail how to tell whether or not music is "godly." (Short answer: anything with a danceable beat isn't.) The comments range from the definition of classical music to Battlestar Galactica. There's even a drive-by saving toward the end.

Favorite comment: "I hope I'm not the only person who headbangs to Verdi's Requiem during the Dies Irae."

While I agree with you that fear is one of the biggies the use of fear to purposely cripple angers me so much more. Sort of like should I blame the drug, the pusher or the purchaser (yep I'm wondering about those who so want to believe in fear too). Maybe all to some extent.

I also get really overwhelmed not only the wrongful actions and the lying by our administration but the seeming lack of worry that it will ever matter if they did wrong or not (or lied about it).

I also, personally, have David Neiwert and Sara Robinson at Orcinus on my must-read list, though I do sometimes put them off for a day or two until I can really focus.

Hear, hear. I meant to recommend them as well.

The culture wars in America. The fact that moderation in one's opinion is viewed as weakness. And especially the prevalence in America of the idea that the ends justify the means.

The fact that we no longer have an independent media. The MSM is controlled by corporations with specific political agendas. Reporters are no longer expected to actually, you know, do their jobs. They are little more than propaganda machines repeating the same talking points. The state could stand despite many other problems if the media was truly free. But I can count on one hand the number of true reporters left and have fingers left over.

And that scares me.

Three things, really, all of which have been mentioned.

1. Fear -- or rather, the manipulation of legitimate concern by politicians and demagogues to keep people constantly afraid and tense and willing to go along with anything to Keep Us Safe, when in reality all safety at any time is nothing but illusion. I would throw in people's willingness to allow themselves to be manipulated and scared. The only legitimate way to live life, in my opinion, is fearlessly; a craven fear of death is unworthy of human beings. We all die; staying alive at the cost of one's (or one's national) ideals and raison d'etre seems to miss the point.

2. Ignorance. People are ignorant of the basic ideals on which this society -- on which human culture in general -- was built. They don't know what's in their country's Constitution, fer cryin' out loud. Heck, some (not all or most, I'll note) fundamentalists who claim to want to order their lives and society by the Bible are ignorant about, y'know, what it says other than Genesis 1-2, some passages in Leviticus and so forth, and seem to think that God speaks/thinks in Elizabethan English. Even more worrisome than ignorance, though, is a growing willingness to remain ignorant -- instead of realizing one's ignorance and educating themselves, people either deny their ignorance or realize it but refuse to recorgnize it as a problem/failing ... even take pride in what they don't know, insisting that their lack of learnin' equates to horse sense, so, heh, logically, the dumber you are the smarter you are. Cue migraine ...

3. As

madrona noted, above: The marginalization of moderation. The inability of a growing number (or at least a louder number) on all sides (but mainly on the Right) to view dissent as honest disagreement, as anything more than malice and ill will. Too many people seem to think that their views' correctness is so self-evident and obvious that any disagreement must be a result of bad faith and willful treason (or, at best, stupidity and/or greed).

(That fundamentalist link you posted recently depressed me beyond measure. Because, using one very narrow definition -- it's early-20th century meaning, when it referred to adherence to five basic doctrines (such as the Resurrection, the incarnation, etc.), without all the lunacy and legalism and politics and meanspiritedness that's accured to the term -- I could be considered a fundamentalist Christian. But I don't recognize myself in any of these people. And yet they claim the same source for their whacked-out views that I do for mine. Sigh.)

I try to, in my own life and spheres of influence, live fearlessly, always strive to educate myself and refuse to demonize opponents -- even those I'm sorely tempted to and may deserve it -- and try to model/promote this approach to life. It's a feeble effort, I suppose.

Dishonesty in public & private life.

If you don't have honesty you have essentially nothing one can trust, if you don't have trust then systems will begin to fail.

We are currently seeing systems failing at an accelerating pace.

A couple of people have already touched on fear, or on xenophobia in particular, but lately I've been thinking on how so many people (in and out of the current administration) seem so afraid of being wrong that they can't bear to admit it might happen. That's why we haven't seen contingency plans, or the willingness to make a real change of course.

This may be pure stubbornness rather than fear, but anyway, that's what I think is our biggest problem right now: too many people who don't want to face the possibility that they may be wrong.

Biggest problem? I have a little list...

Lets see, corporations committing ecocide for profit.
Impending eco-apocalypse as a result of global warming that nobody is doing anything about, [or doing very little and spinning it to look like a lot.]

Politicians who seem to think that as long as they aren't caught, it's ok.
Preachers who say do as I say and not as I do.
Politicians who do the same.
Leaders who think they are rulers.
Rulers who think they are little gods, in so far as what they say is reality.
People who think that their rights, includes the right to be a jerk and an ass.
People who think their freedoms are more important than yours.

Aww, heck with it...

Biggest problem = PEOPLE

All in all, the biggest problem is ignorance;

Ignorance that universal health care only provides bare-bones, minimum-grade health care for those who have nothing else to turn to, and that higher-grade private health insurance would still be a viable option for those who can afford it.

Ignorance that global warming results in changes in climate and weather patterns, not warmer temperatures.

Ignorance that "terror" isn't some country you can invade or some criminal you can kidnap, it's a method and an idea.

And so on...

Tribalism. Us vs. Them. I think you can trace 100% of the fear and loathing right down to Us vs. Them I go into greater detail here in "Choices" (http://phoenixinn.iwarp.com/Politicks/choices.html) but the problem boils down to Us vs. Them, the fear of the "other".

The trouble is that politicians need Us vs. Them it drives the need for someone to do something, usually detrimental to liberty, peace, and understanding, but adding to the personal power of the politician.

I'm sure I could make a list of a hundred Big Problems without working too hard, many of which have already been mentioned above. And they're all interconnected, to some extent causing and being caused by each other, so it's really hard to find root causes. I've given this enough thought that if I had more drive and organization in my life, I would actually write a book about it.

My own take is that the most important strand in the web is the way capitalism has gotten dangerously out of whack. I genuinely believe that free markets are second only to scientific thought as the greatest historical force for the betterment of mankind, but the system we have today certainly seems to refute that proposition -- global corporate capitalism as it now exists is the greatest force for the debasement and destruction of mankind, beating out even coercive religion. Today, most of the important decisions in the world are made by a tiny group of people on the basis of only one criterion: what maximizes their own corporation's stock price in the next reporting period. It's a serious distortion of the idea of free markets and entrepreneurial capitalism. Corporations are far too big, so that the people at the top are too distant from the day to day effects on individual people's lives of their decisions (whether the people are customers, employees, or residents of communities where the corp operates). And corporations are far, far too focused on the very short term; even a company concerned with absolutely nothing but maximizing shareholder value would be much better for the world if they were maximizing that value in the long term. In the long term, keeping your customers, employees, and neighbors happy is good for business; it's just in the very short run, where the immediate monetary benefits of screwing them are in the time horizon and the long term damage is not, that it makes sense to be so evil.

The screwed up corporations are major immediate causes of most of the other big problems. All our environmental problems from global warming on down flow from the fact that being responsible costs money in the short run and only brings benefits in the long term. The debasement of our media is caused in large part by the fact that most of our media have become divisions of megacorporations, required like all the other divisions to show increasing profits, and real journalism is expensive compared to infotainment fluff. The insane alliance between the environment-destroying corporatists and the intellect-destroying religious whackjobs that is today's Republican party works because the corporate side is willing to work with anyone who helps them achieve their short term goals and is willing to say anything to secure their help, because honesty is another thing that costs extra in the short term and only brings rewards in the long term. Our political system is so corrupt because it's become all about money, a situation that those who have the money do everything they can to protect and enhance the influence of money -- and where's the money? In the corporations.

I just think it's beautiful that we live in a country where those with severe mental disabilities have the opportunity to be elected to public office. Obviously, my preference would be for different individuals with different disabilities, but just because someone is delusional and incapable of rational thought is no reason to hate them.

I'm not sure it's the biggest problem we face, but it's part of the overall problem: The media isn't what it ought to be.

Truth has been traded in for balance.

Getting the facts comes second to getting the news on the air first. (For a parody of this problem, see Something Happening in Haiti (http://www.theonion.com/content/video/breaking_news_something_happening).

And investigative reporting seems to be a thing of the past.

The biggest problem that we face, in my opinion, is that collectively we aren't wise enough. There are many, many problems out there that need to be tackled, but it's not enough to be smart enough to have an idea of how to solve them; it's necessary to solve them in a wise fashion as well.

I view intolerance as a major problem -- on a global basis! -- but I find that I'm not nearly wise enough to be able to draw a big bright line between behaviors that should be tolerated and those that shouldn't. Oh, sure, some are clearly way over here and some are clearly way over there (in my opinion; your mileage may vary), but some calls are just going to be harder to make. And when it comes down to it, I think that we're really bad at achieving a wise consensus on those close calls -- again, not just in the United States, but on a global basis.

I could go on down the list, but I think you've gotten the idea by now. :)

Now that I've seen a bunch of postings on the topic, I look over it all and wonder, how much of this is new?
"Fear" is the problem, but it was also so 20+ years ago when the right fretted about Communists while the left fretted about global nuclear annihilation. Various scares predated that.
"Ignorance" seems to be the problem in varying degrees throughout history.
And of course the culture wars go back at least to the days of Prof. Harold Hill. =)
Et cetera et cetera et cetera, as the King of Siam would say.
(Sorry about the musicals references)

The biggest problem is that we can't see the historical forest for the very frightening trees. All these problems are much scarier up close, but the key is, as the good book ("Hitchhiker's Guide" of course) says, Don't Panic.

I read somewhere that history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. What's most unique and distressing about this verse is that we have a government running a war and weilding an uncomfortable amount of power, led by a man who has pretty much no idea what he is doing. During Vietnam, we may not have been happy with the way things were going, but at least we knew LBJ and Nixon were in charge. Disagree with what their mental clocks said, but at least they were ticking. It's going to be a scary ride until this era sorts itself out around 2010, but I have to have faith that it will, and not give in to the level-headed-but-evil minds who seek to profit from this chaos.

I follow the same set of blogs, but I add Pandagon in there too. Pandagon covers much of the progressive political stuff and also gives attention to women's issues, race issues, and LGTB stories that usually don't get as much play in the 'boys' blogs, (even Americablog).

Recently Pandagon critizied Markos for blowing off Kathy Sierra when she was getting threatened, because, (to paraphrase him) "we all get threatened, shake it off". Pandagon pointed out that there is a undercurrent of sexual threat that male bloggers don't get and IMO should be more sensitive about.

If I were going to name some Biggest Problems? Hrm.

A whole lot of people have mentioned fear. I think that's one of the biggest ones, from freakouts like you link to there to the fact that people are so terrified of even the slightest risk to anything that swings and merry-go-rounds are getting banned all over the place. It also covers most of the side-effects of it, particularly the tribalism that someone mentioned elsewhere in the comments.

Ignorance is kind of an unfair one to list; coming up with that one as a major problem is like shooting fish that are already lodged in the gun's barrel these days. It causes a lot problems itself, but the main one it's responsible for is fear. Stuff gets banned at the first hint of problems because people don't understand how risk works. Email forwards convince people vaccines are deadly, so the neighbors decide to treat their kid's cancer with homeopathic "medicine." Science gets generally stigmatized because people get their perceptions of it from contemporary science fiction movies and not The Real World. That kind of thing.

My main pet peeve, though, is the fact that foresight is pretty much stigmatized. Anything that involves any kind of long-term planning or consideration is a non-issue, both because We Need Instant Gratification and because such things are generally considered bad for various silly reasons, in and of themselves. A lot of issues going on these days aren't going to be fixed with a hastily-written law or a couple of marches or by bombing a country into the ground. Fixing a lot of problems facing the planet or any particular country in it is going to take years or decades or generations of work in quite a few cases, and I think that's going to be a problem until people learn that it's not wrong to think further than two years ahead.

as usual, Tom raises an interesting and thought provoking topic.

lots of EXCELLENT posts. (and I'm checking out the rec'ed blogs)

personally, I think the biggest problem is the lack of personal responsibility.

Nothing is ever anyone's fault. Oh, my child dived into the pool right by the 'No Diving' sign and broke his neck. It's the POOL'S fault. Or the Lifeguard's for not watching my child!!! waaaaah

Same with the politicians. It's like they are allergic to saying. "Ok, on reflection, this was a really bad idea, we're calling all the troops home."

I don't know if it is fear of confessing that they are *gasp* actually human and capable of making mistakes or their overweening arrogance but what happened to being able to say "My bad."

Education: always a gimme. the politicos don't want the general public smart enough to realize that they are screwing us over by the numbers

and you know what else seems to have disappeared? manners. Simple "please" and "thank you" or "excuse me" when you've bumped into someone.

yes, we're hurrying, hurrying, hurrying all the time and I'm not advocating that we snail down. But would even a low muttered 'sorry' really hurt? or is that admitting responsibility and owning up to a mistake?

I think our biggest problem is gullibility. There are those who believe that if an authority figure says it, it must be so--especially when the people suffering from gullibility get so tightly focused on their immediate lives that they allow themselves to think that things like their government should be left to someone else.

This is our country, and it is our right, our duty, and our responsibility to keep it going, and to make the right decisions. Many of us, occasionally myself included, lose sight of this. We let "good enough" be good enough; we assume decisions that screw up someone else's world will never affect ours.

There is just one human race on this planet. There are many cultures, many faces, many lives...but all are connected, and all suffer from gullibility. All suffer from that belief that what affects you won't hurt me.

I'd go with OneTrueWayism as the worst problem the nation faces right now. Doesn't matter if that One True Way is Christianism, atheism, Republicanism, Democratism, liberalism, conservativeism, sexism, racism, ageism, Marxism . . . I could go on, but why?

Any time an individual or group begins to believe that his, her, or their position is inherently superior just because it's his, hers, or theirs, there is a problem. I don't think there is anyone above the age of, say, nine months who's immune to this tendency, though -- and I should point out that I'm well over nine months old, myself.

For sheer Hunter S. Thompson cleansing invective: Driftglass
http://driftglass.blogspot.com/

His most recent post comparing GOP accomplishments to The Aristocrats is masterly.

Also jurassicpork:
http://welcome-to-pottersville.blogspot.com/

Fear, intolerance, hate, etc. seem to have a common root: Belief in something which is demonstrably untrue.

If I were a cynic I'd say that sentence was too long. The biggest problem that we face, in one word, is belief. Faith, in other words.

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What keeps me up at night...

IMHO (TEP)

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