Sports, for the most part, is about winning and losing. We get that. We accept that. The Brewers are winning. We love it. The people in St. Louis don’t. The Packers won the Super Bowl. We were thrilled. People in Pittsburgh weren’t. Winning and losing is the essence of sports and is part of our culture. But it shouldn’t be for politics.
With all this political jockeying going on right now, I feel like I’m watching some sort of surreal game. And that would be okay if it didn’t have such a significant impact on my life.
In today’s political environment, it’s all about winning. The focus is on the party’s agenda, not the people’s agenda. And in the last few weeks, we all saw it play out on the national stage.
Our elected officials risked putting the US into default because they couldn’t agree on the debt ceiling. More specifically, the debt ceiling became the central battleground between the Republican controlled House and the Democrat controlled Senate. Somehow they forgot whom they were serving in their all-out efforts to “win”, and in fact some in Congress said they’d let the country go into default rather than compromise. Basically, they put party before people. Which caused S&P to downgrade the US bond rating. Which caused the stock market drop drastically. Which caused people’s savings to lose 15%, on average. That’s yours and my retirement money, folks. I don’t think this is why we elected these people.
Gone are the days where, no matter who “won”, it was a victory for the people. No one in government and politics seems to give a rip about the people anymore. It’s all about getting their way, more specifically their party’s way. It’s about winning. And no matter which side wins, it seems the average person loses.
In these now thankfully nearly complete recall elections, which emanated from Wisconsin residents getting sick and tired of not being considered by their elected officials, all we hear about is who is going to have a majority in the state Senate when all is said and done. So their side can win all of the legislative battles. So their party’s agenda can come out on top.
Politicians, to my mind, are supposed to work for the people and help people solve their problems. This batch, from the President to the Governor and all the way down to the congressman, doesn’t even appear to know what problems we the people have. Or care. It seems it’s all about what’s best for their party and the next election.
Drew Westen, a professor of psychology at Emory University, wrote a brilliant article in the August 6 New York Times about the temper of our times, which I highly recommend. Read it here. While it’s largest premise is actually a question, specifically asking “What Happened to Obama’s Passion?”, this particular paragraph kind of sums up what I’m talking about:
“Americans don’t share the priorities of either party on taxes, budgets or any of the things Congress and the president have just agreed to slash — or failed to slash, like subsidies to oil companies. When it comes to tax cuts for the wealthy, Americans are united across the political spectrum, supporting a message that says, ‘In times like these, millionaires ought to be giving to charity, not getting it.’ ”
Any of you remember Ronald Reagan? He was President for virtually the entire decade of the ‘80’s. People really liked him because he seemed to give a crap about them. Maybe because he originally was an actor. Right off the bat, in his first inaugural address in 1981, Reagan said something very profound: “In this present crisis, government isn’t a solution to the problem. Government is the problem.”
More than ever, that problem seems to be the case today. And it truly is not a game.
