The reality of America now is we are living in times of chaos. Chaos on steroids, that is. Forget about just that clown show called presidential debates.
Daily, as a writer with blogs and other journalistic venues far afield from Lincoln County, even with an international reach, I find more and more people coming to me (emailing me) as an American asking me, “What the hell is going on in your country?”
I write about many canaries choking in the proverbial mineshaft, for sure. As a former diver and science guy, the indicator ecosystem (coal shaft) for me is the coral reef. Amazing incubators of juvenile marine species and a dynamic ecological heaven, corals are bleaching and being diseased by trillions of tons of effluence and ag and industrial runoff.
They are dying off quickly.
Apply this country’s preeminent inventor and thinker’s axiom to anything in your neck of the woods or arena of interest: "When the well is dry, we know the worth of water."
Benjamin Franklin is one of the early Americans not deeply studied but certainly mythologized through the famous kite and electricity experiment, and the fact he became the country’s first postmaster. We are talking about three hundred years ago, and this fellow, if he could see the state of this country’s USPS (gutted by politicians and the current DeJoy wrecking crew) and our broken electrical grid, he’d be spinning in his grave.
His virtues still should have immediate staying power — triage for this chaos riddled society. Temperance. Silence. Order. Resolution. Frugality. Sincerity. Justice. Moderation. Cleanliness. Tranquility. Chastity. Humility.
We fail on all of Franklin’s “virtues.” Now, as was true a hundred years ago, America can be characterized by the catchphrase, "There's a sucker born every minute." We associate it with P. T. Barnum, but he wasn’t the guy who coined the phrase. Even Mark Twain is wrongly credited for this aphorism.
Think of the millions of scams throughout the land, from PayDay loans, to reverse mortgages, to all the thievery the states attorneys general attempt to prosecute. Enron to bailouts, from the art of the deal/steal, to the $300 toilet seat.
The chaos has always been embedded in this free-for-all market capitalism. Trusts, monopolies, welfare for the corporation while the taxpayer foots the bill for this and that cost overrun, externality, and clean up. Let’s not forget about those proxy wars.
The billions of Benjamins about to be pocketed by the military industrial complex would make Barnum ecstatic and Franklin depressed. War pays off big time for a few, in the form of millions/billions of dollars, and then millions make some sort of living off of death and destruction.
This then conjures up for me one hero, rarely taught: Smedley Butler. Read his short book, “War is a Racket.” He was a major general in the U.S. Marine Corps, an outspoken critic of U.S. military adventurism, and, at the time of his death, the most decorated Marine in U.S. history.
“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service, and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism…. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”
In 1923, the British novelist D. H. Lawrence offered a grim assessment of America and Americans: “All the other stuff, the love, the democracy, the floundering into lust, is a sort of by-play. The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.”
Interestingly, some believe that in the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity (Sun Tzu, “The Art of War”). Sun Tzu was applying this theory for war, battles, massive violent engagement of armies, counterstrategies.
Unfortunately, the Mark Zuckerberg’s and Elon Musk’s of the world also study Sun Tzu in order to destroy both their competitors and enslave their “customers.” Think about those targeted children — billionaire Peter Thiel (co-founder of PayPal and the first outside investor in Facebook) tells us he lets his kids use a screen for just 1.5 hours a week, yet he is on top of a high tech empire. Other tech CEOs like Evan Spiegel (Snap chat) and Sundar Pichai (Google) also limit their children's screen time.
“Social media for thee, but not for me. Or my kids.” You understanding the scam yet? AI, ChatGPT, Zoom and screen scrolling just aren’t cutting it for nurturing a smart, collectively organized, and critically thinking participatory democratic population.
Dumb downing is all baked into the equation of these modern PT Barnum’s like Sam Altman and the Avatar hunters. And they own the media, the press. Just look at Jeff Bezos and his Washington Post. No criticism of tech need apply.
Give it to Franklin for his pugnacious defense of the First Amendment. Our titans of tech are right in line ready to censor, ghost, shadow ban we the critics. The algorithm rules.
“In those wretched countries where a man cannot call his tongue his own, he can scarce call anything his own. Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech ... Without freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom, and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech, which is the right of every man.” (Silence Dogood, 1722)
Paul Haeder is a novelist, journalist, educator and author of “Wide Open Eyes: Surfacing from Vietnam,” Cirque Press.
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