I just saw this excellent article in the Guardian about why so many Americans hate government right up until the time they need it’s help. The author, Paul Harris, makes a valid argument for why Americans only seem to love their government in times of crisis. It comes from two competing but equally important values that we have all been indoctrinated with at some time in our lives. The value of individualism – the self made man or woman – versus the value that so many people in our past and in our present focused upon when danger threatened, the spirit of community.
Harris even provides us the perfect example of both values in action (though he admittedly borrows it from the late Kurt Vonnegut) – volunteer firefighters:
[T]he late great writer Kurt Vonnegut, often held up as America’s conscience, praised volunteer firefighters in so many of his books. After all, the small-town firefighting department is an expression of the community as a whole, as it needs to respond to catastrophe. But it’s also made up of individual volunteers.
The volunteers are making individual choices, but they are choosing to act in support of thier community. And who pays for the firefighting equipment they need? Government. As much as so many Republicans claim to hate government, and want to “drown it in a bathtub,” they are also often the first to clamor for government’s help in times of disaster. Chris Christie, Republican governor, is but the latest in a long line of Republicans who demand the Federal government “bail them out” when they know they are in too deep. The TARP program, after all, was first and foremost a Republican program created by a Republican President, George Bush, to benefit Wall Street, Big Banls and lastly keep a second Great Depression at bay. Was it necessary to prevent a depression? Likely yes, but it was also necessary to save their own economic skins (or at least the skins of their biggest supporters – Big Banks and Wall Street).
So, it’s important to remember that the Republican party is not really against government. Far from it, despite what they tell their libertarian hangers-on in the Ron Paul wing of their party. They are for very much in favor of a federal government that safeguards their lives, imposes their “values” on the rest of us and, in the case of corporate persons, their massive profits. So when no overwhelming, hit you upside the head and make you take notice, crisis exists they make jokes about government:
There is a Ronald Reagan gag trotted out all the time by Republican politicians. “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help,'” he quipped. It always gets a laugh.
But as Mr. Harris notes, when disaster strikes – for example when economic, terrorist attacks, or natural catastrophes, such as the wildfires, droughts and super storms we’ve experienced over the last decade – they forget they ever heard that joke, much less laughed at it:
Trying telling that [Reagan] joke to anyone in trouble right now in New Jersey, New York, Virginia or Maryland. They won’t be laughing with you. Not even the Republicans among them.
Indeed, the main recent catastrophe where America failed to step up to the plate – the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina – was seen mostly as a failure of too little government help. President George W Bush and his reviled Fema boss Michael Brown were lambasted for not doing enough: for government inaction. The hero of the hour became the National Guard, which swept into the disaster zone to take action: again, a bunch of reservist volunteers who make up a part of government.
Unfortunately most of our crises are slow moving and require a singular ginormous event to make people sit up and pay attention. Like Japan, which failed to notice its over-reliance ion nuclear power in a land beset by earthquakes until Fukushima occurred, we allow the slow crises in education, manufacturing jobs, an under-regulated financial system, crumbling critical infrastructure, etc., to continue until the lid literally blows off the top, and we realized, as did the Marines in Stanley Kubrick’s classic Vietnam film, Full Metal Jacket, that yes, we are deep in the shit.
A natural catastrophe, such as Sandy, of course, has the advantage of being an immediate and galvanizing event that demands action. Everyone sees the need, everyone affected wants government action and help. And everyone complains, as George Bush found out, when government, BIG government, doesn’t come through with the goods upon demand. Unfortunately, most of the crises we face as a nation are of the long simmering variety: lost jobs, poor or non-existent health care, underfunding of schools at all levels, and climate change, which yes, does make super storms more likely – just ask the insurance industry:
While the world has been beset in recent years with various natural disasters–from heat waves in Europe and flooding in Asia to flooding, drought and wildfires in Australia to earthquake and tsunami in Japan–those caused by severe weather have hit the U.S. hardest, according to a study released on Oct. 17 by the massive German reinsurer Munich Re. […]
While doubt over the reality of climate change may persist most strongly in the U.S., ironically, its effects are hitting North American shores–and heartland–the hardest, and insurers cannot afford to doubt the connection.
Munich Re’s report, “Severe weather in North America,” the company said in a statement, “analyzes all kinds of weather perils and their trends. It reports and shows that the continent has experienced the largest increases in weather-related loss events.” […]
Prof. Peter Höppe, who heads Munich Re’s Geo Risks Research unit, was quoted saying, “In all likelihood, we have to regard this finding as an initial climate-change footprint in our U.S. loss data from the last four decades. Previously, there had not been such a strong chain of evidence. If the first effects of climate change are already perceptible, all alerts and measures against it have become even more pressing.”
So while Governor Christie is happy to get disaster relief from the federal government, his party is actively undermining the ability of the federal government to address the long term crisis of climate change, just as they undermine the need for the federal government to regulate our food, our drugs, our workplaces, our financial markets, public health, our freedom to say what we want where we want, and most fundamental of all, our children’s futures.
Oh the GOP won’t do away with government. Their corporate sponsors in the defense industry, the financial industry, the energy industry, the private prison industry and the private education industry (among many others I could name) are dependent upon government largesse for their existence. They need Big government to allow them to keep feeding at the public trough. Republicans, especially political figures, value individualism, true enough, but in a perverted and distorted way. After all, as Mitt Romney put it so bluntly and (for once) honestly, “Corporations are people, too.” And those corporations need Big government to clean up the messes they make. They value community, it’s just not the one that most of us do. It’s the heavily fortified, gated community of the wealthy and powerful at the expense of the rest of us.
They aren’t volunteer firefighters or soldiers or relief workers, though they are glad to receive their help when needed. And unfortunately, too many Americans, indoctrinated from childhood that individualism is the best and highest American value (even if community action is, regrettably, required every so often) are being gulled by Republican propaganda, because they are inclined to view the Federal Government as evil, at worst, and an inefficient and costly means of delivering services at best.
Those whio will vote republican this year are not of necessity “bad people.” They often perform many good acts. They rally in times of crisis to help their neighbors. They enlist in the military, or send their sons and daughters to do so. They volunteer as firefighters. Sadly, they don’t see that their actions are an expression of a profoundly important American value: supporting the community so that all may prosper. Nor do they understand that for all to do well, we need a government that works for all the people, not one run by oligarchs and corporations for the limited benefit of the rich.
Government has always existed and always will. Anyone who thinks otherwise is fooling themselves. The fundamental question is who will our government serve? Will it serve the interests of all Americans, or those of the few? The Republicans stand for the latter proposition, almost uniformly. Democrats, as bad and timid and weak as they often are, primarily stand for the opposite view. Americans should never give up the value of individual achievement. It has led to many great accomplishments and successes.
However, neither should they ignore the value of community, for it is as a community, acting through our government, that we have achieved our greatest feats: the end of slavery, the defeat of fascism and totalitarian communism, the creation of a large middle class, technologies that came out of the effort to send Americans to the Moon, and so on. And the best, most effective way to support and protect our communities is a government committed, to the greatest extent possible, to assisting all Americans, not just the privileged, the powerful, and the greedy.
When President Obama says the American people are faced with two competing visions of America in this election, he is correct. What he doesn’t say, however, is that both visions will require a large federal Government. One of those governments provides vital support for most of our nation’s people, whether through disaster relief, the social safety net, environmental and economic regulation, etc. The other? If you have watched a Romney commercial, or seen him debate President Obama, or heard his 47% speech to donors, you know the answer to that question.