A pre-blog blog

This was written the day before my 45th birthday, but I think (sadly) it retains some resonance today. I wrote this on October 1, 2008.

I’m flabbergasted. I know more about foreign policy and the financial markets than the Governor of Alaska, and current vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin does. Tonight I learned that she couldn’t answer Katie Couric’s question, “What magazines and newspapers do you get your information from?” Palin’s answer? “All of them. All that are available to me.” Well, I can tell you right now I get my information from the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times, The Economist, The New Yorker, CNN, NPR, and other sources such as drudgereport.com, MSNBC, 60 Minutes, and, yes, even now and then Fox News. Is this a difficult question for, oh, just about any citizen of the United States of America to answer?

Palin says she has foreign policy experience because she can see Russia from Alaska and yet she’s never (according to CNN) been to the island off the Alaskan coast from which one can actually see Russia. She has held a passport for a little more than a year. I – a non-politician who has spent the vast majority of his life working in the theater, the theater! – have visited more countries than Sarah Palin has. I’ve been to Malaysia, Mexico, England, Austria, and Germany. Both Palin and I have also been to Canada. And, let’s not forget, she had a fueling stop in Ireland, so that means she’s been there too. I changed planes in Hong Kong. Whoop-dee-dooh! I once stopped in Lincoln, Nebraska to fill up my gas tank, but I’ve never once represented to anyone that I’ve “been there.” I was at a Citgo station, for crying out loud!

My heart aches. I worry for our country. I am deeply afraid that too many white people – and I imagine some non-whites as well – are telling the pollsters that they are prepared to vote for Barack Obama now but that when they are in the voting booth, they simply will not be able to bring themselves to pull that lever or fill in that circle or touch that touch-screen button for… horrors!.. a black man. I worry that we, as a country, remain racist – hip to hip and stem to stern. I recall what happened with Tom Bradley in the 1980s in Los Angeles. I know the history of Harold Washington’s election in Chicago and know that he would never have won without some ninety-three percent of the African-American vote. North Shore liberals – many of them – voted against Harold the first time he ran. The encouraging thing is that a lot of them voted for him the second time he ran.

Our country is facing a potential financial meltdown. We remain embroiled in a supposed “War on Terrorism,” which is odd, because generally wars are fought against an enemy rather than a tactic. Al Quaeda is an enemy, Hamas is an enemy, the Taliban is an enemy. “Terrorism” is not an enemy; it’s a tactic. It’s a tactic radical Islamists (and others, including the IRA let us not forget) use to attempt to advance their political and ideological agendas.

This is part of why the “War on Drugs” is such a colossal failure. It’s not properly targeted and it’s hypocritical. We don’t put nicotine addicts or alcohol addicts or caffeine addicts in jail. Can you imagine? Starbucks would go out of business overnight if we adopted the same posture toward caffeine – which has been proven to make caffeine users (full disclosure: I am a caffeine addict) more prone to cysts, nervousness, anxiety, and heart disease. Yes, heart disease – the leading cause of death in men and women in the United States of America. Sounds pretty ominous, doesn’t it?

Now, let me be clear. I’m certainly not advocating that we should run Starbucks out of business – I am a stockholder, after all (more’s the pity these days) – and, I would tell any fascist-leaning leader that you can pry my grande coffee in a venti cup out of my cold dead hands before I agree to give up my daily caffeine fix. I’m simply saying, where’s the consistency? Where’s the logic? Where’s the smart and straight and problem-solving thinking being brought to bear on the challenges we face as a nation?

It seems to me that we spend too much time on the trivial. Who’s up and who’s down. Well, at the moment it appears that no one’s up and we’re all a little down. We’re all worried about our IRAs or 401ks or pensions (remember when there were pensions? We’re concerned about how the current credit-crunch might affect us.

The government has done a fine job of scaring us out of our wits and a lousy job at trying to solve the problems we are facing. Wall Street’s in the doldrums? Let’s give them $700 Billion dollars. And the worst part? We basically have to. Because if we don’t, we are going to see our access to credit stop on a dime. Jobs will be lost. Companies will have serious difficulty in making payroll. The housing market will get even worse than it already is. We’re stuck. Even though the vast majority of us didn’t make this problem, we’re going to have to be part of solving it, because if we don’t we will be in a mess of hurt. Is it a drag? Yes. Is it fair? No. Do we have to buck up and take some responsibility? Yes, I think we do. And then when things get a little calmer, a little more secure, I think we need to hold the greedy bastards accountable. Some heads need to roll, in time. Not for vengeful reasons, mind you, but for upholding the principle of accountability. If this happened due to your decisions, your mistakes, you must be held responsible.

How likely is it that that will happen?

Not a chance.