The Best We Can Do?

So after all the reasoned debate and the thoughtful media analysis of the Republican and Democratic campaigns, we have winnowed away all the lesser contenders so that only the worthiest remain, the two candidates undisputedly most qualified to lead our nation for the next four or eight years.

And yet I can’t help noticing that both of them have negative favorability ratings, at last look 54% for Hillary and a whopping 60% for Trump. This is unfavorable we’re talking about, one can only imagine what the actual percent of favorable impressions are, since there is undoubtedly a degree of undecided or neutral percentage points in there. Somehow the media never seems to tell us exactly what percent of us actually like either of them. It doesn’t really matter, I suppose, because we’re not going to be voting for the one we like anyhow but rather we’ll be voting against the one we most dislike. But judging from the people I talk to, my estimate on likeability for either of them would be about 1%.

How did this happen?! How, in a nation of over 300 million people have we not been able to find two candidates we actually like, let alone even one? In any other sort of competition it would boil down to the best of the best. If it were a beauty contest, we’d almost all agree that the winner would at least be pretty. Were it an athletic competition, few would deny there was at least one of the best represented in the final showdown, the other perhaps being a merely “good” team that lucked its way onto center stage. But even good is better than what we have. Similarly, in any list of best movies the vast majority can agree that the top two are at least films worthy of viewing. You might prefer Casablanca, but you still have to give Citizen Cane its due. But when it comes to choosing a president we are incapable of finding two candidates who get a passing grade—a D-, for God’s sake—in the eyes of the electorate.

Once we get to this point, isn’t it logical to stop the debate about which of the two really bad candidates we want and instead discuss what the hell brought us to this point in the first place? What is wrong with our electoral process that we end up in this situation election after election? I know the pressure is on to vote against the really bad candidate (in your eyes) rather than the merely bad (in your eyes) candidate, but that is not the answer to the real problem, which is bad candidates. We’ve been down this road too many times and it has led to Clinton vs. Trump. Do you really want to play the same game one more time, kick the can down the road and wait and see what 2020 brings us? Go ahead, imagine the worst, the reality will be worse yet. Eighteen months ago I thought Clinton vs. Bush was the worst possible scenario.

Where else in our lives are we willing to accept such a choice? If you needed surgery would you go with the doctor less disliked or would you perhaps delay the procedure until a better option presented itself? If your toilet was broken would you choose the plumber in the Yellow Pages that displeased a mere 54% of his customers or would you not rather attempt to do the job yourself? Would you not demand better, would you not seek some other option than the two given you?

At what point do we refuse to play this game any longer? At what point do we stop moving our token along the path we are told we must travel and instead tip the whole damn board over?

Seriously, what’s wrong with us? Let’s put aside for a moment what is wrong with our candidates, because that question won’t provide us with the answers we’re looking for. Let us rather ask what’s wrong with us as a nation, as a society, when we cannot get two decent candidates. Don’t you think the first quality we would demand of a leader is that he or she should be moral and honest? Isn’t that what we used to revere in leaders such as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln? If morality is not a high priority for us in those we vote for, then we ourselves are not moral and we are lost as a nation. And if morality is not a high priority in who we vote for, there is no reason in bothering to listen to the self-righteous outrage that both sides hurl against each other. If you plan to vote for either of these candidates, can it with your moralizing.

Here’s the thing: we deserve better! But like a woman who’s been beaten down by one no-good man after another, we have forgotten our self-respect. And if we lose our self-respect, it further encourages the abuser to tell us how lucky we are to have him/her. The abuser tears you down, makes you feel like you can’t get and don’t deserve anything better. And you WON’T get anything better until you find it within you to demand respect, demand dignity. More than anything else, you’ve got to stop making excuses for the abuser. You have to see things as they are and stop accepting the narrative of someone who’s taking advantage of you. Only you can make that decision. They will never decide to set you free, they will never treat you the way you deserve to be treated on their own. Sometimes you have to walk away, be willing to face all of the terrible threats that they’ve been using to make you live a life of fear.

Abused people begin to hate themselves as their fear of the abuser overtakes them. Then they begin to hate and fear others. That’s what elections are about now: hate and fear. We no longer vote for what we want but against what we hate and fear.

There’s a word to describe such behavior: dysfunctional. The left and the right are like spouses who can’t stand each other and yet can’t justify their own behavior without having the other to blame. It’s a trap we are stuck in, but just like an alcoholic it’s up to us to change the destructive pattern we’ve created.

It’s up to you! The future of your country and most likely the world is up to you! Stop blaming others and accept responsibility. Stop believing that we just have to hate the right people and trust the right people and it will all magically fix itself. Reality is presenting us with some serious questions and you know deep in your hearts that the answer is neither Trump nor Clinton. This is what adults do, they realize they can’t hand it off to someone else and expect them to solve their problems. You’re the parent now, you’re the grownup. If you don’t do it nobody else will.

This is your country. This is your life. You can’t resign yourself to the two choices provided by others when you know, You KNOW, deep in your hearts, that neither presidential candidate is truly motivated by what is best for their country but instead by selfish concerns. You can’t pretend it’s okay, can’t pretend there are simplistic solutions to the crises our nation now faces.

We cannot play this game any longer. Even if you are too weak to avoid voting for one of these two candidates, at least spare us all your hate-filled diatribes. When you vote for what you feel is the lesser of two evils, don’t try to make others believe they are evil for not voting for your candidate. And for the love of God, don’t try dragging others into the cesspool with you. Because in the end it’s not about Donald and Hillary, it’s about you and me. We have to learn to get beyond the partisanship, and that means getting beyond the idea that we have to uncritically defend what is indefensible.

We’re better than this. America is better than this. Let us once more show the world the potential of the U.S.A. Let us act in a way that would make people like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King proud, let us remember our heritage and strive to pass on to our descendents the best of what we have been able to create. Let’s show them that we’re not just another country that rose to great heights only to fall into complacency, decadency, greed, and violence.

And while we’re at it, let’s show each other we’re better than the politicians who represent us. Trump and Clinton are not candidates but bombs with lit fuses in a crowded room we try to hurl at the other side in hopes of injuring the other more than we ourselves are injured. Damaging the other side is not the same thing as winning. The bottom line is, fighting with the other side will never bring about the changes we need to make, it will only lead us lower in our death spiral. We need to find ways to compromise, and more than that we will need to work to understand and, yes, even love those who disagree with us.

It is not too late, but we cannot walk the same road that has brought us to this point. We feel we have no choices but we better start looking harder. Our continued conviction in failed patterns of behavior has brought us to this point and clinging to them further is like a drowning man embracing a boulder. You have a choice of boulders right now, and whichever one may seem bigger in your eyes at this moment, the option of letting go is the better choice. United we will stand, divided we will drown.

Hatred and fear. That’s what is guiding us as Americans now. We’re better than that. At least I hope we are.

The Monkey In The Mirror

In Isaac Asimov’s Foundation And Empire, a genetic freak known only as The Mule seems to arise from out of nowhere and manages to take control over the better part of the galaxy. Similarly, a man who I’ll refer to as The Monkey has managed in the last year to capture the Republican nomination for President despite having been dismissed by the prognosticators of the media. Whether he too is a genetic freak is an issue I shall leave to others to decide.

But like The Mule, no one seems to be able to account for the trajectory of The Monkey, nobody can explain how someone so seemingly lacking in positive human attributes has been able to have the success he has enjoyed. Everyone has their pet theories as to how The Monkey has managed to achieve the nearly impossible while breaking all the rules, but none of the explanations seem convincing. More often when people attempt to exposit a theory it is merely a matter of finger pointing.

In Foundation And Empire, it turns out The Mule has the ability to control the minds of others, and perhaps that might help explain The Monkey. Somehow when The Monkey’s minions look at him they don’t see the obnoxious, hateful, bloviating simian, they see what The Monkey wants them to see. Well, actually, even his minions have to admit that he’s an unlikeable character, and yet they are able to see past the gruff exterior to the warm, caring individual that the rest of society does not see. Like a lonely woman who wants to feel loved, the supporters of The Monkey ignore all the warnings their friends raise and prefer instead to see the knight in shining armor their hearts cry out for. True love, after all, is a matter of the heart, not the head.

What then accounts for the unprecedented success had by The Monkey? The truth might be quite obvious and yet so unpleasant that we would rather not admit to it. The liberals want to blame the conservatives and the conservatives want to blame the liberals. Indeed, everyone’s pointing their fingers at someone else. But nobody seems to want to take a hard look in the mirror. Maybe The Monkey isn’t some random occurrence or the cause of some other party. Perhaps we, individually and collectively, are to blame for the ascendance of The Monkey. Perhaps we have somehow allowed ourselves to slide down somewhat on the evolutionary family tree.

What would make a narcissistic capitalist monkey popular? Perhaps it is due to the fact that we have been permitting narcissistic capitalist monkeys to tell our stories for us for the last thirty years, beginning around the time of Alex P. Keaton. Perhaps it is because we have been told over and over again if you are good you will become rich and if you are rich you must be smart. Perhaps the values of free market media have finally overtaken the values humanity has lived with up until the time television took over as the voice of authority in every home.

Maybe we have become a nation of narcissistic monkeys ourselves, whose only purpose in life is to get more for ourselves and not worry about the results of our actions. After all, are we not always being urged to satisfy our gluttonous cravings for anything advertisers are selling? Isn’t it our patriotic duty to be selfish and arrogant?

Perhaps the Republican Party is the natural home to the narcissistic capitalist, but the opposition is merely a kinder, gentler, more hypocritical breed of monkey. Those who claim they have been the alternative to the narcissistic capitalists have not been averse to eating from their hands whenever it is outstretched to them. We are all of us living in our own little jungle, not willing to contemplate the larger world outside.

For a couple of generations now, we’ve been living a sort of delusion, a mindset sold to us by advertising executives. It’s a delusion that tells us we don’t have to think hard or grow old. We try to live this lie by doing the only thing that is in our control, refusing to grow up. Growing up means accepting that we as adults have certain societal norms we should live up to and sometimes apologizing for our behavior when we have failed. It means taking responsibility for our own actions. Growing up means grappling with difficult questions and finding solutions. But we have become a society that will no longer admit that we are ever wrong or responsible for anything we’ve done.

The Monkey will never admit wrongdoing. That’s part of the narcissistic package. Or perhaps that’s sociopathy, I don’t know, I’m not a psychologist. The point is, we live in a world nowadays where nobody feels responsible for anything and nobody feels like they have to set the good example. Everybody is worried about their rights and nobody about their responsibilities. It’s no wonder why we can convince ourselves that a monkey is worthy of leading our country nowadays. It’s no wonder we can overlook his many and pronounced flaws.

A society of monkeys doesn’t have to worry about the long-term implications of their behavior, after all, we’re just monkeys. To monkeys, the Middle East exists for no other reason than to be a holding tank for the oil that will eventually be consumed by our vehicles. Central America is there as a place for us to vacation or as factory labor to make our clothing.

If we’re monkeys, all we have to do is select an alpha-monkey to subject our will and our decision-making abilities to. Of course, if you know anything about primate behavior, you’ll know there are some rather unpleasant aspects to subjecting yourself to a dominate ape, but being monkeys we really don’t care to speculate on such matters. Monkeys aren’t known for their dignity or self-respect.

We can pretend if we like that The Monkey is an aberration, sprung upon us by random chance. We can believe that we only have to defeat The Monkey in his attempt to win the presidency and disaster will be averted, that we will have confronted and won the important battle of our age. But if The Monkey is not some fluke, if The Monkey is merely a symptom of the monkey within all of us, a symptom of a monkey virus that has been spreading in our society for thirty or more years, then the defeat of one monkey, even if he be the alpha monkey, will do little to change the path we are on.

There is a voice inside us that says we merely have to turn out in November and cast our vote for the lesser of two evils, that everything else we attempt to do is not merely wrong but will end up helping The Monkey. It is a tempting voice, a voice for the status quo. It tells us that we are basically fine and all we have to do is overcome the enemy that sprang from nowhere and can be cast back into the abyss by following the accepted wisdom. This voice speaks to our laziness of thought, our unwillingness to take a hard look at ourselves or the position we now find ourselves in. It speaks to the monkey within us all. But before you decide, take a look at The Monkey, and ask yourself if that is really what you want to be.