I’ve been thinking, and I anticipate that next year my writing will be a lot more focused on meta-issues. I’ve been really goal-oriented for such a long time that I have developed a lot of impatience with meta. But we’re in such a different environment now as a country. We avoided catastrophe, as least in the short term, and we’ve stabilized the ship, at least for now.
The problem is that we’re stuck. We can talk about it in mechanical terms…divided government…gerrymander…filibuster…
We can talk about the legal aspects…Citizens United…Super PACs…corporations are people, my friend…
But I think we need to talk about the social problem. And that’s a challenge because being a social scold is normally the purview of conservatives.
Then I think that we’ve gotten to the point where it’s the conservatives who need to be scolded. They’ve just gone off on a national bender where all elements of truth and authenticity and respect for talent and genuine meritocracy and fundamental decency have been subsumed into a calorie-free diet of sell-out art and entertainment (of which politics can no longer even aspire to be more).
There’s a moral element to progressivism, which is mainly compassion for the unfortunate and a bias in favor of equality. We don’t want people going hungry or dying needlessly, and we don’t see income inequality of the type we see today as compatible with austerity programs for the poor. Are we broke? Okay, let’s raise taxes on the rich.
But this is only a conventional kind of moralism that you can find at any time in any country, really. We need to figure out what this country is really all about. What it should be all about.
Are we the indispensable country which must intervene in Syria to avoid an Islamist takeover or to prevent a genocide? Much of the world acts as if we are, even though we know that the moment we committed ourselves we would be the imperial oppressor now mired in another Asian quagmire.
The whole country has been adrift since the Soviet Union fell, taking a break only to have some kind of collective freak-out/demand for blood and security in the aftermath of 9/11.
Meanwhile, everything in media is more fragmented, less influential, less lucrative, less nutritious, more common and less aspirational. We’re left celebrating the irony of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert because we’re smart enough to know everything is bullshit but clueless about what this portends for the future.
