Nothing Swings the Pendulum

Key words:  theology, economics, politics     
About 750 words or two pages

I happen to believe that everything is ultimately theology, and what’s not is economics.   Let me explain.  Even if you believe in nothing, that’s still a theology (and then Nothing, I suppose, really is sacred).  I’ve been lucky enough to live in a couple of different “doms.”   I’ve lived in Islamadom, Judaidom, and what’s left of Christendom, but what I fear most is Nothingdom (it has the worst track record yet). 

Nothingdom is really a self-inflicted aspect of Judaidom and Christendom in that they allow for debates over pluralism, which can lead to some other “dom’s”.  They don’t like such debates in the other “doms,” especially Nothingdom.  This is what is not being appreciated:  the freedom of thought which is based on Graeco-Judeo-Christian civilization (and that is just a politically correct name for Christendom, by the way).   Even the mosaic American model must have a mortar board, and that mortar board is what we used to call a Melting Pot toward a common set of values, and that Melting Pot derives from a unique rabbi’s vision of an identity paired with peaceful inclusion, articulated a couple of millenia ago.  Appreciate what the world looks like now compared to what it might have looked like if that Rabbi from long ago had been a man of the sword instead of a man of peace.    

What’s also to appreciate is economics.  There is a debate now on what our national budget is to look like.  It looks like the current president has shoved out there--bare naked--the concept of here’s what we really have to pay for, let everything else speak its worth.  Now this makes a lot of well-meaning groups very nervous.  Some fighting mad.   Let us appreciate the fact that there’s an open season and curse not the debate.   A budget should have some relation to mathematical reality.  Do we want to fund Project X?   It’s a great project and the right thing to do.  Now, do we want to borrow money to fund Project X?   For that’s really the question.

And we should debate these things.  Perhaps it will lead us to come to grips with entitlements eventually--but as always, not now--if the next generation is to prosper at all.   My Social Security will need to be cut; I will not run from that math.  We can only hope facing those bare naked economics sooner rather than later may be today’s saving grace.  And if it is, my great grandchildren, whom I will never meet, will not read—if the written word is still around—of the current buffoonery in Washington but of the tackling of an impossible deal. 

There’s a lot of venom in politics these days.  We’ve seen this before, and frankly, I don’t care which side you’re on.  We’re better than this.  We really are.  If you need someone to blame for the increased partisanship, it’s really Ross Perot. I say this because Bush 41 was our last truly qualified president from a resume perspective; he’s the only one of the past several who would have been hired by a non-biased hiring board as having the appropriate credentials.  Bush 41  was handed a defeat by Perot who split the non-Clinton vote--Clinton being the first of the Boomers and relative to the Greatest Generation, somewhat of a dodgy character (and not just the draft).

That’s when the modern hatred pendulum really kicked up:  hatred from the right, and then hatred from the left, and so on.  The pendulum’s been swinging since—and blessed are those who are rational, non-hating, and guileless when the pendulum moves fro instead of to.  I worked for six years in the liberal arts academia during both Clinton and Bush 43, and the venom of the liberal artists and the conservatives (what few there were in the academia) was something to behold.  I have no baseline venom metric from which to analyze (it was in the liberal arts after all, which is based on opinion citing an earlier opinion), but my guess is there is plenty of nasty, self-serving serum to lubricate the pendulum at each amplitude. 

Maybe it’s the loss of the Greatest Generation that is the problem.  I have a 90-year-old neighbor, who’s now become a shut in.  He fought in the Pacific.  I’ve tried to get him to ride with the other few remaining WWII vets in the local July 4^th parade; he says maybe to the invitation each year, but always cancels.  He doesn’t want to make a show.  He served in a “dom” greater than Nothingdom, and it led to Freedom instead of Selfdom.   Something to appreciate while watching the pendulum swing.