Underneath all the cloak and dagger of politics, there are real issues that all too often get covered over by the latest political drama. The maddening thing about all this is that nothing seems to get resolved. It just appears that every action gets a reaction. Perhaps the laws of physics are perpetually reaffirmed but this type of dynamic which generates heat and entropy in the system. Perhaps the manifestation of heat is chaos and knee jerk reactions that end up hating the government and becoming paranoid about the evil genius that is the ghost in the machine of absolute power. Fox news has made a lot of money propagating this tragic drama. Unfortunately, the electorate has demonstrated more of a propensity for loving the manufactured lie than digging into the pesky details, the anomalies that call for thought and wisdom. What is it that calls for resolution and solutions? The answer that political chaos calls for is not eternal, emotional vigilantism or otherworldly cynicism for this world but principles that address justice. We all come to this calling with historical deficiencies and biases that easily derail and confuse us. In any case, this is the situation the Founding Fathers faced even with their advantage over us as the most highly, liberally educated scholars of their day. However, we are, as they were, constrained to try to answer the questions of our day, to heed an inner necessity for a yet to be determined justice. Cynicism is always snapping at our heels and tempts us to yield to hate, fear and apathy. Apathy is most seductive and can take many forms. Apathy absolves us from responsibility from ‘my’ call for resolution, for solution, for justice. Apathy is the lassie faire of the rabble; let the market decide, not me. However, capitalism is not about passivity but production and action from the individual. It is unfortunate that a long history of economic reductionism has lost the connection to personal responsibility to heed the call for justice as what is most noble in human production. Our understanding of what it means to ‘be’ has taken on a certain stubborn, habitual embedded-ness to a metaphysic of materiality and its antithesis, spirituality. Body and soul, accident and substance, no-thing and thing, mortal and divine have split us into fragments, historical pieces of our call to ‘be’, to do justice in spite of our overwhelming injustices. The face of every child, every victim of suffering continually calls for remembrance and reawakens us to our personal and absolute responsibility for justice, response and answer. Let’s take a few concrete, current examples of how this gets worked out in our politics.

The far right can concoct conspiracies and vile governmental demons in a vacuum but now oxygen has been heaped on their delusions in the form of the phantasmal IRS scandal, the Benghazi attack and the Associated Press surveillance. Let’s refresh our convenient short term memories and see if a need for an unanswered question arises.

After 911 many folks had a burning desire for vengeance that fueled a political fire for two wars, Guantanamo and the Patriot Act. The cost of the wars and effect on the national debt, the torture of “war combatants” and the invasion of personal liberties on U.S. citizens was only met with crickets chirping. Only a few voices were raised in unpublicized hearings and court cases to counter the onslaught of public aggression. The government was not evil back then but the arm of the almighty fighting the just war. The vile liberal laws (which really were not enacted by liberals) that prohibited CIA assassinations and much covert activity were readily dispensed with in the name of hanging the perpetrators high. The onslaught of drones was welcomed by the chirping crickets. The call for justice was silenced by the call for revenge at any price. The CIA could listen in on any calls they wanted including U.S citizens; businesses were not exempt either. The tax exempt status of immensely funded political machines was given carte blanch for any “social service” group including neo-Nazis and the KKK…remember Citizens United, the Wisconsin Right to Life decision, tax exempt status and corporations right to free speech?¹ Not a chirp was heard from conservatives when all this was working for them. Did many of us really think through the loss of revenue from these tax exempt groups and whether tax exempt was being unfairly endowed on puppet groups opening the flood gates to political circus and “targeted groups” for any organization that did not get tax-exempt status? Who will be the next targeted “social service” group…Serial Killers of America? Isn’t more money in politics rust to any iron left in our politicians?

Now, in the aftermath of impending danger we are left with some nagging questions. Can segments of our society be interned in various ways as slaves in the early U.S., the Japanese in World War 2, the Islamic community now, and the latest, conservatives in the Tea Party? Apart from a comedic grand conspiracy of President Obama, how do we justify bias and favoritism in our own calling and personal responsibility for an answer? We did so in the Bush administration while garbing ourselves in the clothes of the Divine. Now, our holiness is not so pure and we are left with nagging questions. Yes, it always easier to devise a devil like President Obama to squelch our conscience but the truth is that we are our own worst, diabolical conspirator. We setup, welcomed and allowed the conditions for these injustices while the crickets were chirping.

So, let’s say we get rid of those unjust, liberal laws that were supposed to protect us against terrorism according to President Bush and Dick Cheney. Let’s go back to NOT being able to spy on Americans, intern enemy combatants, water-board terrorists, propagate our clones and keep national security secrets from the American public to protect top secret sources. Let’s give every group that wants it tax exempt status. Let’s cut the national debt indiscriminately. When another terrorist attack gets our attention, unemployment goes back to depression levels, everyone’s pet government handout including Social Security and Medicare gets slashed or eliminated, when we can no longer justify our hypocrisies, we can go back to the silence of crickets chirping and start the whole insane cycle all over again OR we might try to think proactively.

We may actually have to suffer a little pain to be true to ourselves and our highly praised, Founding Father’s ideals. We may have to stop looking for easy, purely reactive indulgences and heed the call for justice even when it hurts us. We may actually have to live our ideals instead of revering them. If we, the electorate, reward mindless political thrills we will create a political machine in our own image. This will not be the image envisioned by the Founding Fathers but a hideous underside that will mock truth and justice. We need to ask ourselves and settle the issue, are we ok with perceived “war time” invasions of privacy? What are the limits we should not cross in the name of national security? What are conditions for mass expenditures and waging wars? What groups do we sanction and what groups do we oppress…gays, Arabs, conservatives, KKK, neo-Nazi, etc. or do we give carte blanch to everyone? Wisdom and measure is required to think through these issues. Government institutions are also required to ensure that we enact our collective wisdoms. The rabble of the market has no indebtedness to enduring wisdom only self satiation. There is no given goodness to the market only the perpetuation of the war of all against all. If we are to overcome our injustices we will have to become capitalists of a sort that are personally responsible for justice, which cannot abdicate our debt to the market but only continually answer to ourselves. We will have to rediscover what human being is, our being and our indebtedness to the other cannot be suffocated by the evil genius we hate or fear, the Great Satan that opposes God, the not-my-problem cop out of apathy. We must decide, act and live resolutely with the consequences of our desire for justice or shrink back into living oblivion. I hope to explore the depths of these questions more in my upcoming philosophy series.

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¹ See http://mixermuse.com/blog/2012/08/08/formalism-when-a-lie-becomes-truth-really/

See http://benjaminstudebaker.com/2013/05/13/the-irs-tea-party-muddle/