Perfect is the enemy of good.
The best selling point for capitalism is also the best selling point for politics in the U.S.:
It’s messy.
Messy is good. Messy means no one gets to get too comfortable. Comfort is tyranny. Comfort means the few absolutely enjoy a greater standard of living than the many. Comfort is fiction. Messy is reality.
Messy capitalism means the system can be manipulated. But a system that allows for course corrections is a dynamic one, that rewards innovation, that celebrates achievement.
Messy politics is much the same. The worst that actually comes from messy politics is an opposition that obsesses over reclaiming power.
In every other form of politics, other than the republican democracy practiced in the U.S., tyranny is the word they’re always trying to hide in the description. A system predicated on checks and balances prevents tyranny. For two hundred and fifty years, including a civil war that radically transformed the reputation of the president whose election led to it, the U.S. has maintained an otherwise impossible ideal.
Because it doesn’t look ideal.
It’s the saints of imperfection. It’s the belief that things can go horribly wrong (the Great Depression), but the system endures, both in its politics and in its economy, and somehow manages to enter a world war and emerge on the other side on better footing than anyone.
It’s the belief that mistakes, small and grave, are not the final outcome.
It’s the belief that we can disagree and believe we exist in different cultures, but we don’t, because even the worst disagreement we ever had failed to end the country, the twin systems guiding it.
It’s the belief that innovation drives advancement. For most of human history the core belief was that you could just steal it from someone else, and every single time this somehow only led to decay.
It’s still early, sure. People like to say the U.S. is still a young country, that there are other countries doing any number of things better.
Better needs to add up, though. The U.S. has fought hard not to fight every war it ever entered, up to and including WWII, which no one could have imagined, both within the U.S. and elsewhere, would’ve led to a behemoth most of the world resents, today, including many within its own borders, among its own citizens.
But there are still great demands on this country, and that, perhaps, cuts through everything else, the belief that even if perceived as adrift it’s still the most needful nation in the world. The world needs it.
The U.S. needs its politics as exactly as they are, it needs its capitalism.
It’s perfectly imperfect. Exactly the way it needs to be.
6 comments:
Are there pluses? Sure. Have I personally benefited from them? Undoubtedly.
But Tony, the free market doesn't exist without exploitation. The prosperity of some must come at the expense of others. Without socialist elements to provide a safety net, too many live in struggle. Basic healthcare, for starters, should not be an exclusive privilege for those with means.
And that's just the beginning. Paying a living wage shouldn't be optional. Decent housing shouldn't be a privilege. Quality of education shouldn't be dependent on a community's wealth. And so on.
Capitalism has all of the advantages you've listed. But as long as it translates to comfort only for the privileged few, it's not good enough.
Greater institutional prosperity exists than we’re willing to admit. At the very basic level of AC, which became a significant topic this year for a number of reasons, I think it ought to be more than evident. We wouldn’t have an epidemic of obesity, or the perception of one, if we didn’t have an abundance of food. We take far too much for granted. Everyone wants to be a king. The richest among us have the same dreams as the most rural residents: they just want to live on land where they really don’t need to be bothered with neighbors.
That last point was, I think, why Yellowstone became such a phenomenon. It was a cross-section of everyone who coveted that land, and it was basically every possible interest group. That’s how all of this happens. We’re the land of the free. It tends to breed competition. Not everyone wins. There’s never going to be a civilization where everyone wins.
At the moment it’s incredibly popular to look at the history of European settlement in the Americas as genocide. Every single moving part in that mechanism was maneuvering in its own interests. We lack any real perspective on it. If you look at English history, just marveling at the concept of “Anglo-Saxon” heritage suggests how easily we eventually accept that as far as history is ultimately concerned, things simply happen. No one is currently worried at how barbaric Viking activities really were. It’s stuff that happened. We’re much more concerned with how amusing, say, Thor is in the MCU. But there’s no Thor without Viking raids tearing communities apart at the seams.
You want to know how shallow our thought process is? We rename sports teams to remove Native American references, but the Minnesota Vikings endure. Just because you’re not personally offended, doesn’t mean it’s not trauma to someone else, some other time. But then, the argument is never really about that.
I seem to have strayed from the topic. But I haven’t.
It’s about being able to have some pride in a country even when you’re being told not to.
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