There I was in the subway handing out flyers as part of my Don Quixote run for (or rather against) the state legislature. It was 2004. I was running, with no chance of winning, to try to call people’s attention to decision after decision the state was making to diminish our common future while providing up front benefits to those who matter in Albany, and the complicity of both political parties in those decisions. One day, someone asked who I supported for President. I said I certainly wouldn’t be voting for Bush, or any national Republican, on generational equity grounds, but for reasons I was prepared to explain I might not vote for Kerry either. “How could you even think of voting for that Benedict Arnold,” he screamed at me. “You’re a Benedict Arnold if you won’t vote against that draft-dodging war monger” a woman passing by screamed at me. Then they started screaming at each other, something that went on for a long time. About Vietnam. For them I had disappeared, and state and local government issues, the future, questions of fairness and fair value in public services and revenues, even current foreign policy issues didn’t matter. All that mattered was the time of life that mattered for the generation that mattered.
I wouldn’t mind their generation’s obsession with the past, if they left the future to others. The problem is that the future is used as a chip in their endless struggle over the past. Sure if we hand out more benefits to the better off, or tax breaks, or special deals of various kinds, the common future will suffer, they seem to believe. But that is what they need to do to attract the money of self-interested interest groups, and the votes of those seeking something for nothing, so they can “win.” Win what?
My subway flyer was one page double-sided, but those who went on the internet and looked at the detailed version received my judgment on their g-g-generation and its politics. That document is still posted here: http://www.ipny.org/Littlefield/civicunion2020.html. After writing about the generational equity, special deal, and fair value in services for the tax dollar issues I was primarily concerned with, I wrote the following:
Both major political parties pander to the selfish and irresponsible.
Aside from lobbyists who are just out for a dollar, politics appears to be driven by two different concepts of the word "freedom" that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, one good and the other (for lack of a better word) evil. The good freedom might be called freedom of identity, or of lifestyle. For a brief period after World War II, many Americans believed that if you didn't look like, act like, think like, and live like everyone else, then you shouldn't be accepted. The idea of America as a land of social conformity is mostly gone, but politicians can still get elected by manipulating 35 year old resentments with tribal appeals to groups of people, and the invocation of "values" issues on which they have no intention of changing anything. Sadly, tribal politics determines how many people vote, among those who vote at all. They are suckers.
And in order to get their tribe ahead, what do both parties do? As I wrote then:
The evil idea of freedom is freedom from responsibility, which has both a "liberal" and a "conservative" version, depending on which responsibilities one does not want to meet. Liberal Democrats have sought to attract votes by telling the poor and not so poor, the old and not so old, the sick and not so sick, and others that they do not have personal responsibilities to work and earn their own living, or to take care of their family members. To knowledgeable critics, their excuse for irresponsibility has been "social realism, " the assertion that this is the way people live today (because they are free to live that way) and government programs, paid for by someone else, must limit the damage. And they have cultivated a sense of entitlement to assistance, causing recipients of public benefits to feel anger at anyone who dares to make demands on them in exchange.
Conservatives and Republicans have sought to attract votes by telling the better off that they do not have social responsibilities to their communities, to the less well off, to the rest of the world, and to the future, particularly with regard to taxes and debt, but also with regard to the environment. To knowledgeable critics, their excuse for irresponsibility has been "economic realism, " the assertion that the affluent are self interested and mobile, and if you make demands on them for the benefit of others, or for the benefit of the future, they will take their assets and go elsewhere, leaving you worse off than before. They also cultivate a sense of entitlement, telling the affluent that their position of privilege is the result of their own moral superiority, not social advantages or luck or (as the business scandals show) worse, and that they do not owe anything to anyone in exchange for it.
With all this grasping for advantage, and pandering to selfishness, the federal government is beginning to be run as incompetently as the State of New York. No wonder that the richest generation in the richest nation in the history of the world is passing a huge debt onto its children. No wonder it is unable to offer universal health coverage despite the fact the federal, state and local governments are already paying, directly or indirectly, for about 75 percent of all third party health care expenditures – more than 80 percent excluding non-vital services such as dentistry and chiropractic. Our governments spend more and more, on fewer and fewer. And many tax rates keep going up, even as revenues – shrunk by tax breaks, deals and fraud – are not keeping pace.
So there you have it. That’s why I don’t want to wait until after the election to hear about Social Security, a single simple financing system for universal health care (rather than dozens that can be adjusted based on the relative political value of different beneficiaries), the national debt, and energy and the environment. Senator Obama is right when he talks about a generation locked in past divisions. What is worse is the fact that it appears to be united in other cases, to the detriment of the future. I understand the good that came out of the political battles of 30 or 40 years ago, but nothing good is coming from the tribes today.