Possible Trends in US Politics, a Recent Shopping Incident and the Mindset of British Academia

Harper's publisher runs a critical piece about President Obama from somewhere in the principled left of center in American politics. It features his Chicago patrons, the Daleys:

Take, for example, Obama’s intervention in Chicago’s failed bid for the Olympic Games in 2016. . . .

It didn’t matter to City Hall that there wasn’t enough money in the public coffers to pay for staging the games. What mattered was all that boodle for friends and political allies who could have been cut in on the action. As far as I know, the Daleys aren’t personally corrupt about money. But they love power and they deeply value the currency of political leverage. The Olympics would have meant enormous amounts of leverage. (emphasis mine).

This statement reminds me of an interview with Nancy Pelosi when she became the Speaker of the House. She described the warm, compassionate feeling it gave her as the young daughter of a politician when people would come to their house, hat in hand, and her father was able to give them patronage jobs (with other people's money). The statement above concerning the Daleys emphasizes the practical advantage to politicians of having control over other people's money. Though many convince themselves of their own altruism in selectively dispensing other people's money.

There's a reason that liberals are criticizing Obama now. Here's Krauthammer's take on why Obama's liberal base is frustrated with him at this time. He compares Obama's recent actions to the way Bush, in his words, "spent political capital" in order to achieve his primary goals.

In counterpoint, Wretchard describes some developments in Britain as well as a riot at a Burlington Coat Factory to remind us what is likely to happen when a population starts to look to government for basic needs. It is important to take a long view of the changes now proposed by the Administration and Congress.

Maybe the problem is exactly as Sir Howard Davies described it: the culture of dependency which in some circles is confused with the phrase “scientific socialism”. When even people who should know better believe they can get something for nothing — striking academics in the UK, shoppers in a store, people with health care insurance, people with mortgages — the problem comes to resemble not ordinary debt but participation in a scam. It’s almost as if a hoaxer had appear on the national scene and grandly offered to pick up the tab for a dazzling future without a real dime to his name — and people believed him. How could it happen? And what happens when the joker is unmasked?

Elsewhere, more than once, Mark Steyn has described the extraordinary selfishness of ordinary people who have lived in the social democracies of Europe for a while, especially when the money starts to run out.

Back to the current American political situation: Americans are not immune from selfish dependency on government. Can enough senior votes be bought to pass Obamacare? Will we all become little piggies fighting for the best government handouts in the near future?

President Obama's poll numbers are not so good at the moment. Will Obamacare turn Democrats into supply-siders?

Or is President Obama allowing a very liberal Congress to drive the agenda and absorb the anger of disaffected voters (note, for example, that there is no actual "Obamacare" plan under the administration's name) in order to strengthen and save his presidency by sacrificing many liberal members of Congress in the next election? The liberal base feels downcast and disappointed, while much of the rest of the country is upset about government over-reach. Perhap's Obama's presidency would be more successful if he had a more evenly-matched domestic opponent than Rush Limbaugh, who has no power in Congress, just like the current Republicans in Congress.

We're at an interesting, important crossroads. You may wish to decide on an issue which is important to you and communicate your ideas with an elected representative.

From Wretchard's comment thread:

Isn’t it strange that people can insist that drastic action be taken to respond to a theoretical construct based on questionable data and models that can hardly be trusted – like Global Warming – and ignore real, hard facts, such as the growing national debt, the impact of litigation run amok, the outright insanity that accompanies the modern concept of Civil Rights, the drugging of many of our children, nuclear weapons in the hands of lunatics, and so forth?

We laugh at people of times past who argued over the number of angels who could dance on the head of a pin. But at least those people were not focusing the energies of whole nations on that topic, while ignoring the real issues – if they had, we would not be here.

Concern over global warming is not exactly like worrying about the number of angels which can dance on the head of a pin. But it is surreal that politicians are in such a hurry to exert control over the world's economy in the name of catastrophic global warming, during a worldwide financial crisis, after 11 years of global cooling (since the hottest year in recent decades). In spite of the truly pressing concerns facing us at this time. It is even more surreal that scientists are willing to fake some data and suppress other data in order to support the politicians in their quest for cotrol.

As Dennis Prager reminds us, people like to focus on a problem they think they have some control over, while pushing out of their minds problems which make them feel helpless. People can recycle. Recycling (particularly of metals) is a good thing. But to recycle with the thought that they are "fighting global warming" makes people feel like they have some control over their environment and that they are doing something good. And they may be willing to cede more control over their lives to the political class (even when it will mean a significant lowering of their standard of living) in order to continue to feel that they are making a difference. But they may not consider the unintended consequences of their good intentions. Damaging the world's economy at this time, for example, could have grave consequences for the truly poor.

Working on the things which you think you can change is healthy, as long as you don't become convinced that the problem you have chosen to address thereby becomes the most important problem.

The Serenity Prayer

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

I would add, concerning problems beyond the personal, something about the wisdom to look ahead in humility to try to foresee how the change I seek will affect other important problems in the world. This is where a set of timeless principles and some lessons from the past can come in handy.

Ordinary people tend to think they can't do much about the more concrete, threatening problems facing us today. Sometimes they are wrong. Sometimes they think that to do something would require too much effort or danger. Sometimes they are wrong. Sometimes they choose to believe the unbelievable promises and assurances of politicians. Sometimes they just ignore real problems and expect that the good times will continue to roll even when politicians warn of the development of real problems, like British academics who think they can agitate for raises when their country's economy is in dire straits. These types of self-delusion set people up for big disappointments, like the shoppers who found out that they would not be getting free stuff from a mysterious benefactor at the Burlington Coat Factory.