Supreme Court Stimulus Package

            Just when you thought free speech had nothing to do with money, the U.S. Supreme Court, or at least part of it, has upheld the right of corporations to spend freely and secretly on political ads even in Montana. You see Montana has tried to keep corporations from having influence on politics ever since the copper mining industry indulged in purchasing votes and politicians about 100 years ago.  However, in the name of free speech, the Supreme Court has kept the corporate political influence geyser blowing money all over Montana.    

            

            While the robed but not hooded court (the conservative 5/9ths of it) has given the go-ahead to Arizona to detain any Latino living in the state who is caught jaywalking until he or she can prove legitimate presence in the state, it has denied Montana the right to prevent undue political influence peddling by corporations in the name of free speech. Who says the court is foolishly consistent. Apparently you can pay for votes indirectly, just not directly. And apparently if you are Latino, you are guilty until you are proven innocent. The big guys in Montana get a bye (or buy), and the little guy who speaks English with an accent gets detained. It’s a neat trick. Big guys get protected; little guys get persecuted.

            The good thing about the political ads on television is that conservatives are pouring millions of dollars into the economy just in time to stimulate it for President Obama’s benefit. As the U.S. economy expands in spite of the European Union’s struggles because of this extraordinary mid-summer stimulus, the U.S. economy will begin looking better and better. 

            Of course no corporations will look at the money pouring into political ads as stimulus. All they can see is the defeat of that socialist/Muslim President Obama, which brings me to comment on that confusing label. Obama can be a Muslim OR a socialist, but not both. Have you ever heard of a socialist Muslim? It’s an oxymoron. The fact is, he is neither, but that does not stop conservatives of one sort or another throwing out labels that contradict each other.

            Ironically, all of that unintended stimulus money will fulfill the Keynesian promise that stimulus, not austerity, will restore the American economy, and it will be funded by none other than the folks who believe just the opposite. That’s an even neater trick.

The Absolute: Ideal Cover for the Dissolute

         Football, the stock market, and the Catholic Church are three examples of ideas that have become cultural holy grails worshiped and revered by loyal fans and followers in America. The most successful in those arenas become heroes and even idols, especially when they profess to represent goodness as well as greatness.
       What we forget is that our institutions are human constructs and are therefore imperfect. When we trust them as if they were absolutes, we put ourselves and especially our most vulnerable at risk. The most respected and revered examples of those institutions affiliated with our most revered ideas become the ideal cover for those who would harm us.
      Penn State was one of the most respected and revered college football programs in the nation. It stood for tradition, integrity, hard work, excellence, and success. Penn State players graduated in high numbers; they generally behaved themselves much better than most; and they played for one of the most revered and respected coaches in the land: Joe Paterno. Jerry Sandusky used that institutional reverence as part of the cover for his pedophilia.
      The most famous Ponzi schemer in the history of the United States, Bernie Madoff, lured many a believer into his scheme because he maintained the appearance of the consummate exclusive, successful, investment manager who produced fantastic results, literally. He became an institution of one that attracted true believers because he was able to sustain for a very long time a charismatic god-like image that provided the perfect cover for his deceit. It is blind faith in the “goodness through growth” of the market system that gave cover to Bernie Madoff’s scam.
       And most egregiously, the Catholic Church continues to cover for what is turning out to be countless pedophiles among its clergy.
       In all three examples the perpetrators used other people’s blind faith in institutions and in ideas as their cover. Therefore, our most cherished beliefs can make us immune to any notion that anything untoward could possibly exist in conjunction with the purity our minds insist on seeing. We fall prey to absolutes because they provide the false but enticing clarity of black and white in the face of a gray world.
      But ultimately it is hope distilled into faith that is our greatest liability as human beings. We get intellectually lazy in some aspect of our lives and begin to rely on faith rather than judgment. We “decide” to stop thinking and simply trust. We transform a part of our relative lives into some sort of absolute. It is comforting for a time, but inevitable reality intrudes. More often than not we choose belief over fact because we are, as humans, foolishly consistent even in the face of change.
       As D.H. Lawrence says, in Studies in Classic American Literature, “Beware of absolutes. There are many gods.” In fact, we make gods of all sorts of things to let ourselves off the hook. Except for sociopaths and psychopaths, who represent a small percentage of the world’s population, we know right from wrong. We learn it by all sorts of means, but we learn it. We continue to learn it throughout life and we act on it regularly when the costs are low. It is when the costs are high, when the power of evil masquerading as goodness is great that we more often than not fail to act. That is why true heroes are rarer than diamonds, and why human evolution is so very slow.
      Maybe rapidly evolving technology will enable us to hold ourselves and others more accountable than has happened in the past. Equipping the whole world with cell phones and cameras may give us the means of capturing more of reality moment by moment and lay waste the cover our hallowed institutions have provided those who would harm. But all the accurate exposure in the world will have little effect if we do not stop making gods out of our own sloth and intellectual resignation or faith out of hope.