Life is often a beauty contest. Perhaps this accounts for the snail-pace of human progress.
Our eyes are programmed for choosing sexual mates. Our brains, however, will decide ultimately what happens to the human species. A just, functional and happy human species will depend upon those who have the intelligence, compassion and inventiveness to apply science and ethics to daily life.
Democracy is a lofty concept. Mob rule is not. When democratic institutions are used by angry mobs to vent their rage, they cease to function for the good of all the people they represent. There is an ugly mood in the U.S. at present: A group tantrum by those who have become lured into superficial materialism by Wall Street and mortgage bankers. The American middle class threw away their own national dignity abroad, their own equity, their own privacy and their own power as laborers in the Bush era. What did they get? They got LCD TVs, polluting Hummers and barn-like mini-mansions, made of junk materials.
So, as these willing victims of the 'greed-is-good' con game rage at having to pay the piper, they look to vent their regressive anger upon the progressive politicians who are trying to help them clean up their mess. They kick their feet and scream as government tries to relieve them of the burden of unaffordable health care. They throw their support behind scheming opportunists, who represent the same creeps who stole their money in the first place. They look for new scapegoats and the same old ones, like gay people, African-Americans, immigrants and others.
So, politics begin to resemble high school prom-queen and prom-king competitions. Sarah Palin, a woman who has glaringly obvious deficits as an intelligent leader, gets into the political sphere because she looks pretty and has done all the conventional 'right' things as a wife and mom. Scott Brown, the U.S. Senate candidate in Massachusetts, gets into the political sphere because he was a jock, a nude poster-boy and drives a pick-up truck. Those whose lives peaked and plateaued in high school rally to the flags of these pubescent icons.
Meanwhile, democracy and the people's real needs are discarded. They are successfully sabotaged once again by the evil forces behind the doctrine of personal greed and materialism, who gladly fund and promote this process of regression. The bankers slink away to their gated mansions with a cynical laugh at their willing dupes, the Tea-Party-style fanatics.
Today is Martin Luther King Day. Martin Luther King, who was the most inspiring man in my adolescent life, was not a pretty man. He was no prom-king candidate. He did not advocate rage or tantrums. He did not advocate selfishness or materialism. He did not support free-market capitalism. He did not whine and rant about what he wasn't getting. Martin Luther King spoke to the hearts of those who yearned for progress, social equality and economic justice for all through civil, progressive government. And, he was killed for it by the same characters who are currently funding efforts to subvert peace, the Obama administration, human rights for all and universal health care.
Make your choice. Will you indulge your own negativity? Will you go on justifying your own materialistic selfishness? Will you continue to begrudge paying taxes for social welfare programs in America while not even blinking when your taxes needlessly kill civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq? Who will you support in the voting booth?
