Weekends for me are a time to relax and think, a time to regain a bit of perspective. So it was that during my weekend reading I came across the JFK quote that seemed to so aptly fit the pepper spray incident (and all the other OWS protests as well);
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
That of course led to a leisurely perusal of some other JFK quotes and some further thoughts.
Let's start with what many on the right seem to have forgotten. The rich may not like it, but it is true - the golden goose (capitalism) has to be fed (wealth recycled) in order for it to continue to lay golden eggs.
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.
I know that there are many out there that would like to return to the heydays of the middle class (50's and 60's) but they fail to realize that these times were an historical aberration caused by the aftermath of the WW2 (the rest of the world economy had been destroyed giving America a temporary advantage). In a globalized world it is impossible for one nation, no matter how blessed, to live far above others for long.
So too there are many that just want to return to the boom times of the early 2000's, but these good times too were an illusion funded by debt and more debt and excessive consumption - living beyond one's means.
We would like to live as we once lived, but history will not permit it.
For time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.
The challenge now is to find a new dynamic, a new way to live that is sustainable and generally fair. So far we are nowhere near close to even beginning this incredibly important task.
Unfortunately change (and 9/11 - yes AQ may have lost many battles, but they surely fundamentally changed America) has created sharp fissures in the structure of American society and the responses to these fissures has been to make them even worse. Starting with the illegal war against Iraq ...
The world knows that America will never start a war. This generation of Americans has had enough of war and hate... we want to build a world of peace where the weak are secure and the strong are just.
and the formation of the Orwellianly named Homeland Security department, Americans seemed to have forgotten the values of tolerance and instead recreated an US vs THEM dynamic.
We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.
We see increased secrecy, lack of respect for dissent, uncontrolled spying, targeted assassinations, renditions, and acceptance of torture. We have the non prosecution of horrible crimes (torture, mortgage fraud, banking fraud, etc.), but the arrest of peaceful protesters.
The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.
And so we have the new myths in America ... that are destroying truth in America. That somehow each individual is uniquely responsible for his/her own success or failure, that there is no value in (or need for) shared sacrifice, in shared contribution to society's less fortunate, that the job creators deserve carte blanche and should get to keep everything they make without owing anything to the society they live in.
The basic problems facing the world today are not susceptible to a military solution.
We are living in a period of unprecedented technological, medical, scientific, societal and environmental change. It should not be surprising that we are confused and uncertain. We are in unexplored territory. Everything is new and changing faster than we can keep up .... but we need to change, we need to try new things, we need to innovate , we need to sometimes fail and learn from our failures. But most of all we need to try and we need to look forward ... not backwards. A lot of sacred cows need to get slaughtered on both sides of the political spectrum.
For time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.