The US turned away from the business of manufacturing some time ago in the pursuit of cheap goods and consumption in exchange for fundamental business principles which had made our nation strong and provided a slower path to a more equitable future–a future which could only be realized if there were a fundamental restructuring of the way wealth was distributed; our return to a more stable economy is conditional upon such a revision today.  We, the consumers, were still being born in the USA even as we became morbidly obese by cannibalizing our spirit of self-reliance and impoverishing ourselves on the riches we squandered to create a culture of unending consumption.  We exchanged our birthright gleefully for the slickest, and in many cases, not so slick advertising jingles; our passport may have listed us as citizens of the USA but we were indentured to the things we bought in the USA.  How much is enough is one of those metaphysical conundrums that we have refused to attempt to solve.  Our dilemma, for any group or any individual, has been determining how much should we keep for ourselves and how much should we give to others.  Introduce this topic in any group setting and one may reasonably expect a mathematical progression of rationalizations, all to someone’s mind, plausible, and, with the majority of those ratiocination’s, staunchly in defense of upholding the status quo.

As our economy has floundered, we have become both angry and reflective; however, we have not yet been willing to acknowledge our own culpability in contributing to this crisis and the extent to which we played into the hands of many captains of industry far more greedy than we ever dared to imagine.  But we came close, if not in tangible wealth, certainly in the lust for it as evidenced by our collective appetite for reality entertainment which afforded the opportunity for both riches and notoriety–the illegitimate offspring of fame–so that the allure to sate ourselves enticed us with a ubiquitous doppelganger, the summum bonum of our culture.  Our actions reflected the conduct of desperate men long before the consequences of our behavior became evident or irreversible.  We wanted what we wanted when we wanted it, which was readily translatable into any of the many commercial jingles aired on all manner of media proclaiming our inalienable right to obtain anything that we wanted without restriction.  Hip advertisers chanted a mantra that opportunity is limitless and obstacles are illusory.  There is one especially telling commercial in which the product ordered online is delivered fully produced by downloading it from the internet.  Not unsurprisingly, only the method by which we can complete our transaction is discussed but not how we will be able to pay for our purchase.  Deferred payment trumped deferred pleasure.

Even as the average citizen of this country or any other country in the world struggles with the economic realities with which he or she is confronted, there is at least a certainty that in the near term there will be life altering decisions which will prove to be transformative in the long term; the extent to which these changes will add value is unclear at this time.  “Yes We Can” seems a little less reassuring when the speaker stands with his hands behind his back, fingers crossed, and, as the words leave his lips thinks silently to himself,  “I Hope We Can.  And, with the exception of a few inveterate or recalcitrant self-absorbed ideologues, we hope he can, too.  The counsel for caution is deceptive; desperate times may require desperate measures.  The so-called socialization of America was initiated by a conservative Republican who also shares the honor as being, at present, arguably the worst President in this country’s history; and, who presided over a divisive, duplicitous administration which nearly ruined the foundation of our republic and the democratic principles for which it has been held in high regard throughout the world.  His administration promulgated the concept of war-without-end and un-apologetically plunged the nation into an unnecessary, ill-advised war that remains unresolved and financially unsustainable.

As the ship of state attempts to set its course, it’s churning wake indicates the turbulence through which it must navigate, not the least of which is the uncharted waters of re-shaping America.  Detractors and zealots are quick to shout out instructions to the captain–fore, aft, port, starboard–figuratively controlling the helm, but they do so from a safe distance, unwilling to lay their hand with his to steady the wheel.  Walt Kelly’s observant marsupial, Pogo the possum, observed in one old comic strip: We have met the enemy and he is us.  It is either an optimist or a fool who imagines that self-defeat is a strategy for victory, but that is what stands before us.  An outcome is inevitable; that it will be favorable, is not, but the landscape we will behold shall bear the signs of our struggle.  I cast my vote for the optimist last November; he still has it.

In the heat of accusation and recrimination, a torpor of ignorance and callousness enervates the spirit of religious freedom.  Christian values are myopically proclaimed as if they are penultimate criteria for establishing worth; and, while one might suppose that other religions are relegated to subordinate status by our national might, it is we who are diminished, it is our ideals that are tarnished and toppled ignominiously like foreign statuary.  Our republic is unique in its profession of a single constituency;  it hangs together because we are enriched through our differences and not separated by them: One nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all–the source of the brouhaha, the UNDER GOD part that was added to the original Pledge of Allegiance back in 1954 .  Interesting, the author of the Pledge of Allegiance which, was written in 1892 was Frances Bellamy, a Christian Socialist and Baptist minister: it seems unlikely that the omission of  “God” was an oversight.  The slander of godlessness fouls the air.  Not because some monstrous irreligious heresy has been exposed.  No, the culpability of those involved is even more odious because precious time and effort have been wasted on nothing more than foolish conceit, or even worse, a transparent veil of pretense.

Perspective becomes irrelevant, methods are immaterial, the ends don’t justify the means because the means no longer matter.  Friend or foe, ally or enemy are arbitrary and impermanent arrangements by which the world is ordered. The sad irony is that it doesn’t matter with whom we cast our lot because we are plagued with a universal ignorance:

You never ask questions
When God’s on your side.

With God On Our Side
Bob Dylan

At first the rawness chafed by the town’s less than gracious performance seemed as if it would never heal. But, after a while, like most small towns, the embarrassment dissolved into whispers and finally fell back into the torpor which probably accounted for some of the indiscretions in the first place. Grace Metalious had burst onto the popular literary scene only five years earlier with her steamy expose of small town hypocrisy and sexual mores with her novel Peyton Place so it seemed a natural progression for small town parochialism to leap to conclusions drawn from popular fiction: a neighbor published a novel shortly after the town’s national humiliation aptly titled, This Cesspool Called Life.

The town’s Emperor’s New Clothes experience went the way of all flesh, my apologies to Samuel Butler, and time, the soporific that it can often be, drew down the curtain of ire and indignation that had awakened the community, and it returned again to its unconscious slumber. Small towns or small groups are often characterized by the barriers they erect to wall themselves off from forces they consider dangerous or which, threaten their status quo. Tradition, values, religion become ingrained and stale from lack of exposure; they lose that elan of vitality that the persistence of creative tension ensures. There are times when great virtue stands out, but more often virtue is compromised by the stagnant urgency to eradicate change or novelty, particularly if the health of the community depends upon the scrutiny of regular self-examination.

45 years later, my hometown still exists, some residents might quickly add that it is much diminished from the status it enjoyed only a generation ago. Some businesses and manufacturing operations have closed down completely while others have been reduced to skeletal organizations that no longer reflect their former robustness when a they were among the primary employers for the town’s populace. Property taxes have skyrocketed to offset the void left by the exodus of flourishing enterprises. Many of the once proud historic residences that lined the main street are abandoned, or inhabited by street people while others have been used as a dump and are now filled with trash and refuse. The downward spiral that indicates a loss of vitality and creativity is often compounded by the growing antipathy of residents of a town or members of any similar organization and the resentment that builds from the belief that the root causes of decline are wholly external to the town or organization itself. A tendency to cling to the familiar, to distrust or demonize the unfamiliar, the unknown, or anything that appears to be different grows as the spiral tightens. The circling of the wagons into a we-they dichotomy is region independent: similar, if not identical responses will not be out of place in the north, east, south, or west. I don’t doubt there are many towns or organizations, which do not succumb to a sort of vicious entropy; however, if we are honest, those of us who have lived in or were raised in a small town, know full well that Barack Obama’s words captured the spirit and sentiments often spoken by the residents of those forgotten towns living on the edge of a time they fear they will never recover.