My vote
As important as art and drawing are to me, I have also always been deeply interested and involved with the politics of this country, ever since I was at Princeton, majoring in political science, working for my congressman, and as a White House intern.
I have been thoroughly absorbed in the current Presidential election, the most important of my lifetime. The twists and turns of the primaries were history in the making and the general election has engaged Americans and the world like never before.
However, despite the strategies and theatrics of the campaigns, which have been as entertaining as any sporting event, I have the increasing concern that I could lose sight of the true nature of the issues at stake. All too often the media, the pundits, and the political operatives tempt me to lose perspective on what all of this drama means … to us and to me.
When I was studying political history, my thesis advisor, Robert Tucker, gave me a concise definition of successful leadership. A leader does three things. First they provide a definition of the situation facing the community. Secondly, the leader charts a course to deal with the situation. And, thirdly, they mobilize the people to move in that direction. In other words 1.”Here’s what’s going on” 2. “Here’s what we need to do about it” and 3. “Here’s what we can all do to solve the problem.”
While reading political theorists like Locke, Hume, Mill,and Hobbes, I also came to understand the proper purpose and function of a successful government. It’s to organize the people, to share their resources, and to guide them in collectively solving their problems. You can’t build your own roads, educate your children, defend your borders, and improve your community alone. So we set up governments to help us figure out how to do it together, preserving our own self-interests but also encouraging us to make some sacrifices for the greater good. Those people who have the ability and inclination to help us coordinate in this way become the community leaders while the rest of us agree to support their decisions made on our behalf. If we come to feel that they are not doing the job well, we replace them.
On September 12th, 2001, I suggested to the group of people I worked with, that in response to the events we’d witnessed through our office windows the day before, we all go and donate blood and our time and effort to help our fellow New Yorkers. We walked over to the Javits Center on the Hudson River and joined thousands of our neighbors who also wanted to help. After hours of standing around, we realized that nobody had anything for us to do. We, white collar workers, were useless in this situation. The firefighters and ambulance drivers who showed up from around the country soon discovered that their skills in dealing with emergencies wouldn’t be needed either. The next day, President Bush told us that there was nothing we could do but go shopping. We all felt scared and impotent.
Months later, the war on Afghanistan began but we weren’t asked to make any sacrifices or offer any help. All we could do was to pay taxes and stand by whatever the government thought was best. That extended to the following year when the President told us we needed to support his decision to invade Iraq. Most Americans agreed to do so. But some of us marched through town, waving banners that expressed our concern. We were a small and ignored group but we did feel we’d done something, finally. (Now, I know that war is an inevitable part of history, that all societies must define themselves and protect their interests through calls to arms. But I also know that this is an incredibly high price to pay and that we should all question ourselves deeply before we make any sort of commitment to violence and destruction; in the last few years, we have utterly failed to have the sort of open national discussion that such a commitment requires.)
We had a sense of purpose when we participated in the 2004 Presidential election, but were frustrated and disappointed when the discussion veered off the real topic at hand, the issues facing the country, and into a destructive and hostile creed against the personalities of the candidates. Again, citizens were infantilized and distracted by pundits rather than engaged in a productive forum on the true matters at hand.
Three years ago, when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, we tried to help again. But no one was there to coordinate us, to lead us, to harness our desire to make a difference. I felt even more worried that not only could we do nothing to deal with the situation but that the government was failing to protect us too. They did nothing and we couldn’t help.
Communities are defined by who’s in them and who isn’t, us vs. them. It could be Americans vs. Foreigners, Citizens vs. Immigrants, Men vs. Women, Gays vs. Straights, Believers vs. Non-Believers, Democrats vs. Republicans… people are galvanized by being presented with an opponent. (As a sidebar, when Al Gore established his leadership by defining a situation that impacts us all, by asserting that for once there was no Them, just Us, all of Us, and that we could all make a contribution to fix the problem, I was very inspired. I was also flabbergasted by how many people, those in power and those with no apparent axe to grind, were skeptical and even openly hostile against the effort to reduce global warming. I just don’t get it but can only assume that the agendas are hidden but there, and that the power of denial is incredibly strong. )
This election is hard fought and as always has a lot of Us and Them in it. And, as has been the case so often before, people are diverted into a certain group or another, even though they may well end up working against their own better interests. Religion is often used to distract people from larger agendas or self interest. Whether Al Quaeda convinces young people to kill themselves for the cause, or the Religious Right convinces working class people to support corporate interests on the off chance that Roe v. Wade will be overturned, people with a range of interests are edged into one suffocatingly narrow view of the world, one slim issue that overshadows all others.
I have feelings about a lot of the emotional issues being discussed but if I look at them really hard, I can see that many or most issues have nothing really to do with me.
For instance, I don’t understand why people feel so strongly about owning guns; they seem dangerous things to have around the house. But I really don’t care if people insist on bearing arms. Just keep them locked up and don’t let your kids bring them to my kid’s school.
I also don’t care much about whether or not people want to pray in school. On an academic level, I think the Constitution is pretty clear about the separation of Church and State but if you want to say a prayer or even carve it into the wall, and it really means a huge amount to you, then go ahead. As a boy, I went to a Protestant school in Australia that had mandatory chapel and I found it boring and irrelevant but I lived through it, reason intact. I think my son would be more annoyed by such a mandate than I was but I don’t think it would stunt him horribly to be exposed to it. I also lived in Israel for three years of my boyhood, an ostensibly single religion country and Judaism was taken for granted and part of most things we did but it didn’t have much impact on me either way except to leave with a distaste for the tedium of religious ritual. So believe what you will, pray where you want, but don’t deny my boy the chance to learn about evolution and have a proper education. If you choose not to do the same in your community that is a shame and will diminish the intellectual power of our country but it’s not a life or death matter for me.
(It’s odd how hard religions work to foist their notions on others. Maybe I should go around lobbying for mandatory contour drawing or stop people in the airport and make them do watercolors.)
