Earlier this week, I was standing by one of the headwaters of the Salmon River, watching the salmon spawn and getting in a screaming match with my good friend and expedition partner about proper safety precautions around black bears. And the reason that this is relevant to the title and subject of this node is that the metaphor can be carried further. When the words "...we need to talk" are usually uttered in a relationship, there is usually something else going on. As a master of the storm out, the silent treatment, the icy glare I know that by the time someone says "we need to talk", something has been going on for a while. And of course, I haven't even mentioned the bringing up of anecdotes of past failures or the dreaded "this is just the type of thing your mother would do". The types of passive aggressive and manipulative tools that can be used in interpersonal relationships are seemingly endless, and of course we can follow it with the metaphor presented above. Because America isn't talking about what is bothering it, it is bringing up that time five years ago when someone got drunk and knocked over our grandmother's favorite vase.
So, what is this really about? I ask myself this question, and I have some answers. For some of these answers, we have to shift to a different part of Idaho, and a different piece of writing: Enron and the Cult of Personality. In 1877, the Nez Perce Indians, after having their reservation shrunk to make way for gold prospectors, fled across Idaho and into Montana before finally being surrounded close to the Canadian border. As is usually the case, it ended with many of the Nez Perce dead or in Oklahoma. And why this happened has a lot to do with what IceOwl writes about in Enron and the Cult of Personality. Things like this happened because America, on the whole, believed in progress. Whatever words were actually spoken, whatever promises were made, it was a sure bet that it was unimportant because everything else was subsumed to the idea of "progress". A lot of people (and a lot of nature) got hurt because of this, but many of the people who did all of these things for progress believed that they were making the world an objectively better place. It wasn't simple greed that chased the inhabitants off the land so that it would be open for exploitation, it was a belief that this was what God wanted them to do with the world. Or at least that is one way to look at it: when you discovered what one party wanted, "progress", you could understand the conversation a lot better because you knew what the real goal underlying the transitory statements and promises was.
I am not quite sure what the real goals and beliefs in the current American debate are. I do think that the amount of anger and hatred are so out of proportion to the policy issues being discussed (which are rather wonkish), that some other values are being tickled and irritated. Even people not familiar with Godwin's Law are wondering why a debate about healthcare policy has turned Barack Obama into a socialist, or Adolf Hitler. His plans might be impracticable, they might be stretching a budget that is already badly strained, and they might be changing a system in a way that might not benefit everyone, and might break with traditions. But the reason that people live in societies is to share resources, and life being what it is, that sharing isn't always equal. Aspects of medical care have been socialized for decades in the United States, and when George W Bush pushed through an increase in Medicaid benefits during his term, while there was some grumbling, it wasn't perceived as a sign of the apocalypse. And ways in which the government redistributes wealth are manifold, although often invisible. One of the most obvious examples is rural interstate roads, which allow people in small communities transportation costs that are heavily subsidized by people in larger communities. Another example is the US Post Office, (which is an autonomous government corporation), which maintains branch offices in tiny communities, offering a chance to communicate and employment in areas that would not have them. Not that these are perfect examples, but they do bear thinking about.
But again, none of this is what the argument is REALLY about. When I see someone by the side of the road in the John Day Valley with a sign proclaiming a "UN Free Zone", I am a little serious as to how much the UN interferes with his day-to-day life. Perhaps he was just that saddened by the death of Asuka Langley Sohryu? And when frantic parents think that Obama's generic, feel-good "Stay in School" speech is an attempt at socialist indoctrination...something else is going on. This is not what is really bothering people. Something is being unsaid in the national conversation that is actually important to people, while many subjects that are red herrings are thrashed over repeatedly.
I myself have one major guess about what the real discussion is about. My own belief is that "progress", as the national myth, has been displaced by "autonomy", the belief that all people are in their natural state when they are independent. Strangely enough, a large part of this belief in autonomy as the foremost good comes from the counter-culture, something that many of the believers in the ideology of autonomy would perhaps not like to admit. And many of the believers in the ideology of autonomy like to mix it with the ideology of progress, although they don't actually always explain how or why this is guaranteed to work out. It is impossible to be autonomous in the world now, just like it has always been impossible. And the more that people think about the ways they are dependent on forces outside of their control, the more it makes them angry at some of the more obvious signs of encroachment. The economic system never guaranteed anyone a job or a living, but the economic system is a rather diffuse target, so more obvious targets must be chosen.
But the entire last paragraph was just one possible explanation: my main point is that we need to talk, and we can't right now because the real subjects of discussion are not even being brought up. I hope they are soon, because hearing the same arguments rehashed for the Nth time is boring the f*cking sh*t out of me.