Doing The Right Thing Instead Of The Might Thing

by pessimist

History is replete with tales of the high and mighty brought low through their own hubris, and it is looking to me like it is now America's turn.

The pace of major news stories this week has been astounding, and what makes them so is that the tone of the stories is in tune with the goals we here at The Left Coaster have been pursuing for almost three years now - toppling Bu$hco before there is nothing left of our nation to save. King George's Oil War has been exposed for the crime that it is, the hypocrisy over torture as a 'legitimate' intelligence tool screams for the world's attention even if Americans can't be bothered to notice, and the Congress is again making progress on the road to recovery after being DeLayed for so long.

It isn't all happy time, however. The sad news includes that of Watergate hero Bob Woodward, involved in Plamegate as an accomplice (at least). Someone who should have known better - from experience - didn't do better, and he will be remembered by history as becoming one of the very 'president's men' he and partner Carl Bernstein had once exposed, mired in scandal after being corrupted by access to power.

Our country is full of such people, and we're not just talking the highly-placed and well-connected. It's each and every one of us, complicit by citizenship and abetting through our silence when another new abuse justified as being performed in our name is revealed. We've been fooling ourselves for years about many things, and what saddens me the most is that, while certain victories are now finally being achieved, the war within us is being lost in the ensuing hoopla.

It's good that Bu$hCo is being confronted and bested by the Democrats and moderate Republicans. But that in and of itself isn't cause for celebration. I'm concerned that we are merely changing bucking broncos in the middle of a raging torrent on the edge of a tall cascade and are about to tumble onto the rocks below.

I can see things changing in this country, but not in a significant way. We still hold selfish attitudes of grand entitlement, that the world owes us as a sign of recognition of our superiority. Our sense of community has shrunk from E Pluribus Unum to "an army of one". The 'Me generation' has spawned the 'ME, damnit!' generation, and Satan Seize The Slowpokes. Our moral values have sunk to the level of Might Makes Right when for so long we aspired to Abraham Lincoln's Right Makes Might position, however incompletely achieved.

There are so many dangers facing the nation today, including the threat of religious-based terrorism fostered by extreme Muslim, Jewish, Christian, or other beliefs. The idea that one person can declare that God has spoken to him to perform a deed which in any other instance would be considered heinous - and that person will be followed - astounds me. For every Osama pledging jihad against the infidel, there is a Pat Robertson preaching assassination. For every al-Zarqawi terrorist, there is an Ann Coulter calling for the bombing of her fellow citizens and the forced conversion of the vanquished.

The idea that America can do what it damn well pleases, even if the intended action differs only in scale from that which was used as a rationale for war, has got to come to an end. It isn't right for us to do as Saddam did, for example, just because no one else is strong enough to make us stop in the manner we stopped the Hussein regime.

Might Never Makes Right.

Period.

America didn't become the envy of the world through the use of power or might. We did so through the Power of Right, by doing the Right Thing instead of the Might Thing that has been the modus operandi of Bu$hCo, and which continues even as the Secrit Bu$hCo Bunkur is surrounded and going down to defeat in flames (as if that confers some kind of emulatable greatness that justifies all!).

This nation will soon go through some tremendous changes, some made much worse through our own irresponsibility. In most cases, there is nothing left to do but to go through the ordeal, for our options have been exhausted by the poor choices we've previously made.

I wonder if we as a nation can survive this rite of passage. I wonder about whether we as a nation will be up to the challenge of finally growing up. Will we finally decide that the party is over, that playtime is for children, and get on with being responsible adults in the world? Will we finally decide that the Seven Deadly Sins have no place in our lives, neither at the national level in politics or diplomacy, nor at the individual level as the excuses for life?

I hope so, but I don't know. The portents aren't promising.

I'm concerned that the shift in direction this country is now experiencing is going to become the consequence of its own action, the end of its own means instead of a means to a greater end.

I'm concerned that we have supplanted the basic philosophy which generated our national belief in the primacy of the individual over the state with a new philosophy of corporatism, which coopts the rights and privileges of humans for the oppression of same as a means of materially benefitting the few.

I'm concerned that morality is just another word to be used as a weapon, instead of a motivation toward ensuring that the most good is done for the most people.

There is a saying which goes "When the student is ready, the teacher appears."

The teacher are coming. It's time for the students to prepare to learn the hard lessons about to be taught, and that's something more significant and important to life than merely learning to put the 'perfect' head on a glass of beer.