I’m increasingly drawn to whole paragraphs Mead rolls out, almost without effort, day after day. See if you agree with these Mead thoughts:
➢ people, not experts:
the emerging Tea Party . . . movement’s . . . ruling passion is a belief in the ability of the ordinary citizen to make decisions for himself or herself without the guidance or ‘help’ of experts and professionals. No idea has deeper roots in American history and culture and by global standards Americans have historically distrusted doctors, lawyers, bankers, preachers and professors: everybody who presumes that their special insider knowledge gives them a special right to decide what’s best for the rest of us and historically no political force has been stronger than the determination of ordinary Americans to flatten the social and political hierarchy.
➢ basic structure broken:
Today . . . our core institutions . . . cost more than we can pay but they don’t do what we need. We have colleges our people cannot afford — and that often leave graduates without a basic grounding . . . We have a health system that we cannot pay for and which fails to cover enough people. We have a public school system which has been failing too many of our children for far too long, costs unconscionably large amounts of money considering its poor performance — and vested interests block necessary reforms. Our federal, state and local governments are locked into an employment system and mode of organization that we cannot pay for — and that does not do the job. Our retirement system is a time bomb and all our political class can do is watch the fuse burn.
➢ need a revolution:
The United States has rarely been in greater need of rapid transformation than we are now. The information revolution, the rapid development of the global economy, the shift of cultural and economic power from Europe toward Asia, the enormous wave of immigration that since the 1960’s has been remaking the body politic once again, the breakdown of the progressive or blue social model as industries and financial markets rise and fall with a velocity not seen [before]: these changes are taking place all around us, but our institutions and policies are very far from keeping up.
1 comment:
This is your best thread of thought and development; all the other posts seem too abstract and distant.
But the liberation from the old status quo hierarchy, is something everyone can do, in whatever position they hold or are in. One can be a leader just by refusing to go along and surrendering your energies to the old partisan battles, that are merely distractions and diversions.
Especially in Hawaii, you need a cultural revolution because it doesn't matter who is at the top of a corrupt system in which nobody can discriminate good from bad, right from wrong, the truth from all the lies anymore.
Everybody has just given up trying to solve any problems -- and now think it is enough not to even see them.
Post a Comment