The Ghosts of Freedom's Future

It's that time of decade again. The political football that every four years inflates to the size of the Hindenburg has taken flight, and it's about to crash-land... oh the humanity. Come Christmas of 2016, one side or the other of the United States will feel like they just got Scrooged. Haunted by ghosts of elections past.

There's the ghost of Bill Clinton. And the ghost of Jeb Bush, who literally scared himself out of the running. There's the ghost of Evita Peron, reincarnated into the body of a peculiar old man promising free stuff to everyone. And then, there's the scariest of them all: the ghost of fascist past. Wait, what? Fascism in the land of the free? Oh the irony.




Freedom is a painful human illusion. It exists, but it is not what we think it is. To illustrate in real life, take a walk down the dark side of American history for a moment. But I have to warn you: to borrow a term from our champions of marketeering, you may experience disruption. (In case you don't keep up with our roving marketeers on LinkedIn, they have been tripping over themselves to see who can use the word "disruption" more often.) So get uncomfortable for just a minute, this disruption won't hurt. Much. Oh, and before you report me to the ghost of McCarthy: grow up. Everyone has a dark side. The sooner we confront it, the sooner we can truly honor our founders and work on that more perfect union. Now let the disruption begin.




During its first one hundred years as a "free" nation, the United States enslaved people. Legally. Then for another one hundred years it "segregated" them. A sanitized term if I've ever heard one. Good guys segregate, bad guys apartheid. Really bad guys apply the final solution. All in the name of freedom. And in the name of God. An odd God, if I've ever seen one. And quite a perverse definition of freedom, to say the least. (How's that uncomfortable feeling? Hold on a little longer, just one more disruption...)




Mine was the first generation ever in the history of mankind that was born into a nuclear age capable of mass annihilation. Mutually Assured Destruction was the sanitized term of our time. It was indeed a world gone mad. Complete with evil empires. But... here's the thing about evil empires: to earn that title, don't they actually pull the nuclear trigger? As in, drop the bomb on live, urban populations. Targeting not just military operatives but their families as well. Just as ghost of fascist past says we should. 




Uncomfortable enough yet? I hope so. Because if there is no pain... you are receding. Into a very dark place, where they build very high walls. The kind that even Republicans like Ronald Reagan called on to tear down.

Disruption over, at ease. The founders of this great country, with all their human imperfections, were indeed some of the finest men this world has ever seen. I have nothing but deep respect and admiration for them. As I do for those who have made great efforts, and in some cases great sacrifice, to carry the torch. The innovation, imagination, work ethic, and scientific achievements of the United States are awe-inspiring. No, it is not the only nation in the world with impressive contributions. But the potential for another 250 years of great contributions to humanity is too important. By then, this great land will surely double in population, to almost 700 million people. Because history has consistently proven that leaders who tear down walls always trump the ones who build them. 

Of the last two formidable fascists in the history of civilization, one was shot and hung for public display, the other took a bite into a cyanide pill rather than be captured and tried for the worst crimes against humanity the world has ever seen. The United States of America was instrumental in that conclusion. These formidable fascist enemies, by the way, were not Muslim, or Mexican. They were card-carrying members of the “master” race. And as for the “mother of all wars”… no, it hasn’t been “terrorism”, not even close. After the Master Racists, the Civil War killed more Americans than any other foreign enemy.

As I find a way to bring my thoughts here to a useful conclusion, I can’t help but notice out of the corner of my news feed that 700 people are lining up in the rain, right here in my own hometown, to hear orange wall-man talk about his great wall. If I were to walk over there and listen, I imagine I would be in an auditorium with 700 angry people chanting for the wall. Being surrounded by 700 angry people is surely a scary thing, been there done that. But a moment of fear is no match against a lifetime of it. In true Machiavellian, fascist form, wall-man is at this exact moment frightening 700 of my fellow hometowners that the 700 million are coming. And that only he and his wall can save them.

Fortunately for this great country, it will continue to be great, in spite of the darkness that men like wall-man create. And perpetuate. By Christmas of 2016, the ghosts of election past will all go back to sleep.

“The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever.”   (Charles Dickens, “A Christmas Carol”)

...

Freedom's Just Another Word

A friend and I were talking about the strengths and weaknesses of Europe and the U.S., when he happened to use the “f” word. No, the other “f” word. “Free” is a word that comes up frequently in the U.S., often in context of democracy and liberty, but it extends heavily into economics. My friend was referring to the economic kind, as in “free” education, healthcare, and other social net services. At which point it hit me: freedom has to be one of the most prostituted words in the history of mankind.

Semantics is where we often park our words when we’re too busy surviving. The complication is, some words represent the dearest values in our lives – as in “love”, “happiness”, “freedom”, and a few others. We might be able to survive for a while without the presence of those basic values, but we can’t prevail without them. And the difference between surviving and prevailing is too important to dismiss, as William Faulkner once pointed out. Yet it seems we constantly run out of time to understand the true meaning of those words, never mind agree on their significance. So we throw our arms up and agree to disagree, at best, or frequently contradict ourselves. All of this takes a serious toll over time when it comes to the quality of our lives, which… is where that elusive prevailing comes in. It’s all just semantics in the end anyway, isn’t it?

No, it isn’t. Look, I realize most of us manage to not lose much sleep over words. But I'm not talking about the words themselves, I'm trying to point out the force behind them. And if we can agree for a moment that the force behind words like love, happiness and freedom is what we hunger for the most in life, then it might not be so crazy to take a closer look. Seems a bit unorthodox, I'll admit. But challenging our mindset every now and then might be worth a try, considering the upside.

So let's take that mindset back to the word “freedom” for a moment. While the pursuit of freedom is an inalienable right, the pimping of freedom is an unfortunate political manipulation, one which we have allowed to linger for too long. Consider the following observation: the use of the word free in “free market”, to imply that a government does not interfere with price and competition, is a borderline insulting reference to the essence of freedom. A truly free marketplace would be one where everyone has access to it – including the significantly disenfranchised. You can't appropriate the word "free" and then ignore people who can't even touch the marketplace, through no fault of their own (for those who may be need further definition of what "no fault" means, try abused or neglected children and elderly, mentally ill, significant physical handicaps, etc. In the US that count is in the millions, not in the thousands). In that regard, Communism and Capitalism are ironically a negative and positive of the same image: Communism tried (and so far failed) to insure that everyone has limited but equal access to goods and services, with an elite that has unlimited access to the goods. And Capitalism insures the same for the elite, while everyone else has unlimited but unequal access to goods (unequal meaning in some cases none). Meanwhile, nothing in the Socialist middle is free: it is shared by consensus.

These clarifications are not semantics. They are truth-seeking definitions that filter the noise from our perceptions. We can argue politics all day long about which economic paradigms are or should be "free". But it can be far more sobering to challenge conventional wisdoms every now and then. Ask yourself tougher questions. Hell, ask everyone tougher questions. If they kick you out of your church for asking tough questions, you were in the wrong church anyway. As The Lion King's Rafiki would say: look clooser... Freedom is an abstract that we wave around frequently, but it will remain dysfunctionally abstract until we realize what the true driving force is within it. Whichever system you subscribe to, figure out its true meaning first. Don't just defend it blindly, challenge it and make it better. 

We take these very important words and distort them in an endless string of careless arguments, until we render them meaningless. Then we wonder why we’re not happy often enough. Or why meaning eludes us. Or why we’re often in survival mode, where prevailing is just a dream. And I'm not just talking about survival or freedom of the economic kind here... but hey, they're only words. Or not. Your choice. 

Kris and Janis were right: freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose... and nothin' don't mean nothin' hon' if it ain't free.

....

What Americans Do Every Four Years

Americans vote for a leader every four years -- presumably. It may work out that way "on paper", but nothing could be further from the truth. Yes, a president is actually elected, not so much by popular vote, but by something called an Electoral College. About 100 Americans actually know what an Electoral College is, and yet 100 million Americans argue about politics every four years, until their common sense falls out. But while the Electoral College system may be part of the complication, it is not really the heart of the problem. After all, the Electoral College has disagreed with the popular vote only three times in 236 years. The heart of the matter seems to lie in a collective anxiety of what freedom actually means.

All in all about 120 out of 195 countries are officially democracies, representing roughly 58% of the world's population. But only 25 out of the 120 are stable and consistent democracies. The rest are considered "flawed" democracies. Which brings our freedom count to about 15% of the world's population. That's about one billion people who can truly sing, "well at least I know I'm free". The fact that there are 24 other free countries out there may come as a shock to country music fans, but such is life. There's a reason why humans thought for millions of years that the sun revolved around the earth. We're just wired that way.

Which brings us back to the matter of freedom. In the U.S. we have essentially a two-party system, open to any other interested parties. Each of the two main parties has a set of convictions about economics, national security, and social issues. They typically add up to ten issues or so, making up the famous "platform". For the most part, Americans tend to vote much more so on a platform than for an individual leader (and/or representatives, judges, etc.). To complicate matters, many of the platform-driven Americans are really only interested in part of the platform, and in some extreme cases they are arguably only interested in a single issue. As well-intentioned as the system is, it does leave you wondering what exactly it is we're electing every four years: a leader or a principle? "Both" is a tempting easy-way-out answer, but it is not necessarily the best answer.

No doubt that having the satisfaction of choosing anything of importance is important. About 50% of the world longs for a taste of that choice, and as many as 85% of the world is not sure whether they have ever had that choice. So why do we American voters feel so dramatically anxious every four years? Could it be that we're living vicariously through our principles? The fact is, for every issue on a platform, many Americans already have the freedom of choosing to live up to that particular issue. But it’s never easy, and like anything else in life, it often comes at significant cost. 

So we do what we can to survive or prevail, then we anxiously hope that the majority of Americans agree with the rest of our principles. But with each day that brings an election closer, our hope turns to demand. And there's the problem: we're free to arrive to our principles by choice, but we demand that others agree with ours immediately. 

What we Americans do every four years is realize that it's time once again to confront our convictions, and be challenged in a major way by more than 50 million people. Then we take it all very personally, to the point of distortion. Yes, there are party-line policies that eventually go through, and they do have a real impact on many people's lives. There are social injustices that call for government to intervene and make right. But every time an American utters the words "our way of life", he/she should try substituting "our" for "my" as an honesty-check. Every time a politician says "the American people have spoken", he/she is talking about half of voting Americans -- at best.

Dissent is part of the democratic process. Not understanding that it is, or how to live with it is an unfortunate misunderstanding of democracy -- and a threat to our destiny as a relevant nation.