It's helpful and somewhat soothing to remember that in many cases the great steps we've taken as a people weren't necessarily taken for the reasons we like to imagine. At least, not at an individual level. Presidents, senators, mayors, governors, protesters, strikers, voters, entrepreneurs, movement leaders, inventors, builders. What do they all have in common? They're people. They're looking out for Number One. Most of the things these people did were at least partly motivated by self-interest.
Sure, Abraham Lincoln was largely responsible for ending slavery and averting the total dissolution of the Union. These were undoubtedly selfless acts that put him and his family in great personal danger.
But at the same time, it's not difficult to understand how his actions were virtually always in sync with exactly what was best for Abraham Lincoln.
The Emancipation Proclamation is instructive: the document was only issued once Lincoln had the political cover of the Union victory at Antietam, so that he - and by extension, the North - would appear strong. If he issued it earlier, popular opinion might turn against him or it could be perceived as a last-ditch effort to avert some impending disaster. If he had waited much longer to push emancipation, the ambitious Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon Chase, would have an easy path to nomination at the Republican convention by convincing ascendant Radicals that Lincoln was really a conservative on the slavery issue. As it was, he was forced to compromise heavily - too far, some abolitionists claimed - by omitting the border slave states and certain Confederate territories in Union control. Those slaves were forced to wait for their freedom until the implementation of the Thirteenth Amendment.
The self-interest that drives people to push themselves and their cultures beyond what may sometimes seem possible is not the perfectly rational self-interest of economic theory. The world is messy. The real self-interest of groups and individuals is somewhat rational but frail and easily amenable to deception, distraction, and misdirection.
Before the accusation can arise, it's not demeaning to say that people can be fooled, even Americans. We're not that unique.
It's part of the fate of human beings that we possess intelligence and can rise above the level of merely reacting to the world as we sense it, and this ability is the fundamental source of our enlightened intelligence. Only an intelligent being can dissociate their immediate experiences from their conception of reality. A man may see a bright hot yellow disk circling him up in the sky, but I can convince him through reason and observation that it is in fact a massive thermonuclear fireball exerting an invisible force on us that keeps our planet roughly 93 million miles away as we hurtle around it through an incomprehensibly vast space at an incredible speed.
Intelligence is also the source of all deliberate deception. To borrow from 1984, only an intelligent being can simultaneously comprehend that 2 + 2 = 4, and yet ardently profess that 2 + 2 = 5. Animals don't understand the deceptions they perform, their actions are guided by their instincts and present circumstances.
A lot of FOX News viewers regard themselves as well-informed. They might be curious enough to seek out the news, but they may not have the inclination to fact-check it, which makes them dangerously susceptible to being hoodwinked by conspiracy theorists and spinsters. One of the most intelligent strategic moves conservatives ever made was to effectively destroy the influence of mainstream media outlets in the minds of the right wing. As far as these people are concerned, the only media that can be trusted is right-wing infotainment like FOX, Drudge, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck. They see the regular media as corrupt, false, overtly and irredeemably biased, and contemptuous of non-elite heartland Americans.
The trick is that, in reality, all of these qualities apply to FOX and the far-right media in spades. Yet by hitting the correct code words they're managed to hide their true face from their fawning supporters, spewing hypocrisy and lies about all who disagree with their vision for America and convincing those same heartland Americans that the people actively working against their interests are actually good Christian Americans just like them, and the people working to make this a better place are actually some kind of "other" out to sabotage America's future.
It's reached a point, thanks to the fracturing of our media and culture, that most Americans no longer seek, nor are they presented with, any honest alternatives to the views they already possess. Even worse, it seems many people really never consider the consequences of the ideas they espouse. Properly exploited, as it has been by FOX and other conservative Republican organizations over the last generation, this situation yields a self-contained perpetual ignorance machine, ensnaring decent-hearted people in a web of lies that serves to enrich a few wealthy individuals at the expense of everyone else.
Bad things don't come only from the right, however. Hollywood and most "celebrities" (assuming the term still has meaning) are generally on the left side of the political spectrum, and for that I can appreciate what they often try to do in politics. But unfortunately there's no way around the fact that the values that are important to their industry are corrupting when applied to politics.
Hollywood-style celebrity culture is rooted in a sensationalist, fad-seeking, "narrative"-obsessed mindset, and their hedonistic, self-centered lives are pushed in the media as some kind of ideal in which shame, humility, and morality play no part in "real" life. This rightly offends people, since in order to be relevant in pop culture you have to push the boundaries of reasonableness every once in a while. Jon Stewart can hold as many "Rallies to Restore Sanity" as he wants, but the fact is he makes his living making "out of bounds" comments about the ridiculousness of our politics and media. If he weren't in the position he's in - hosting a "fake news" show on a cable comedy channel - he wouldn't be able to say those things. I'm not bashing what he does - I love "The Daily Show" - I'm just simply pointing out that if his vision for a saner and more civil American politics and media were realized, he'd be out of a job.
I don't want to uniquely single out Hollywood for its negative influence on our political culture. Hollywood has done some good things for our politics, and believe me, there is plenty of blame to go around for all of the bad things (like, for instance, FOX News).
In the same vein, the right-wing obsession with imposing moral values through government is just as corrupting as the left-wing obsession with removing values entirely from the public sphere. If you take a moral stand and defend that position with nothing except "I believe in X because I'm a Christian/Muslim/atheist," your position is poorly reasoned. I have no problem with moralists as long as they can logically and philosophically defend their positions in inclusive terms. References to holy books, deities, or ill-defined external forces such as "nature" are non-starters when discussing politics - we must make laws for everybody. Justice, democracy, fairness, social cohesion: these are defensible reasons for staking a moral position. Just don't go into wild hysterics if I challenge that position based on my own lines of reasoning.
And it's the same way with business: there's no doubt that business creates wealth. By definition, that's what it does. Wealth is a good thing as long as it is broadly shared by the whole population, but as it concentrates in fewer and fewer hands its benefits to society are outweighed by the horrifying social and economic consequences of accelerating inequality. The values of high finance and corporate economics are corrupting politics and statecraft and turning this country into a plutocracy ruled only by money. Industry and hard work are not valued: efficiency, ruthlessness, and cold calculation are.
Organizations which are compelled to make profit for profit's sake will do whatever they can to accomplish that goal, including altering the government and the law against the true will of the people and lying about their intentions. Trying to impart these values into government might make it profitable, but not in the way that benefits average Americans. Two examples illustrate the point: healthcare and defense, two industries behind some of America's biggest expenditures.
Healthcare corporations make more money if you get sick; insurance companies make more money if they don't fulfill their obligations to pay medical expenses; drug companies make more money if you "need" their medicine; doctors make more money if they perform more procedures; hospitals make more money if they defraud Medicare and keep malpractice damages low; equipment manufacturers make more money if hospitals have to buy more and newer equipment every year for no medical reason; and all of them make more money if people have to pay for things out of pocket rather than having the government negotiate on behalf of the nation as a single pool in order to keep costs down for everyone.
The ultimate goal of this system is to keep Americans sick, poor, and totally incapable of addressing the problem as a nation, thereby making the healthcare industry more money. And they have able allies in the food and media industries, ready to turn a normal healthy person into a sugar- and fat-addicted hypochondriac who absolutely must have the latest, most expensive drugs and procedures to treat (not cure) his heart disease, cancer, and diabetes despite the lack of any evidence these new treatments work better than the old ones.
And most Americans either don't know, don't understand the implications, or don't care.
Defense contractors make more money if we continue a policy of perpetual warfare for no productive purpose; foreign companies, governments, and power players make more money as long as our soldiers are in their countries absorbing the human costs and footing the financial bill to secure and rebuild centralized "democratic" states where they've never existed; foreign enemies and terrorists make more money as long as we continue to occupy countries and territories where we're not wanted and kill innocent people, no matter how well intentioned we are; weapons manufacturers make more money as long as our military must continue burning through stockpiles of ammunition and logistical supplies at a cost running into the billions of dollars every month; and the military and the defense industry make more money and gain more power as long as the civilian government defers to the brass for every decision involving the number of troops, tanks, ships, missiles, bullets, and dollars we are going to waste in a series of military efforts with no military solutions.
The ultimate goal of this system is to keep America scared, militarized, and willing to spend obscene amounts of money, kill thousands of people, and sacrifice the blood of our innocent soldiers in order to keep the military-industrial complex rich and hard at work profiting from endless, unnecessary wars. And they have able allies: in politicians, who are all too willing to fight any and all government spending - unless it benefits the defense industry; and in the media, who are too cowed by phony patriotism and too ignorant of history to understand the complexities of the defense industry and the effects of its unchecked growth on our culture and economy.
And most Americans either don't know, don't understand the implications, or don't care.
Has the American mind closed? Have we lost that spark, that need to explore and conquer new realms by the power of our ideals and industry? Have we lost the need for new horizons, goals toward which we as a nation can strive without descending into debilitating bickering and pettiness? People like to compare us to great empires that suddenly lost most if not all of their power, like the western Roman Empire or the British Empire. I would say we're closer to the Ottomans. We're gradually being stifled by traditions in business, politics, and culture thanks to which our greatest collective desire seems to be to cravenly seek any and all ways to make more money and spend more time in the proverbial spotlight.
How truly, pathetically sad for the future of America.
Organizations which are compelled to make profit for profit's sake will do whatever they can to accomplish that goal, including altering the government and the law against the true will of the people and lying about their intentions. Trying to impart these values into government might make it profitable, but not in the way that benefits average Americans. Two examples illustrate the point: healthcare and defense, two industries behind some of America's biggest expenditures.
Healthcare corporations make more money if you get sick; insurance companies make more money if they don't fulfill their obligations to pay medical expenses; drug companies make more money if you "need" their medicine; doctors make more money if they perform more procedures; hospitals make more money if they defraud Medicare and keep malpractice damages low; equipment manufacturers make more money if hospitals have to buy more and newer equipment every year for no medical reason; and all of them make more money if people have to pay for things out of pocket rather than having the government negotiate on behalf of the nation as a single pool in order to keep costs down for everyone.
The ultimate goal of this system is to keep Americans sick, poor, and totally incapable of addressing the problem as a nation, thereby making the healthcare industry more money. And they have able allies in the food and media industries, ready to turn a normal healthy person into a sugar- and fat-addicted hypochondriac who absolutely must have the latest, most expensive drugs and procedures to treat (not cure) his heart disease, cancer, and diabetes despite the lack of any evidence these new treatments work better than the old ones.
And most Americans either don't know, don't understand the implications, or don't care.
Defense contractors make more money if we continue a policy of perpetual warfare for no productive purpose; foreign companies, governments, and power players make more money as long as our soldiers are in their countries absorbing the human costs and footing the financial bill to secure and rebuild centralized "democratic" states where they've never existed; foreign enemies and terrorists make more money as long as we continue to occupy countries and territories where we're not wanted and kill innocent people, no matter how well intentioned we are; weapons manufacturers make more money as long as our military must continue burning through stockpiles of ammunition and logistical supplies at a cost running into the billions of dollars every month; and the military and the defense industry make more money and gain more power as long as the civilian government defers to the brass for every decision involving the number of troops, tanks, ships, missiles, bullets, and dollars we are going to waste in a series of military efforts with no military solutions.
The ultimate goal of this system is to keep America scared, militarized, and willing to spend obscene amounts of money, kill thousands of people, and sacrifice the blood of our innocent soldiers in order to keep the military-industrial complex rich and hard at work profiting from endless, unnecessary wars. And they have able allies: in politicians, who are all too willing to fight any and all government spending - unless it benefits the defense industry; and in the media, who are too cowed by phony patriotism and too ignorant of history to understand the complexities of the defense industry and the effects of its unchecked growth on our culture and economy.
And most Americans either don't know, don't understand the implications, or don't care.
Has the American mind closed? Have we lost that spark, that need to explore and conquer new realms by the power of our ideals and industry? Have we lost the need for new horizons, goals toward which we as a nation can strive without descending into debilitating bickering and pettiness? People like to compare us to great empires that suddenly lost most if not all of their power, like the western Roman Empire or the British Empire. I would say we're closer to the Ottomans. We're gradually being stifled by traditions in business, politics, and culture thanks to which our greatest collective desire seems to be to cravenly seek any and all ways to make more money and spend more time in the proverbial spotlight.
How truly, pathetically sad for the future of America.
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