The Bush Balloon

marjorie says...

I asked a friend over email yesterday if he ever watched things like presidential addresses with his two young children. Here is how he replied:

“No I never watch things with them like that. I prefer them think there is no such thing as war for now.....Santa Claus is real, Jerry Springer is not.......the tooth fairy gives you money when your tooth falls out, not ...’hey! you need a root canal!’........inflation is what happens when you blow up a balloon, not something that happens and all of a sudden your allowance doesn't go as far as it used to.........they will get enough of reality to deal with in their lives. It doesn't have to start at three and five....”

How can I argue with that? It brought to mind the icebreaker we had in our recent staff retreat. In pairs we were asked to articulate the things we would do in the first 100 days if we were president. The resulting butcher paper covering the wall listed a smorgasbord of pragmatic initiatives to make the world a better place mixed in with utopian visions of what our world would look like. Indeed, inflation in our world would be what happens when you blow up a balloon.

Over the years I’ve noticed a few phrases that are identical coming out of the mouths of people, regardless of age, race, gender, class, or religion. One of these is “It’s the best we can do…there is nothing better” when the question of capitalism surfaces. I often wonder when I hear this…so we can go to the moon but we can’t come up with a political economy better than what we have now? One that would actually ensure equity, that inflation only happens when you blow up a balloon?

Where is the imagination?

The next part of that particular conversation about capitalism has often been the moment in which I am challenged to articulate my own plan to replace capitalism. As if one person could do that. Before there can ever be a plan, there has to be a shift in public consciousness about capitalism, thereby creating the necessary space within which to change it.

I think this will happen, is happening, but it’s so large and complex that we each in our own relatively small lives can’t really see it. Unlike the shift in public consciousness about our self-created Iraq problem which became profoundly evident by the Democrat ascension to the Congressional throne this month.

No one should question for one second that the sweep of the Democrats last November was a reflection of widespread and profound disagreement in this country with the Iraq war. It was a remarkable example of the public making their voice heard. And Bush, in his presidential address last night, embodied what I think Wall Street would be like in the face of a shift in public consciousness about capitalism. He flipped us all off.

The problem with Bush is that he is happy to remain in an ideological box created for him by others. He has no imagination. He doesn’t stop for one minute and ask himself what it would be like to embrace what the public is telling him, to open up his world to outsiders, to acknowledge that there is a different way. But in fact, there is always a different way.

In his speech, he carefully constructed a couple of boxes. The first box was Failure. Failure, in Bush speak, is government in Iraq being constructed in a way different from that imposed by American architects. The second box was Consequences. Consequences, in Bush speak, are that Islamic extremists grow in strength and Iran is emboldened. In sum, he suggested that the American way of life would be in peril. As long as these versions of reality are embraced, our hands are tied.

And he challenged Democrats to come up with a better plan.

No, George, you come up with a better plan. You are, after all, the Commander in Chief. The public along with your very own Iraq Study Group has told you to not escalate the war in Iraq. There is another way to inflate this balloon.

There is another way that we can find, in which American youth are not sacrificed to the geo-political and economic ambitions of certain people. A way that immediately lifts the burden of reality off of the countless children in Iraq who are beset with the stress and anxiety of war-making.

Ultimately, we want to live in a world in which the question of having to shelter our children during a presidential address never comes up. That’s another world…but I believe it is possible.