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01/07/2005: "Easy Money"

“You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today." Abraham Lincoln. I happened to run into this quote just this week, and it applies perfectly to the topic we’ve been exploring. Despite Bush’s claims to be “addressing problems now rather than leaving them for future Presidents” (speaking of an imperative to invade Iraq), the exact opposite is the truth. Indeed, Bushism (what I’ve also called “Con-munism”) goes beyond “escaping responsibility.” It sins in two additional dimensions. First, it conceals its unwillingness to deal with today’s responsibilities by crowing that it is meeting today’s responsibilities. Bush’s statement earlier in this entry is a good example. The strategy can be described several ways, including “spin,” “positioning,” and “the best defense is a good offense.” I prefer the traditional term, “lying,” although I could live with a compromise word like “disinforming” (maybe I spent too many years in intelligence). Beyond just blustering past its unwillingness to face responsibility by giving lip service to facing responsibility, Bushism is guilty of a more heinous sin: profiting by denying that the responsibility even exists. Over and over, the Bush Administration advances programs that place blatantly immoral burdens on posterity, all the while feigning obliviousness to these burdens. Case in point is the debt and ever-growing deficit that feeds it. Point out the immorality of the deficit, and the Administration’s response is to offer unconvincing aspirations to “cut the deficit in half,” as if that in any way addressed the question. If you’re doing something immoral, doing it more slowly doesn’t constitute morality. The environment provides unscrupulous politicians an even greater opportunity to gain a flood of campaign contributions from interests profiting by avoiding the measures absolutely required for the sustainability of our society. These measures can be boiled down to the term “regulations.” The “modern” GOP has gotten enormous mileage by positioning itself as the anti-regulation party. It constantly trumpets terms like “getting government off people’s backs,” “regulatory burden,” and “jobs.” Bushism is the latest illustration of the difficulties that human societies face in meeting the challenge of limiting unrestrained exploitation of finite resources. The logically obvious and increasingly apparent imperative for tempered growth creates opportunities for naysaying Dittoheads to profit from the dangerous appeal of their siren song. Historically, all societies have faced this challenge, and the ones that listened to their Dittoheads were extinguished.