The Semantics of Legislative Representation

An occasional perusal of news sites can relay a lot of information to the reader about the state of affairs in the U.S. and beyond, but sometimes I think the most revealing information lies in tidbits that don’t get the benefit of headlines. For instance, White House press secretary Tony Snow recently spoke to the media regarding the massive troop increase President Bush has slated for Iraq, despite large scale public and government disapproval of the action. Snow said “"The president will not shape policy according to public opinion, but he does understand that it's important to bring the public back to this war, and restore public confidence and support for the mission." Interesting. Let’s break this one down a bit, shall we? So, according to the public relations officer for the executive branch of the U.S. government, the President of the United States is no longer willing to perform actions that are desired by the people that he was assigned to work for. Furthermore, the President is under the belief that the will of the public must, in fact, be altered in order to bring them in line with the international policies he chooses to implement. Interesting! Now, I’m no political science scholar, but doesn’t this seem like a substantial reversal in the roles that citizens and presidents are outlined as being privy to in the very documents that this country is supposedly based on? Cue up the Schoolhouse Rock music (We’re not going to talk about bills and laws. I just like the music.) as we go on a trip through the basics of U.S. governmental functions…



Ok, so we’ve got a President that believes it is his job to make the American public support the decisions he wants to make. What do U.S. documents have to say about all this? Well, the American Declaration of Independence, which I’ve heard was pretty important in the formation of this country, says that governments must be instituted among men for the purpose of defending their rights, and that these governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed.” But wait. Didn’t Tony Snow just say….well, let’s hold up a minute before we pass judgment.

The Declaration goes on further to say that when the leaders of a nation enage in "a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, [evincing] a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government." Well, what does that mean? I suppose one might argue that Mr. Bush does seem a bit obsessed with the "same Object," that is, oil in the middle east, but what is a despot, anyway? Well, despotism, is "a form of government by a single authority, either an individual or tightly knit group, which rules with absolute political power…The term now implies tyrannical rule." Hey! Are you calling my President a tyrant?! Um, what’s a tyrant again? "The term ‘tyrant’, used literally or metaphorically, now carries connotations of cruel despots who place their own interests or the interests of a small oligarchy over the ‘best’ interests of the general population which they govern or control." Well, Mr. Bush certainly isn’t a part of an oligarchy, whatever the hell that is, now is he? "Oligarchy is a form of government where political power effectively rests with a small, elite segment of society (whether distinguished by wealth, family or military prowess)." No way. Not our leaders.

Vice President Dick Cheney is said to have been made immeasurably wealthy by awarding uncontested building contracts to Halliburton, his former company, in war-torn Iraq. Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is said to have been made immeasurably wealthy by the use of tax dollars being used to support Tamiflu, a product made by a company he was formerly a chairman of. These dollars were diverted to support of this product due to a scare about an avian flu, much heralded by the Bush administration, that is so virulent that only Tamiflu, supposedly, can counter it. Less than 300 people have died since 2004 due to this flu. By comparison, the war in Iraq, which has raged in a roughly similar timeline, has killed over 3,000 U.S. citizens, and though some money has been spent on an antidote, since no government employees benefit from the remedy it has yet to be enacted.

U.S. President George W. Bush and family have been called, by Peter Schweitzer, author of one of their family biographies, "the most successful political dynasty in American history." Dynasty? Oops. Err, "a dynasty is a succession of rulers who belong to the same family for generations." (How poetically appropriate is it, though, that "Dynasty" was about a bunch of oil tycoons?)

The real reason Bush wants to stay in Iraq.

Well, now that you bring it up, the Bush administration does sort of seem like an oligarchy. What were we supposed to do about them again?

I don’t want people to get the idea that I’m terribly political. Despite my recent foray into U.S. political matters, I actually take no interest whatsoever in such banalities. What I do take interest in, however, are the subsurface social issues that are revealed by politics, and the political incidents of this day and age surely have revelatory value. At the heart of this matter is the fact that politicians can openly admit that they have no interest in serving the public that their occupational guidelines demand that they do, and that nobody really makes a big deal out of it. You see, if you keep digging, you start to come to the realization that this isn’t an American political problem. It’s a human one. Never once, in the history of humanity, has a country or any other large social organization gone out of its way to help another without a motive mired in a beneficiary outcome for itself. Altruism is not an attribute that exists in the space of interaction between human social organizations. Thus, the idea of halting a massively profitable war just because the public requests it is largely inconceivable. Revolution, you say? A nice idea, but such a thing is also infeasible in the current U.S. Revolutions don’t occur because of ethical outcries. Being that revolutions are a social activity, they too are therefore devoid of altruism. They occur for entirely selfish, “lack of profit” reasons. Like when the wealthy folks are forced under a wall of taxation without representation or something. Once people can no longer live lives with the comforts they are accustomed to living with, then such things as revolutionary action begin to manifest. U.S. global economic domination since the end of World War II has yet to allow such a thing to occur. Besides, revolutions really only reset the system that creates the very problems that are rebelled against.

So where do you go, what’s the conclusion, what do you do with this? Start making signs that say “Queue up here for Anarchy-land”? Since there isn’t a whole lot one can do to alter basic human nature and social reasoning, it is nice to at least try and understand what is really going on around oneself, behind the social veils everyone puts up. Actually, it isn’t that hard these days. Maybe just listen to what your leaders are saying. They aren’t even lying about their intentions anymore.

“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake...We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power."  (George Orwell, 1949, 1984)

Karmic Transactions

Sometimes, things just seem to fall together correctly. Chance? Maybe, but maybe not. My day began, as usual, with a laundry list of things to get done. The first order of business was to pick up a few items at the grocery store so that I wouldn’t go hungry, food acquirement being one of the prime directives in my life. The store is close and I own a bicycle, so off I go, backpack strapped on. I’m about 40 feet from my front door, getting ready to leave the sidewalk and become a fearless member of the Pacific Beach driving community, when a curled up twenty dollar bill catches my eye. Needless to say, I stopped. I picked it up and quickly realized that it was actually three bills, all twenties, folded up together. The bills were crisp and clean. Clearly they had only recently fallen there. I looked around to see if anyone was walking away from the spot. Regardless of whether I am believed or not, if I had seen someone who might have dropped them I would have gone and asked them. The street was vacant, however, so I threw the $60 in my pocket and continued on my way.

The ride to the store takes about 10 minutes, and those 10 minutes are a lot of time to think about anything. I’m thinking, of course, about the money. I realize that at the moment that I picked up the money and put in my pocket, I had made a moderate withdrawal from my karma account. I know what some of you are thinking. Stupid luck, pure random chance, etc. The thing is, I just don’t agree with you. Nothing works that way. Every action causes reaction; every reaction an interaction; every interaction a part of a play. These thoughts flit through my mind as I’m pulling into the grocery store, as I’m locking up my bike, and as I’m buying my groceries. You can’t just take and not give, you understand, lest the domino chain be broken and fail to wrap back around to you. My brief shopping done, I’m in line to purchase my few items and behind me in line walks up your typical, older, Pacific Beach local. A quite tan fellow with a short cut, white beard, wearing shorts and an old t-shirt. Yeah, I know its January. January means shoes instead of sandals in San Diego. The guy unloads his items: Just a few produce items; more onions than I would have bought at one time. Maybe he’s like my Dad and freaks his kids out by biting into and eating them like apples. He has, I’m guessing, around six or seven dollars worth of goods, so I turn to him and say “Hey, let me buy your groceries. See, I just ran across $60 wadded up on the ground and if I don’t give some of it away it just won’t sit well. I’ll even spring for the onions,” I close, with slight grin. A new thought runs through my head: Many people would probably think I’m insane and not even want to talk to me about this. But not this guy. He lights up and tells me that if buying his groceries is going to make me feel better, then he’s entirely in favor of it. He goes on to tell me his own little karma story. Apparently, while New Orleans was in the grip of hurricane Katrina, his cat fell ill and required surgery that was going to cost $1000. Now, he wanted to save his cat, of course, but he felt wretched about spending that much money on an animal when there were so many newly destitute people in his country. Torn, he paid for the cat’s surgery, then cut another check for $1000 and gave it to the Red Cross branch that was serving New Orleans. True story? Who knows. Why would he make it up? What, really, are the chances that out of everyone in the store it would be this atypically acting, un-Pacific Beach character who would end up in line behind another local anomaly? Is the idea that good attracts good, that happiness breeds happiness, so ludicrous? Having made a deposit to balance my recent withdrawal, I felt pretty good about my account.

Groceries tended to, the two of us walk out of the market and I say goodbye, but we keep walking the same direction. A few seconds later, the two of us are at the bike rack, unlocking the only two bikes there, amidst a field of parked SUV’s and sports cars, warming up in the winter sun. I look at him as we are unlocking our bikes and say “Funny coincidence, huh?” He smiles and says “Not really.”

“The slightest movement affects the whole of nature; a stone cast into the sea changes the whole face of it. So, in the realm of Grace, the smallest act affects the whole by its results. Therefore everything has its importance.  In every action we must consider, besides the act itself, our present, past, and future conditions, and others whom it touches, and must see the connections of it all. And so we shall keep ourselves well in check.”  (Blaise Pascal)