Grieving (a Little)

I grieve for our country.  Not because President Obama was re-elected.  I’ve said before that even though I think he’s a lousy leader, he’s a decent man.  He’s my president, too, and I pray that he’s guided by wisdom in his second term.  

Nor do I grieve because my hope is founded on political philosophies, systems, or leaders.  

I’m not sad that Latinos, African-Americans, and un-married women were successful in their choice of leader for our country.  We live in a rare slice of history, one when ordinary citizens get to vote.  What a great deal that is!

I’m definitely not sad for Mitt Romney or Paul Ryan.  Those guys will be just fine.

I am also not worried that this one event marks an immanent crash of any sort.  Although, that “Fiscal Cliff” thing could get ugly.

I’m sad because we’re moving toward Rome, post-Constantine, and the series of dots that connect our present choices with that future is too difficult for many to trace.  We didn’t just choose a decent man to sit in a big white building on Tuesday or a Native American senator for Massachusetts; we chose an economic and political trajectory.  That trajectory is called Statism.  It will result in our continuing decline in global commercial competitiveness.  It means importing lower standards of living.  It portends a diminished means of funding national security priorities, which protect our liberty as well as our economic interests.  

My sense is that a lot of voters simply can’t play those scenarios out.  So, we voted for a decent man with a kind smile whom we believe is most likely to understand our problems and provide government solutions to them (the President nailed that metric by something like 85-15 over Mr. Romney, by the way).  Is it legitimate to vote on that basis?  I suppose so.  But, the implications of a civic and intellectual life predicated on self-pity can’t be good for our future prosperity.  

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On the first night of my economics class, I try to encourage the students by saying that if they have any apprehension about spending the next few weeks in “the dismal science,” they should take heart: my class is really not about numbers and math as much as it is about cause and effect.  Watching students learn to master shifting supply and demand curves in response to external factors is very rewarding personally – it’s a reasoning tool they’ll use the rest of their lives.  There’s nothing like seeing the lights come on for them!    

But in class, shifting the demand curve for Doritos in response to a shortage in Ruffles is pretty simple.  The results of choice and external factors, intertwining through the far larger theaters of U.S. economic and political policy are way, way tougher to divine.  That’s especially true when faced with a flock of smart economists whose analysis is really advocacy in drag.   

   

I guess I grieve mostly as a teacher at heart, as someone who really wants to help people connect the dots.  If you don’t want to pursue the same society I do, OK, but I still want you to understand the implications of your choices.  

By the way, I think in some of these blog posts, my building sense of dismay bubbled up into impatience and it came across, at least as one friend recently said, as "vitriol."  That's not the emotion behind my barbs.  I'm sure I could've chosen my words more carefully, though, and I certainly didn't mean to offend.

November 6, 2012 was a stark reminder that blogging and teaching and contending and listening – while perhaps fine activities in and of themselves – sometimes don’t bear enough fruit to merit the energy and the passion.  And that’s sad.