Editor’s note: This commentary by Bill Schubart first aired on Vermont Public Radio.
In these opening days of the new decade, I am haunted by Yeats’ ominous stanza in his poem “The Second Coming”:
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
By way of example, our healthcare debate has become so swaddled in half-truths and lies that, as Yeats warns, “Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold.” It didn’t.
Another example, Goldman Sachs will give each of its employees on average a $600,000 bonus. The American way of business will, of course, award most of that bonus money to those at or near the top, while several hundred miles off our Southern shore, our Haitian neighbors have again been clobbered by the latest in a long continuum of manmade and natural disasters beginning with the Duvalier family.
A child roams a blown-out street in Haiti looking for water while an investment banker two hours away by plane wearing a suit worth more than the child’s former neighborhood, explains why he deserves a $10M bonus. The dissonance challenges the heart if not the mind. There is no saving grace, no “ceremony of innocence” here. Can the banker really see the Haitian child or does he just register an image on the news?
The extreme polarization of wealth and the anomie and unrest it engenders in a people have historically signaled a nation’s downfall, not necessarily by revolution but often by ensuing irrelevance. China and India are building the strongest middle classes in the world just as we did after World War II. But now our own middle class is on the wane as too many families slide into penury while a few manage to find their way into the plutocracy.
How is it that those who have the most to lose believe so unquestioningly in those who have the most to gain? Is it aspirational? Do they believe that if their leaders enrich themselves even further that they too will become rich?
Conservatives love to quote our founding fathers, but rarely cite one, William Livingston, the first Governor of New Jersey, a lawyer and leader of the New Jersey militia during our Revolution. In one of his essays he writes, “He is a Patriot who prefers the Happiness of the Whole, to his own private Advantage. . . . He is a Patriot, the ruling Object of whose Ambition, is the public Welfare: whose Zeal, chastised by Reflection, is calm, steady and undaunted . . . Whom no partial Ties can prevail on to act traitorously to the Community, and sacrifice the Interest of the Whole to that of a Part.”
Our own survival – and our moral and economic leadership in the world – depends on reestablishing equilibrium between the American promise of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” for the individual, and the security and wellbeing of the community.
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Bill hits the nail on the head. The biggest fear is that we are headed to that place where the haves just keep keeping and the have nots just never get. Throughout history this has been a recipe for revolution.
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Thanks, Bill. Here are some additional items for the good of the order:
1. From The Guardian: “Unequal Britain: richest 10% are now 100 times better off than the poorest”. See: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/jan/27/unequal-britain-report
2. A warning from the great monk Thomas Merton: “The more people are involved in something set up by others, the less likely they are to be living their own life. Our society is set up in such a way that people are happy with this. In a police or totalitarian state, you want to get out. Our society gives enough rewards so that you’re willing to settle for this provided you get your car, TV, house, food and drink, and enough other comforts….it’s a bad deal because the rewards you get are not real. They are quantitative, not qualitative…. One of the central issues in the prophetic life is that a person rocks the boat, not by telling slaves to be free, but by telling people who think they’re free that they’re slaves.”
3. Kurt Vonnegut’s poem on the death of Joseph Heller, author of Catch 22:
Joe Heller
True story, Word of Honor:
Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer
now dead,
and I were at a party given by a billionaire
on Shelter Island.
I said, “Joe, how does it make you feel
to know that our host only yesterday
may have made more money
than your novel ‘Catch-22′
has earned in its entire history?”
And Joe said, “I’ve got something he can never have.”
And I said, “What on earth could that be, Joe?”
And Joe said, “The knowledge that I’ve got enough.”
Not bad! Rest in peace!”
–Kurt Vonnegut
The New Yorker, May 16th, 2005
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The have nots always blame the socialists for their troubles because they see it as taking away their chances to become the haves. It’s a vicious circle. What is so depressing is that America has allowed this to happen, allowed the conservatives to kill our country for a few dollars more, without so much as a protest until Obama’s election. Barely a whimper.