America's March of Folly

Earlier this month my wife and I happened to be in Berlin on German Unity Day (Einheits Tag). The German Capitol City was in a party mood with tchotchke vendors and food booths and temporary beer and soft drink kiosks set up all along the Scheidemann Strasse. The autumn weather was perfect while we listened to the symphony orchestra practicing Beethoven’s Third and Ninth Symphonies. After munching on currywurst and fisch semmels and drinking a couple of half liters of locally brewed pils beer we headed off to explore more of the city. Because my wife and I are such typical American tourists we had to visit Check Point Charlie and the Brandenburg Gate.

That night we found a wonderful Italian restaurant near the Friedrichstrasse Bahnhof. We happened to notice another American couple sitting several tables behind us. A few minutes after we entered the restaurant a very old German couple sat down next to the other Americans. The German couple eventually finished their pasta and the wife left. The older German man went to pay for their meal and discovered he could not find his wallet. In a panic he looked in his coat pocket, searched under the table, and after a few minutes gave up in utter dejection apologizing profusely to the waiter. The waiter told him it was all right and he could come back and pay later. After the other American couple noticed the old man’s distress, they began in English to loudly ridicule the old man’s motives saying he was just an old con trying to get a free meal. This went on and on even after the old guy left the restaurant.

Over the last few years I have watched the economic crisis known as the Great Recession spread across the globe deepening in intensity. There are mass demonstrations and/or riots in Greece, Italy, Spain, and France. Protest movement are growing in Ireland, Britain, and surprisingly in Sweden. The failure of conservative and liberal economist to predict the crisis is never discussed. Instead there appears to be a growing consensus among the world’s great economic powers that the best approach to mitigating the crisis is to go all out and reduce the deficit by cutting government spending on all social programs. In the United States for the first time since the New Deal of the 1930‘s Democrats are seriously talking about cutting or eliminating Social Security and Medicare. Meanwhile those far right-wing Republicans who ideologically never made their peace with the New Deal are opportunistically chanting the mantra of cut taxes, cut government spending, protect the big banks, protect the big corporations. By pursuing this perverse logic, thereby compounding the economic devastation in society, these right-wingers finally see their chance to gut all the hated social programs designed to help people enacted over the last 80 years.

But what is motivating these right-wingers? Is it purely greed or is there something deeper, more fundamental behind their thinking? The conservative blogger and radio host Mike Adams provides some clues, “The conservative sees man as born in a broken state. This tragic view of human nature sees man as selfish and hedonistic by design....Given his selfish nature, man must internalize some reason to behave in pro-social ways. That fact that he falls short of these values does not mean he is a hypocrite. The one who does not even believe what he says is the hypocrite. The one who believes what he says and falls short is merely human." Adams goes on to say, "According to the conservative, effective punishment is that which produces fear of transgression. Fear of transgression occurs when the punishment is swift, certain, and severe....In sum, the conservative believes we should first try to love people into conformity. If that does not work, we should scare people into conformity.” So there you have it, people are selfish and hedonistic and broken by nature. Work for low wages or lose your job, then get thrown out of your house, that’s how the “Free Market” produces and enforces conformity. If the “Free Market” cannot force people to conform then that leaves the State. Forget about equality and due process, severe and swift punishment by the police and courts will also produce the conformity right-wingers are so bewitched with.

Back in my Berlin Italian restaurant I called the waiter over to my table and apologized for the other American’s atrocious behavior. I then offered to pay for the old couple’s meal. In German the waiter told me there was no need for me to pay because the old couple lived in the neighborhood and they came to the restaurant all the time. A few minutes later the Matre d’ came over and told my wife and I that our meal was on the house. He then popped open a bottle of wine and served us gratis.

Those Americans sitting near us in that Berlin Italian restaurant made some assumptions about the old German man’s motives. They had no evidence for their beliefs. They simply acted on their own miscreant world view of humanity.

There is an old expression that says, “What goes around comes around.” There is a much older expression, one which is at the core of all the world’s great religions, “Do for others as you would have them do for you.”

Next Tuesday will tell us how deeply buried within our individual and social psyche The Golden Rule seems to have become entombed. However the midterm elections turn out, one thing seems certain, fear and loathing and conformity will continue in America’s march of folly.